TLIAM: A Series Of Quite Fortunate Events
- Thread starter Meadow
- Start date
Okay.
Don't hurt me.
I have never heard of Meadow and Roem before
*runs for the hills*
Don't hurt me.
I have never heard of Meadow and Roem before
*runs for the hills*
Okay boys. I know everyone will say start with Lavender but I'm thinking Shuffling the Deck might be a simpler start
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
[HURTS YOU]
They are winners of a large amount of Turtledoves, they run an AH publishing company, and Meadow invented the TLIA* format.
Here's a Vignette.
DAMN IT
You know, I have been here a year, I'm surprised I haven't heard of them sooner.
Can you stop spamming our TL, please? Thanks.
Part III
Harold Macmillan
Conservative and Unionist
1959-1963
A three-figure majority had not been awarded to any sitting government since that of Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald, twenty-eight years prior to the landmark ’59 election. The scale of the Tory victory shocked everyone from Fleet Street to Basildon (which, with a five percent swing to the incumbent Conservative MP, had been an early harbinger on election night). As Harold Macmillan waved to the crowds outside Downing Street as he commented on the results, few could have predicted the changes that would take place during the new Parliament.
To start with, however, it was business as usual. A small reshuffle promoted bright young things such as Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell, whilst disarming the “Wabbits”. Lessons had been learnt from his first term, and the new Government was also considerably less Aristocratic and Old Etonian than the one that had been appointed in 1955. Gwilym Lloyd George was rewarded for a diligent term as Chancellor with a Viscountcy. Almost as if a contrast were required, the grammar school-educated President of the Board of Trade, Edward Heath, was promoted to the Exchequer.
Heath’s post-Election Budget, which introduced funding for a new Commission for Public Works and Infrastructure, capitalised on Macmillan’s landslide majority and the abdication of the political centre by the Labour Party. “Britain Belongs To You” was disparagingly dubbed “Britain Belongs To Moscow” by Quintin Hogg, whilst the Daily Mail paid for a brass band to follow Bevan’s speaking tour, playing a medley of Soviet anthems. Both were absurd exaggerations, the ’59 Labour Manifesto having been firmly in Attlee spirit. However, defeat prompted a wave of unrest within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Supporters of Shadow Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell formed the Council for Democratic Socialism, an organisation near-transparently aimed at preventing a lurch to the left. Simultaneously, left-wingers under the dual leadership of Konni Zilliacus and Fenner Brockway resurrected the mantle of the Independent Labour Party (to unsuppressed groans from some of the more white-haired members on both sets of benches). At an ill-tempered conference in Blackpool that November, Bevan narrowly faced down a leadership challenge from Gaitskell, as well as an effort by right-wing delegates to adopt a new Clause IV formally scrapping a commitment to mass state ownership. Bevan emerged from the ‘Blackpool Bearpit’ with his authority diminished, and many expected him to face another attempt to oust him in the spring. His death on 14th February 1960 rendered such speculation moot.
“It is always a matter of regret from the personal point of view when divergences arise between colleagues, but it is the team that matters and not the individual. I am quite happy about the strength and the power of the team, and so I thought the best thing to do was to simply note these little local difficulties.”
By “Little Local Difficulties”, the Shadow Chancellor was referring to Anthony Greenwood’s announcement that he would also contest the subsequent leadership election. The difficulties turned out to be neither “little”, nor “local”, and for the third time in five years, Hugh Gaitskell found himself second in what he had expected to have been a one-man race. Of even greater concern to the Labour Right, however, was the fact that Gaitskell had only come twelve votes ahead of the septuagenarian Brockway.
The Conservatives, of course, had little to complain about regarding the chaos of the Official Opposition. After the monetary crisis of the late-1950s receded (thanks in part to a few years fiscal discipline on behalf of Heath’s term at the Treasury), public expenditure once again was allowed to rise, with considerable investment in national infrastructure (including ‘Dieselfication’ across British Rail), and the wide-scale adoption of nuclear power. ‘Neutron Ted’ became a popular nickname for the Chancellor, a term which had obvious repercussions for headline writers and cartoonists when the Prime Minister split his duties between responsibility for the Budget and a new, dedicated, Department for Economic Affairs (‘and Development’ having been dropped after the first batch of headed notepaper was printed) in 1962. Housebuilding, of course, remained a matter dear to the Prime Minister’s heart, with the second wave of the so-called ‘New Towns’ being designated as Britain entered the Sixties. Outside Great Britain, however, a very different type of accommodation was taking place.
“The wind of change is blowing through this continent,” Macmillan said at an address at the Parliament of the Union of South Africa, “whether we like it or not, the growth of national consciousness is a pressing concern.”
