The panic that gripped Labour after Scotland voted “Yes" to devolution in 1979 – but not by enough – is revealed in secret Cabinet documents opened today.
The government had been hammered by the unions in the Winter of Discontent, with mountains of rubbish piled in the streets and bodies unburied because gravediggers downed their spades.
The then prime minister Jim Callaghan told Welsh Secretary John Morris as the results came in that he “might as well spend his time writing his election address" if he could not dissuade Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, from joining the SNP in a motion of no confidence.
On the day of the 52% to 48% vote in March 1979 – it was lost because fewer than 40% of the Scottish electorate actually voted for a Scottish Assembly in a referendum forced on the Labour government by rebellious backbench Labour MPs – he told Commons Leader Michael Foot there was no point in his going on TV to appeal to the nation because all he could say was “the government had made a ghastly mistake".
Mr Callaghan became a peer after losing the 1979 election to Margaret Thatcher, and died four years ago.
The papers, released by the National Archives at Kew, show he was determined at all costs – even defeat at the polls – to keep Labour united. He made it clear to Mr Foot and other Labour leaders, anxious to push legislation through to set up the assembly despite the result in order to keep the SNP on side, that a split would be “the worst of all possible worlds" and it was necessary to “strain every nerve to avoid it”.
Labour rebels, mainly from the north-east of England but also including figures such as future leader Neil Kinnock, signed a letter demanding the Scotland Act setting up the assembly subject to the referendum result, be repealed “at the first suitable opportunity". Mr Callaghan was warned by colleagues that twisting and turning to keep devolution alive would be seen by English voters as being as much a fight for his own survival as it was about the Scottish Assembly.
Desperate to retain power, he made an 11th-hour bid to stay in power with letters to Mrs Thatcher and Liberal leader David Steel calling for bilateral talks on a better form of government for Scotland and Wales.
Mrs Thatcher's office acknowledged the letter, but no progress was made and the Tories proceeded with a vote of no confidence in the government, aided by the SNP's 11 MPs – more than the seven it has now – and Mr Callaghan crashed to defeat.
The newly-released archives also reveal a personality clash between fisheries minister John Silkin and his German counterpart in 1979 embittered a bid to secure UK fishermen a better deal.
Mr Silkin had to persuade the Fisheries Council, presided over by German food minister Josef Ertl, to accept UK claims to all fish within 12 miles of the coast and a preference for British fishermen in some areas outside it.
The way he pressed the demand at a meeting of the council in 1979 sank a personal deal reached earlier between Mr Callaghan and German chancellor Helmut Schmidt that would have secured better access to stocks for the UK.
Mr Silkin drew up a document expressing UK demands in trenchant terms beyond what Mr Callaghan had told Mr Schmidt the UK would accept.
Mr Ertl took umbrage and ended talks.
Mr Callaghan failed to take his minister’s side, and insisted instead on talks with fisheries commissioner Olav Gunderlach, a Finn.
Cabinet secretary John Hunt drew up new proposals, and Mr Callaghan demanded Mr Silkin pursue talks. Mr Silkin claimed to do so, but attacked the German presidency for being “little help”. Seeking allies to press for a stronger line, he demanded a Commons debate before the next fisheries talks. But by then he was out of a job.