JACK STRAW: ‘Labour MPs are panicking over election drubbing – I have this sensible advice’

Labour elected by a landslide. Events conspire to knock the government off course.

Two years later Labour gets an absolute drubbing in the local elections, losing control of councils which a week before were rock-solid. Labour councillors ousted from Town and City Halls are vitriolic; Labour MPs panic.

The Labour leader announces that he’s still the man to steer the ship of state to safety – and, just to annoy his internal opponents, later says “I know what’s going on. I’m going on”.

OPINIONAndrea EganOPINIONJames Lyons

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Sounds familiar? It is to party members with grey hair. This wasn’t last Thursday, but 9th May 1968. Harold Wilson had won the 1966 General Election on 31st March with 48% of the vote, and a majority of 99. In the summer of ’66 we won the World Cup. All seemed set fair for Labour. But through 1967 the economy was not working as intended. These were the days of fixed exchange rates, where the £ sterling was tied to the US $. We were exporting too little, importing too much. On 18th November 1967 the £ was devalued from $2.80 to the £ to $2.40.

Things went from bad to worse. We lost a safe seat in Dudley, West Midlands, with a swing of over 21% in March 1968. In late April, Conservative MP Enoch Powell made his notorious ‘’Rivers of Blood’ speech, predicting that in ‘15 to 20 years the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’.

The results two and half weeks later were bloody. I’d just moved into Islington, north London. In the previous elections, in 1964, the Conservatives had not won a single seat. Four years later, they won a thumping majority, with 47 seats. It was a similar story in Hackney, Camden, Lambeth. Labour did not win a single seat in Birmingham; the Conservatives won everything in Leicester, and gained control of Sheffield for the first time in 40 years.

Wilson decided to tough it out. Labour’s fortunes gradually improved, so much that when Wilson called the election in 1970 Labour was over 10% ahead in the polls. But a late swing to the Tories put Ted Heath into Downing Street, on 18th June 1970.

History rarely repeats itself exactly. But it is a guide. Unfortunately, the experience in the late 60’s points both ways. Would a different Labour leader – say Jim Callaghan or Roy Jenkins – have done better than Wilson? It’s very hard to say – though the leadership election would have highlighted even more Labour divisions, which would not have helped. My only sensible advice is to wait a bit until the dust has settled on last Thursday’s debacle.

The horrible truth is that last Thursday’s results are even worse than those in 1968. Worst because we secured a much lower share of the vote than we did in 1968, and worse because the insurgent parties – Reform and the Greens – are eating our lunch. A situation like this requires some big changes in approach.

Stood outside a polling station last Thursday collecting numbers (which tells us who’s voted, who to remind later) I was asked how long I’d be doing this. 71 years was the answer. I was eight at the time. I’d been sent to our local polling station – in St John’s Church Hall, Loughton, Essex – by my mother, a Party activist.

There was a police constable positioned outside the polling station, with nothing much to do. Polling was slow. I chatted to this officer – or rather he proceeded to tell me most of his life story – including his bitterness that he’d been denied promotion to sergeant because he’d been found smoking his pipe at 2 00 am whilst on duty in the High Road. The story has stuck with me ever since.

Since devolution at the turn of the century, Scotland and Wales have lost ground in international education tables, whilst England has gained. The performance of the NHS in both those countries has lagged behind England.

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But there’s little justice in politics. Labour in Wales is no longer in power, whilst the SNP suffers no similar opprobrium in Scotland. The reason – the SNP can always blame Labour in Westminster.

It’s good to see that after extensive investigations by MI5 and the police, a UK Immigration Officer, and a trade official were both this week convicted of offences of assisting a foreign intelligence service – China. If I’d been the Chinese Embassy, I would have kept quiet. But, no – they said that the case amounted to ‘abusing the law’. Extraordinary.