History of England 1-6

On 12 July 1965, Anthony Crosland assembled plans for a fully comprehensive system of secondary education, one that would do away with the divisive eleven-plus. Many had received a grammar-school education superior to that of the best public schools; but for those who failed the eleven-plus, the experience of a secondary modern had only served to dig a deeper sense of inferiority. Wilson’s own attitude was hard to gauge. Outwardly, he gave Crosland his familiar support, while privately he felt corralled by the Labour Left. He had even been heard to declare that grammar schools would go ‘over my dead body’. The problem grew more urgent as Labour’s tiny majority fell to one. The balance of payments, moreover, was revealed to be the worst since the war. The government had to go to the country.

The prevailing mood in the government and party was sleepy, unhurried and even bored. It was another sign of Wilson’s infectious self-belief, which the obvious unpopularity of the opposition’s new leader, Edward Heath, buffed to brilliance. Where Wilson came across as easy-going and confident, Heath seemed awkward, intense and uninspiring. And who, after all, could have expected an election less than two years after the previous one? Richard Crossman recalled the mood on the day of his own re-election, a day of ‘steady, perfect electioneering weather … Now it is we who are on the top of the world.’ The public agreed, and the Labour party resumed government with over a hundred more seats in the Commons.

It had been a beautiful morning, but there were ominous signs. Jim Callaghan, the chancellor, now faced a storm-tossed pound, and for the first time a forbidden word began to be whispered – devaluation. Just as this new threat emerged, an old one, union militancy, rose up from a long slumber. The NUS, the seamen’s union, walked out over weekend shifts. A shipping strike could do nothing but damage British maritime trade, perhaps catastrophically, and it would also make a nonsense of George Brown’s voluntary incomes policy. He had set the rate of wage increases at 3.5 per cent, while the workers were asking for 17 per cent. In a furious bid to break the impasse, Wilson spoke of ‘politically motivated men who … are now determined to exercise backstage pressures, forcing great hardship on the members of the union and their families, and endangering the security of the industry and the economic welfare of the nation’.

Blaming communist agitators worked and the strike was called off, but the victory came at an almost prohibitive price. It did nothing to help the pound and it sapped Wilson’s popularity among the backbench left and even within his own cabinet. This, in turn, led to a stillborn coup against Wilson, known as the ‘July plot’. The nation would never have accepted the erratic George Brown as a replacement for Wilson, but nonetheless it had been an enervating few weeks, and Wilson was ready to accept any distraction.

Since the Edwardian period, organized sport had acquired increasing prominence in national life. But it was cricket that dominated the early half of the century. Football was a local affair and inspired fierce loyalties, but the success or failure of the national team usually evoked little more than well-disposed apathy. With the growth of television, however, popular sympathies began to shift. Football was exciting to watch, but gentle on people’s attention span. A ninety-minute game was perhaps preferable to a five-day test match. Nonetheless, the news that the 1966 World Cup would be hosted by England caught the nation unprepared. It was hard for his aides even to make Wilson understand that football might stretch further than his native Huddersfield Town. As ever, he quickly adapted. But after a dispiriting series of failures, few imagined that England could win the tournament.

Alf Ramsey could imagine it, however, and he set out to ensure it. Ramsey was a scion of the respectable working classes; football was not a game to him, and his players were encouraged to understand that. While it would be unfair to suggest that England sleepwalked through the first three matches, theirs was not a game to inspire the faithful. But with the match against Argentina, all was changed. The England players might have been less skilful than their opponents, but they were dogged and relentless. Towards the end of the game, a header by Geoff Hurst won the game for England.

The Argentines took the defeat badly, despite having bent the rules to breaking point, and Ramsey’s inflammatory words after the game did not help matters. He used the term ‘animals’ to describe the defeated South Americans, and much of the world sympathized openly with them. The formidable Portugal side then lost to the English in the semi-final, in another result that confounded expectation. England was now in the final, and on home turf. At last the public was stirred and ‘football fever’ born.