In 1957, Kwame Nkrumah had led Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast), to independence from the United Kingdom. Originally considered a matter of decisive and positive change for the African continent, Nkrumah’s assassination less than a year taking office led to a seismic shift in Britain’s attitude towards decolonisation. Rioting in the east of the country forced Nkrumah’s successor, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, to send the army to restore order, whilst demands for decentralisation by local chiefs further threatened the stability of the newly-sovereign state. Macmillan, whilst a trenchant opponent of ‘business as usual’ imperialism, felt a need to change course with regard to the future of the Empire. Gbedemah - less radical than Nkrumah with regard to national identity - thought likewise. The following year, the British Government agreed to co-sponsor the Akosombo Dam with the United States. In return, Gbedemah agreed to scrap the proposed constitutional referendum to turn Ghana into a Presidential Republic. Ghana remained a Kingdom within the Commonwealth of Nations, with Elizabeth II as Head of State. As the Belgian Congo collapsed into internecine warfare, with CIA and KGB operatives backing numerous sides in the subsequent civil war, it became clear to Macmillan’s government that a more moderate approach to decolonisation was required. The ‘Ghana Model’ of Dominion Status within the Empire and Commonwealth would dominate Britain’s approach to Empire for years to come.
Meanwhile, in America, John F. Kennedy entered the White House following a narrow but decisive win over Richard Nixon. The anemic response by the Eisenhower administration towards Suez had annoyed isolationists for its perceived deference towards the Imperial Powers of Europe, as well as interventionists for allowing a regime broadly believed to be sympathetic towards Moscow to consolidate itself in Egypt. Kennedy entered the Oval Office with a vow to avoid the same mistakes, immediately dispatching Vice President Johnson to Saigon and doubling the number of advisors and special forces providing support for the South Vietnamese regime. However, while Kennedy’s first term would be dominated by events much closer to home, it would set the tone for the future of Anglo-American relations.
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Macmillan counselled Kennedy in two official calls (records of a third were declassified four years ago) and, like the President twenty-three years his junior, went without sleep for days on end. Typically understated, Macmillan would record in his diaries at the end of the confrontation that “it is all finished with”. The same could not be said for his relationship with President Kennedy, which had been civil but a step down from the warmth his shared wartime years with Eisenhower had brought to the Transatlantic partnership during the latter’s Presidency. Now far from “finished with”, the relationship between Mac’n’Jack (as one soon-to-be-sacked copy editor referred to the leaders of the free world) developed into something more than the boyish President had originally intended to pursue with the man he had wrongly assumed to be a stuffy relic.
To be fair, such a reputation for stuffiness was further supported by his response to the actions of John Profumo, the Secretary of State for Health. Handsome, gifted and tipped for success, Profumo had had the very great pleasure to have been introduced to a young woman named Christine Keeler at a garden party at the Cliveden estate hosted by the Astors. The two immediately began an affair.
Whilst it wasn’t exactly a crime for a man to boff the wrong tart, when said tart was also known to enjoy liaisons with a senior attache at the Soviet Embassy, questions began to be asked in Parliament. These had started first in the tea room, but soon working their way towards the Commons Chamber itself. Throughout 1962, press attention began to circulate the rumours of the love triangle, finally rousing the attention of the Home Office. As a tornado of sex and espionage ripped through Whitehall, Macmillan finally felt duty bound to act. Either through the direct intervention of the Prime Minister, or a crisis of conscience by the man himself, Profumo broke down at the Despatch Box on 22nd March 1963, taking full responsibility for his actions, thanking his priest for guidance, and announcing his resignation from both the Cabinet and as MP for Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a terribly undignified display but as a means to lance the boil it apparently worked – to the surprise of many, the Government comfortably held the seat in the subsequent by-election, with only a small swing to the Liberal Party. This, coupled with figures showing that economic growth had overtaken that of West Germany, made subsequent events all the more bizarre.
With his foreign and domestic reputation at dizzying heights, the emerging rumours surrounding the Prime Minister were confusing and concerning. At first dismissed by all but the most shameless Fleet Street hacks as malevolent Whitehall scuttlebutt, matters escalated and around about Easter 1963 questions began even to be asked in the Commons about the Prime Minister’s regular absences from the House. His disposition when he was seen in public seemed distracted and unwell, and out of keeping with a man whose government was winning by-elections it had no business even doing respectably in. Rumours circulated of long nights, shouting matches with party grandees, and sheafs of handwritten notes being burnt as quickly as they were written.
Britain’s usually easygoing premier at first resisted all calls to quash the increasingly alarmist rumours. But as the demands for action moved from his inner circle to his opponents to the front pages, Macmillan’s staunchly patrician nature gave way to political reality.
After consulting with the Palace, the Magic Circle, and his physician, Macmillan took the near-unprecedented step of carrying out a televised address from inside Admiralty House (where he had been living and working since renovation of Downing Street began in 1962). His announcement would stun Whitehall and send out ripples still felt in British politics today.
Alex Richards
Donor
Something tells me the Commonwealth model probably means a much earlier independence for Rhodesia.
See, that's the thing - on the face of it this seems to be a perfectly nice little TLIAPOT about a slightly different 1950s Conservative government, but perfectly nice little TLIAPOTs aren't what I've come to expect from these two. At least not recently.
With a POD going back to 1953, it's expected that JFK will not be shot on the 22nd November 1963.