248. Withered Heath

Ted Heath’s government had to deal with two problems drawn from Britain’s postimperial standing:

• adapting to its loss of global status, by negotiating, at the third time of asking and for the first time successfully, Britain’s entry to the European Economic Community, which happened on 1 January 1973

• dealing with a hangover from the imperial past, as violence surged in Northern Ireland, addressed by direct rule of the province from London, internment without trail and with violent action by British troops, including some massacres, culminating in Bloody Sunday in Derry/Londonderry (‘Stroke City’) on 30 January 1972.

As well as being significantly bloodier, Health's way of dealing with Northern Ireland proved far less successful than his negotiations with European partners.

This episode ends with Heath’s attempts to solve economic problems and with the double confrontation he had with the miners. The second of these would cause him to pose the very question of who ruled the country. The answer from voters was going to disappoint him.

Illustration: Ian Paisley, the outspoken Protestant Ulsterman, campaigning against Catholicism (‘Jesus Saves, Rome Enslaves’). Detail from a photo in Covert History, https://coverthistory.ie/2024/04/06/bombs-spooks-and-child-abuse-the-sordid-secret-history-of-the-dup/.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License