Word: callaghans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Callaghan postpones an autumn election
...Party advertising was bursting from billboards and TV sets proclaiming LABOR ISN'T WORKING. Conservative Party Leader Margaret Thatcher, 52, canceled a holiday trip to France and waded into a twelve-hour-a-day schedule of speeches and political appearances. For his part, Prime Minister James ("Sunny Jim") Callaghan, 66, seemed as caught up as everyone else in a pre-election whirl, trumpeting the virtues of his Labor Party at the annual Trades Union Congress in a rousing partisan speech that brought delegates to their feet...
...flat out of hot air. In a move that stunned pundits and outraged political opponents, the Prime Minister announced in a four-minute televised address to his countrymen that his minority Labor government would not call for a general election next month, as nearly everyone thought it would. Declared Callaghan: "The government must and will continue to carry out policies which are consistent and determined, which do not chop and change ..." In practical terms, that almost certainly postponed Britain's next election until spring, and under the law Callaghan could draw out the suspense until the following November...
Britain's P.M. watchers had been expecting Callaghan to move ever since the sagging Liberal Party walked out on the 17-month-old "Lib-Lab" pact in August, taking with it its 13 crucial parliamentary votes. That left Labor nine votes short of a majority-and, in the opinion of most analysts, with little choice but to go to the polls. Instead, Callaghan evidently patched together a working majority by bargaining for the 14 yeas and nays held by Welsh and Scottish Nationalists. These extra votes should enable Callaghan to survive a Tory test of confidence in November, when...
...Callaghan decided against British wings for the 757. Instead, the British Government pursued negotiations to join the Airbus consortium. That might strengthen Airbus as a Boeing competitor-if the British are allowed in. But the French threaten to freeze them out if Britain goes ahead with the Boeing deal. While it must find some other builder for its wings, Boeing can rejoice in having emerged from the dogfight with $1 billion-plus in orders-enough to assure the 757 a zooming sales takeoff...