Why Jim arrived so reluctantly - and Harold went so fast

Why Jim arrived so reluctantly - and Harold went so fast

Papers show Callaghan hated No 10, while Wilson feared conspiracy theories as he quit

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Tuesday January 4, 2005

Guardian

Jim Callaghan refused to move into Downing Street when he became prime minister in April 1976, saying the flat at No 10 was so uncomfortable that he was not prepared to inflict it on his wife Audrey, according to files released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Cabinet Office papers released today at the national archives in Kew also reveal for the first time the eight-page resignation statement that Harold Wilson made to the cabinet in which he tried hard to dispel speculation about the timing of his decision to step down.

Callaghan's reluctance to move into Downing Street is revealed in a "personal and confidential" note from Ken Stowe, the PM's principal private secretary, to his opposite number at the Foreign Office.

Stowe warned his colleague that Callaghan wanted to move into 1 Carlton Gardens, the well-appointed traditional "grace and favour" home of the foreign secretary.

He said he had raised the difficulties involved with the new prime minister: the problem of having two official residences at public expense; the fact that he would have to deprive his choice of foreign secretary of an official residence; and the fact that Carlton Gardens was a base for official entertainment.

"Since he was adamant that he was not prepared to inflict upon his wife the discomforts of living in No 10 then he would have to live somewhere else and, if driven to it, would elect to stay in his present flat in Kennington Park Road," Stowe reported.

"I felt bound to say that this was not sensible - operationally and for security purposes it was necessary for him to have a self-contained and serviceable residence as prime minister. He then said in that case he would live in No 1, Carlton Gardens."

Callaghan, who had been foreign secretary before getting the top job, said his successor could have the official flat in Admiralty House. Stowe said Callaghan was prepared to undertake to use Carlton Gardens only as a personal residence for himself and Mrs Callaghan, so it could be used for official purposes by the Foreign Office.

But the idea was enough to make the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Michael Palliser, fume.

He told Downing Street that it was not on, pointing out that since Ernest Bevin had moved into Carlton Gardens in 1945 it had become established as the official residence of the foreign secretary.

The FO needed it for entertaining visitors such as Henry Kissinger, who had visited recently. The alternative of Lancaster House was "far from ideal".

The combined weight of opposition among the mandarins seems to have proved enough to crush a prime minister, as the file contains no further correspondence. Callaghan soon moved into the Downing Street flat.

His elevation to No 10 had been triggered by the sudden resignation of Harold Wilson, another event covered in the newly released documents. Wilson's decision came immediately after the Watergate revelations in the US and a banking crash in London, which triggered some speculation that his sudden departure was in some way forced.

So on the morning of March 16 1976, Wilson went out of his way to explain the timing of his decision to his cabinet colleagues. Barbara Castle is said to have sobbed when he broke the news.

Wilson told the cabinet that he had set out in a confidential statement in July 1974 that his preferred departure date as "party conference 1975". The summer's pay and inflation problems meant that he had revised his departure date to late December.

He said he had told the Queen on December 9 that he would go in mid or late March, and the audience he had with her had been arranged "some weeks ago". His timing, he stressed, "was not related to any recent events".

Turbulent years

Wilson's statement, released today for the first time, certainly gives no hint that the security services had anything to do with his decision, as some have speculated. It shows that he gave his colleagues four reasons for his decision to quit.

The first was that he had been "leader of this party for over 13 exciting and turbulent years - nearly eight of them in government. My period as prime minister has been longer than that of any of my peacetime predecessors in this country," he said.

He added that he had led four administrations and been on "one or other front bench" in the Commons for more than 30 years.

His second reason certainly fuelled Denis Healey's belief that the timing was designed to help Callaghan. "I have a clear duty to the country and to the party not to remain here so long that others are denied the chance to seek election to this post," Wilson said, adding that the cabinet contained the "most talented team this century" since Campbell-Bannerman's 1906 Liberal government.

Wilson denied that he was stepping down because of his age (he had just turned 60) and noted that Attlee, Churchill, Macmillan and Douglas-Home had all been a similar age when they became prime minister. Callaghan was 63 at the time.

His other two reasons were less significant: he felt his counter-inflation policy was safe, whoever succeeded him, and he felt there was a danger that decisions seemed to be coming round a second time.

"I want to make it quite clear... that these reasons represent the total explanation of my decision," he said, trying to dispel speculation that he was getting out before some hidden crisis emerged. "There are no impending problems or difficulties - economic or political - known to the cabinet, which are not known to the country and which are not already the subject of the political discussion of our times."

Historians will regard his claim that all his four administrations had been "happy cabinets" with amusement in the light of the infighting documented in the Crossman, Castle, and Benn diaries.

Wilson advised his successor, who he knew would somewhere in front of him around the cabinet table, that being PM was a full-time calling, and the "easy, spacious, socially-orientated days of some of my predecessors" were gone.

He said he had had to work seven days a week, for at least 12 hours a day, but the variety and interest - at least 500 different documents to read in a weekend - meant that one never got bored, and so never got tired.

But he warned that prime ministers had to watch out "for that cloud no bigger than a man's hand which may threaten not tomorrow's crisis, but perhaps next month's or next year's".

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

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