UFO Info Week-End

Sharing the shame and relief of Munich they took a German socialist refugee

Sharing the shame and relief of Munich, they took a German socialist refugee into their home. Callaghan joined the Navy in 1942 as soon as Houghton could spare him and was recommended for promotion to sub-lieutenant, but the doctors suspected tuberculosis and he was assigned to shore duties. Later he joined the East Indies fleet in Ceylon, Harold Lasky encouraged him to look for a parliamentary constituency and in 1945 he won Cardiff South.With his good looks, his ready tongue and his professional union experience, Callaghan was a potential junior minister He showed his mettle as chairman of the Defence Committee. After two years Clement Attlee appointed him Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and, aware of his rebellious nature, warned him, “Remember! You are playing with the first XI now, not the second.”Callaghan persuaded the ministry to adopt zebra crossings and catseye studs.

From her the boy who was to become Prime Minister derived his deep sense of duty and financial prudence.When she was widowed, she managed superbly on the stingy pension of a sailor whose war service had caused his death at the age of 44. He was an Irishman who could tell a tale, sing a song and dance a perfect hornpipe Jim was born in Portsmouth in 1912. The happiest days of his life were between the ages of seven and nine when his father was a coastguard at Torbay with leisure to tell his tales, as together they watched the ships and hunted for gulls’ eggs. Jim inherited his father’s outgoing temperament and narrative skill.At Maidstone as a young clerk, Callaghan became a Sunday School teacher and, when the superintendent took him home to tea, he met his daughter Audrey. With her, years later, he was to make as good a marriage as a politician could have. She qualified as a domestic-science teacher, gave him a son and three daughters and was elected a member of the London County Council and Chairman of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.Callaghan became an active member of the Association of Officers of Taxes, a small union well run by Douglas Houghton.

He also quietly joined the Labour Party and came to believe that the religion of socialism was more real than Christian fundamentalism. He went to a vast Baptist Sunday School with 100 teachers and feared that, at the Second Coming, his mother would be taken to glory and he, for his sins, would be left behind. In the leadership election, Callaghan was opposed by Michael Foot, Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland and Tony Benn. In the final round of the contest, on 5 April 1976, he beat Foot by 176 votes to 137.Like Harold Wilson, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, Leonard James Callaghan was brought up in the sound of vigorous nonconformist hymns and sermons. The destructive dissidence in the Labour Party, the same old conflicts about the same old problems, helped to inspire both Wilson’s retirement and his choice of successor.Harold Wilson had nothing more to give his party and only Jim Callaghan had the will, the authority and the experience to cope with the financial plight of the country and yet keep Labour from splitting apart.

He was almost 64 and was expecting every day that Wilson would tell him to make way for somebody younger. How could he possibly succeed a man not yet 60?On 11 March George Weidenfeld, the publisher, gave a dinner for Wilson’s 60th birthday. As they drove back to the House of Commons, Wilson confided to Callaghan that he would call a special cabinet on 16 March to announce his resignation.When they reached Westminster, they found Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, rowing with Labour left-wingers who were opposing the Government’s plans to restrict expenditure. As 1975 was dying, a fellow member of the Cabinet, Harold Lever, arrived at the Foreign Office with an incredible message. Harold Wilson had made a firm resolve to resign the premiership in March and Jim Callaghan must prepare to take over.”But I’m too old,” protested the Foreign Secretary.