In politics, as in music, nothing is ever certain. Given his five-seat majority, Wilson could not embark on the restructuring of Britain to the extent that he desired. His wishes, however, were Olympian. The rush of provision between 1964 and 1965 for the most vulnerable now seems uncanny in its beneficence. In 1965, redundancy payments were introduced. Council homes increased from 119,000 in 1964 to 142,000 in 1966. The Protection from Eviction Act ensured that tenants need never fear a rap on the door in the early hours. The Industrial Training Board provided for generations of workers to come. The Trade Disputes Act of 1965 restored the legal immunity of union officials. And the Race Relations Act made it an offence to discriminate against any on the basis of race. Most revealingly, widows’ pensions trebled in 1966. It was as if a sacred well had overflowed into a river of gold. The government’s majority needed all the support it could muster, yet the goodwill of Wilson and his colleagues was beyond question; it was their deep intent to unfurl the canopy of the welfare state far wider than Beveridge and even Bevan could have conceived. By 1965, the sociologist T. H. Marshall could speak of a new consensus in the belief that it was the business of the state to look after the people.
It was education that had brought Wilson from Huddersfield to Downing Street, and he wished that advantage for all. Under his aegis, the percentage of GNP spent on education outstripped that on defence. Thirty new polytechnics were built. There were free school meals for children. The number of teachers in training vastly increased and the student population grew by 10 per cent each year. Every citizen, Wilson hoped, would soon be assured of some form of tertiary education. In 1969 the Open University was inaugurated; if you still could not go on to higher education, it would come to you. The dream of universal education was not as radical as it appeared, yet it was not to be. Instead, Wilson was to be credited for a step over which educators, politicians and parents have been at war ever since.
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.
The opponents in the final were West Germany. Joshing in the press about two other recent conflicts could not conceal the lack of real anti-German animus in the population – if anything, the German economic miracle of the post-war years had attracted admiration. The two sides were similar in many respects, tending to persistence rather than flair. The Germans scored first, a setback that served only to prick the torpor of the England side. England first equalized, then drew ahead. In the last frenetic ten minutes, the game became a true contest. The Germans drew level with one minute to go, and then the whistle blew. The English players were almost despairing, but Ramsey recalled them to their duty during extra time. ‘You’ve won the World Cup once,’ he told them. ‘Now go out and win it again.’ What followed proved one of the most controversial goals in history. The ball ricocheted between the German goalposts and at last the goal was given, to huge German protests. There was no debate about the next one, however: with seconds to go, Geoff Hurst lashed the ball into the German net. 4-2. England had won the World Cup.
The players collapsed, wept and embraced. The sun blazed brighter, the fans roared, and Bobby Moore, having wiped his hands before greeting the queen, held aloft the World Cup. The austere Ramsey, delighting in his players’ happiness, doffed his usual reserve and kissed the trophy.