page_title: James Callaghan
section_title: "Winter of Discontent"
hierarchical_section_title: James Callaghan / Prime Minister (1976–79) / "Winter of Discontent"
caption_attribution_description: English: Jimmy Carter, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Helmut Schmidt and James Callaghan auf Guadeloupe
context_page_description: Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, KG, PC, often known as Jim Callaghan, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. To date, Callaghan is the only person to have held all four Great Offices of State, having also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, prior to his premiership. As Prime Minister, he had some successes, but is remembered chiefly for the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978–79. During a very cold winter, his battle with trade unions led to immense strikes that seriously inconvenienced the public, leading to his defeat in a general election by Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher.
  Born into a working class family, Callaghan started his career at age 17 as a tax inspector, before becoming a trade union official in the 1930s; he then served in the Royal Navy during World War II. He entered the House of Commons in 1945, and was on the left wing of the party.
context_section_description: Callaghan's method of dealing with the long-term economic difficulties involved pay restraint which had been operating for four years with reasonable success. He gambled that a fifth year would further improve the economy and allow him to be re-elected in 1979, and so attempted to hold pay rises to 5% or less. The trade unions rejected continued pay restraint and in a succession of strikes over the winter of 1978–79 (known as the Winter of Discontent) secured higher pay. The industrial unrest made his government extremely unpopular, and Callaghan's response to one interview question only made it worse. Returning to the United Kingdom from an economic summit held in Guadeloupe in early 1979, Callaghan was asked, "What is your general approach, in view of the mounting chaos in the country at the moment?" Callaghan replied, "Well, that's a judgement that you are making. I promise you that if you look at it from outside, and perhaps you're taking rather a parochial view at the moment, I don't think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos." This reply was reported in The Sun under the headline "Crisis? What Crisis?". Callaghan also later admitted in regard to the Winter of Discontent that he had "let the country down".
  The Winter of Discontent saw Labour's performance in the opinion polls slump dramatically. They had topped most of the pre-winter opinion polls by several points, but in February 1979 at least one opinion poll was showing the Tories 20 points ahead of Labour and it appeared certain that Labour would lose the forthcoming election.
  In the buildup to the election, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian supported Labour, while The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, and The Daily Telegraph supported the Conservatives.
  On 28 March 1979, the House of Commons passed a motion of no-confidence by one vote, 311–310, which forced Callaghan to call a general election that was held on 3 May. The Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher ran a campaign on the slogan "Labour Isn't Working" and won the election.
  Callaghan's failure to call an election during 1978 was widely seen as a political miscalculation; indeed, he himself later admitted that not calling an election was an error of judgement. However, private polling by the Labour Party in the autumn of 1978 had shown the two main parties with about the same level of support. After losing power in 1979, Labour would spend the next 18 years in opposition.
  
  Historians Alan Sked and Chris Cook have summarised the general consensus of historians regarding Labour in power in the 1970s:
  If Wilson's record as prime minister was soon felt to have been one of failure, that sense of failure was powerfully reinforced by Callaghan's term as premier. Labour, it seemed, was incapable of positive achievements. It was unable to control inflation, unable to control the unions, unable to solve the Irish problem, unable to solve the Rhodesian question, unable to secure its proposals for Welsh and Scottish devolution, unable to reach a popular modus vivendi with the Common Market, unable even to maintain itself in power until it could go to the country and the date of its own choosing. It was little wonder, therefore, that Mrs Thatcher resoundingly defeated it in 1979.
caption: Callaghan (right) with Helmut Schmidt, Jimmy Carter and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in Guadeloupe, 1979
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