Fitzgerald. But Protestant opponents in Northern
Ireland denounced the idea of giving Dublin any
role in Northern Irish politics as ‘treachery’,
although the government of the Republic of
Ireland had recognised that Irish unity could be
brought about only by the consent of the majority
in Northern Ireland. The agreement has also been
condemned by the IRA and its political wing Sinn
Féin. Nevertheless, the cooperative institution cre-
ated by the agreement, the Intergovernmental
Conference, continues to function, even though its
practical achievements have been sparse.
Despite the difficulties the Wilson government had
experienced economically from 1967 to 1969,
Labour was expected to beat the Conservatives
when the prime minister called the election for
June 1970. To most people’s surprise, the Conser-
vatives won, and their leader Edward Heath was
in 10 Downing Street. Heath, a grammar school
boy, represented a break with the tradition of
grand Tory leaders of the Macmillan and Home
school. He had a good record as a minister, and
although he had failed to overcome de Gaulle’s
veto of British entry into the EEC, his handling of
the negotiations from 1961 to 1963 had earned
him respect.
Now it was Heath’s and the Conservatives’
turn to try to cure the ‘British disease’ of eco-
nomic inertia. The remedy adopted was a market-
oriented approach: a vigorous Britain would
diminish government subsidies and welfare and
reward hard work and enterprise; taxation was to
be reduced, the frontiers of the state rolled back;
wage control was abandoned. Social programmes
were cut, including free school milk. But the doc-
trine of non-state intervention and bale-outs of
industry was quickly reversed, the U-turn begin-
ning in February 1971 when Rolls-Royce was
rescued and taken into public ownership. The
undoing of the Heath government was its bitter
clash with the trade unions. The restriction of
their rights by the Industrial Relations Act in
1971 coincided with an economic downturn. In
1973, the rise in oil prices made the situation still
worse. The Heath government now resorted to
draconian price and wage controls. Government
intervention even came to exceed that of Labour.
In February 1974 the miners went on strike
against the government wages policy. That winter
of gloom the lights literally went out and indus-
try was forced to work a three-day week. The gov-
ernment’s confrontation with the miners was
thoroughly mishandled and when Heath called an
election in February 1974 on the issue of ‘Who
governs Britain?’ he narrowly lost.
The major achievement of Heath’s administra-
tion had been Britain’s entry at last into the
Common Market in 1973. In this critical area of
policy Heath and Wilson were agreed, though
both were faced with considerable opposition
within their own parties on the issue. Wilson’s dif-
ficulties were the more serious. In October 1971
the Labour Party Conference had voted against
joining the EEC. It was, therefore, fortunate that
it was under a Conservative government that the
terms Heath had secured were submitted to the
Commons for approval.
The terms of accession allowed Britain a tran-
sitional period of adjustment for a maximum of
six years. By then, with few exceptions, its food
prices would rise above world prices as duties
would be imposed on food imported from the
Commonwealth and the US. The formula for cal-
culating Britain’s contribution to the common
budget created such a disproportionate burden
that Margaret Thatcher had to negotiate its
reduction, amid much acrimony, during her first
administration (1979–83).
Support for and opposition to ‘joining Europe’
aroused great passions, though more so in
Parliament than in the country as a whole, where
a majority were simply in favour of efforts to find
solutions to Britain’s problems. The opposition in
Parliament could marshal powerful arguments:
the loss of sovereignty and submission to the
bureaucracy of Brussels; the disadvantage to
Britain, with its small and efficient agricultural
sector, of the regressive Common Agricultural
Policy; and the high cost of membership because
of Britain’s large budget contributions. The pro-
ponents’ claim that the advantages of the larger
market counterbalanced the cost underestimated
the difficulty of making Britain competitive.
The House of Commons majorities were never
large, but enough Labour pro-Europeans voted