Sadism and violence had been unleashed at home, too, all the more shocking for their domestic setting. In Gloucester, Fred West was discovered to have buried the bodies of countless girls, including his own daughter, in various places around his house and elsewhere. He hanged himself in prison. Rosemary West, his wife, was sentenced to ten terms of life imprisonment. Their house was razed to the ground, the only conceivable commemoration.
In the BSE crisis of March 1996 may be seen the stirrings of a wider crisis, which touched on Britain’s relations with the EU and raised troubling questions of national identity. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE, was a condition that affected cattle whose fodder had been adulterated with animal matter. The symptoms, which included erratic behaviour and loss of motor control, gave the condition the name ‘mad cow disease’. The EU acted swiftly, voting for a ban on British beef, a decision challenged by the National Farmers’ Union. Thus fell what was termed ‘a beef curtain’ across Europe, but the effects of the ban on the farmer could not be laughed away. Having insisted that ‘we cannot continue’, John Major urged a compromise, though one that required a mass slaughter of British cattle. The action was fiercely and deeply resented. Why, some asked, was the government at Westminster so bluntly indifferent to rural needs? Was Britain merely a nation of burghers? From this sense of grievance the Countryside Alliance was born, a long and near intractable thorn in the side of government.
Other divisions were evident. The armed forces minister, Nicholas Soames, informed the House that the British army would oppose any move to remove the ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces. Four ex-service personnel planned to challenge the ban in the House of Lords, but on 9 May 1996, parliament maintained the ban, despite warning that ‘action in the European Court of Human Rights would force a change in policy within three years’. Westminster once again seemed caught between the forces of modernity and those of tradition, with no rudder to guide it beyond the ambiguous influence of Brussels. The Referendum party was one of the many manifestations of a prevailing desire to cut the Gordian knot. That party, among others, spelt more local election disasters for the Tories. And the froideur between John Major and his predecessor intensified. Some comfort for the Tories was derived from Jonathan Aitken’s exoneration of complicity in the sale of weapons to Iran.
On Saturday, 15 June 1996, the IRA ended yet another ceasefire by detonating a bomb in Manchester. As far as they were concerned, Major had broken faith in demanding the immediate decommissioning of arms. The bomb was the largest ever detonated in peacetime, yet none were killed. It appeared that this was quite deliberate; prominent buildings and government morale had been the only intended victims. The IRA had alerted the police to the bomb’s presence over an hour before the explosion: enough time to remove residents and shoppers from the vicinity. Such finesse illustrated a change: together with an undimmed readiness to use force, there seemed a new willingness to spare life.
62
The unhappy year
The winds of the time blew fitful and contrary. On 15 July 1996, the Conservatives tightened asylum legislation, in spite of an amendment proposed in the Lords. In the same month, ministerial salaries rose, with attendant protest. Industrial unrest resumed with a postal dispute and a strike of underground train drivers. British Energy was at last completely privatized, with still controversial nuclear power involved.
The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee decided not to recommend a ban on the private ownership of guns; since a massacre had occurred at Dunblane in Scotland only a few weeks previously, the ensuing protests were as inevitable as they were extensive. The shooting of an IRA suspect in the same month only added to the unease. Restrictions on handguns were eventually tightened, but no ban ensued. John Major reaffirmed that all paramilitary activity must cease before Sinn Féin could be invited to participate in further talks. As the prospect of a general election loomed, a reduction of 1 per cent was announced in the basic rate of income tax. It was a token gesture, but the government could promise little else in the circumstances. In December, and amidst further unrest over cash for questions, the Tories lost their majority. The fragility of the government was never more obvious than in January 1997, when it brought two Conservative MPs in an ambulance to attend a vote. The same tactic had of course been employed during the Labour government’s efforts to defeat a noconfidence motion in 1979, but that was in a less squeamish era.
With the loss in February of the South Wirral seat to Labour, the government was left in a parliamentary minority. The armed forces minister, Nicholas Soames, came under pressure to resign, having admitted to ‘very serious failings’ over the MoD’s handling of Gulf War Syndrome. Nor was it a happy year for British justice. The Bridgewater Three, victims of a miscarriage of justice almost twenty years before, were at last released.
This paled beside the furore aroused by the Stephen Lawrence case. Lawrence, a black teenager, had been murdered in 1993 by a gang of five white youths. The cry of ‘What, what, nigger?’ uttered by the youths as they crossed the road to assault their victim might have hinted that the attack was racially motivated, but the police seemed curiously obtuse in that regard. That their own delay in arresting the suspects and their disregard for the testimony of the only witness – also black – might be construed as racist was another possibility to which they seemed oblivious. In a ghastly paradox, there was overwhelming evidence of racially motivated murder but almost no direct evidence against the chief suspects. The errors of procedure committed by the police suggested an attitude that was informed by prejudice. Neville Lawrence, father of Stephen, put it thus in a sombre judgement. ‘When a policeman puts his uniform on, he should forget all his prejudices. If he cannot do that, then he should not be doing the job – because that means that one part of the population is not protected from the likes of those who murdered Stephen.’ After charges against the five were thrown out, Stephen’s parents embarked upon a private prosecution in 1994, but it foundered for lack of evidence. An inquest in February concluded that Lawrence’s death represented ‘an unlawful killing in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths’, but nothing came of this. It fell to the Daily Mail, not known for its championship of the oppressed, to highlight the injustice. The next day, on the front page were shown the faces of the five accused with the stark message ‘Murderers’ above. The Mail then challenged the suspects to sue, but they did not. Justice, of a sort, would be served in the years to come.
By March 1997, the government reeled rather than ruled. Yet its predicament was in some ways puzzling. There was no lack of talent, diligence or goodwill. Equally, however, there was no effective majority, too much self-defeating rhetoric and far too many scandals. A general election was called for 1 May 1997. The government’s decision, though welcomed by the other parties, was overshadowed by the continuing controversy concerning cash for questions. Allan Stewart became the latest in a long line of Conservative politicians to resign over allegations about their private lives. Piers Merchant, however, refused to resign. It seemed as if questions of guilt or innocence were long forgotten – to stitch the tattered robes of credibility with numbed and indifferent fingers was all that could be expected. When the prison ship Weare arrived in Portland Harbour, recalled to ease prison overcrowding, it seemed grimly symbolic.