Word: callaghans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Watching and listening to the frail old aesthete on television, former Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan told the House of Commons last week, was like hearing "the rustle of dead leaves underfoot. I could hear those accents of someone from the 1930s...
Thatcher's position was upheld by two of her predecessors as Prime Minister in what Callaghan called "a calm and rational debate." Speaking from the corner Commons seat once occupied by Winston Churchill during the '30s, Edward Heath strongly denied that there had been any "coverup" and insisted that Blunt's disclosures about other Soviet spies had provided "a great deal of valuable information." Callaghan agreed with Heath, but allowed, with hindsight, that "the advice at the time about Blunt being allowed to stay in a palace post was wrong." And Callaghan added the icy comment...
...Callaghan, 67, took his setback philosophically. "My mind is quiet," he later said privately. He promised his inner circle that he would stay on as leader at least through the 1980 conference in Blackpool...
...with Callaghan's authority now seriously damaged, potential successors are already jockeying for position. His own favorite is former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who bravely defended Callaghan in Brighton as the party's "greatest asset." But if the leftists succeed next year in gaining control of the selection process-as they nearly did last week -the front runner will be Tony Benn...
...Brighton his mere appearance on the dais sparked more spirited applause than Callaghan's best lines had received. Speaking in a sibilant, upper-class accent, his cricketer-pink cheeks crinkling with earnestness, the former viscount called for bold economic and social reforms and vowed to wage "a tremendous battle" against "decaying capitalism." One hint of policies to come under a future Benn government: a conference vote in favor of renationalizing -without compensation-the industries that the Thatcher government is partially selling off to the private sector...