Burn It All Down – Britain, 1982-84

Part Ten – Cannonball


Back during April when the general election campaigns were in full swing, the investigative journalist Duncan Campbell posted a story in the left-leaning New Statesman concerning a revelation that in light of a Labour victory, there was the possibility that the British Armed Forces had a plan of action to take to the streets to help maintain order. He used a well-placed source and had spoken to others who confirmed this. His story was mangled during electioneering by political forces out to use it for their own end. The so-called ‘Operation Crown Jewels’ was seized upon by all sides to attack the other claiming scaremongering or warning of impending doom.

Campbell – who had the operation’s real name, not that silly one promoted by a Labour Party staffer – was left to watch helplessly as everything was twisted beyond recognition. The story became something it wasn’t with a reputed military takeover being what people were talking about for a couple of days. That wasn’t what he’d written of. Instead, he had uncovered preparations for the largescale use of military aid to the civil power in the event of widespread public disorder: this wasn’t about an attack on democracy. The Conservative’s campaign team rubbished the notion and condemned it as a Labour-supported dirty trick. However, then then Tebbit Government knew that there was truth to what Campbell wrote. The MOD and Defence Secretary Heseltine did authorise advanced planning for soldiers to be deployed in the face of street protests which could bring about anarchy on the streets. This started before the election as the People’s March For Jobs and CND campaigns were bringing people out and violence had been seen. There were staff exercises on paper and in radio simulations so that, if called upon in a legitimate fashion to act, there could be military support for the civilian authorities if a breakdown in public order became that bad. When John Silkin took over Heseltine’s ministerial brief following Foot replacing Tebbit, the new Secretary of Defence was informed about these plans. He understood the need for them to be made even if he didn’t agree with the idea. During his time in office, Silkin has allowed for the planning to continue during the continuing acts of violence associated with People’s Front marches and domestic acts of terrorism. Everything has been hush-hush with the information kept between senior uniformed officials and a small cabal of ministers including Healey and Hattersley as well as Silkin too.

Crown Jewels has never been an operational name for one of these contingency plans. There are several of them, including one which has been in effect for the past fortnight since Foot was assassinated: Operation GRINDSTONE has seen the visible military presence in Whitehall and around Buckingham Palace to deter terrorism. The others are CANNONBALL, FOXHUNT, SNOWFLAKE & THREADBARE. Each is tailored to a different situation concerning London and other major urban centres to be implemented should significant levels of violence breakout with the police being unable to control that. The plan is for soldiers to flood the streets where disorder is occurring and aid the police in enforcing public order. Curfews and quarantines are parts of several of the plans though not in each one. Weapons to be used and rules of engagement vary too. None call for an overwhelming use of force. What these plans are all about it protecting the public rather than oppression. Long experience with military operations in Ulster has taught the British Armed Forces much about how – they should at least – respond to mass rioting, terrorist attacks and such like. The planners have had confidence that what they have drawn up is flexible and suitable should the worst happen and the ever-growing violence seen in recent years increases to a level where soldiers are needed. No one is keen and eager to see any of this needed though. It has been the hope of those involved since inception that none of this will ever see the light of day and the plans can be filed away in the archives for some historian to one day marvel over.

On September 15th, the order comes for CANNONBALL to move from paper to reality though.


Operational command for the military operations to aid the civilian authorities in the capital comes under the leadership of the British Army’s London District. The headquarters is at the historic Horse Guards… with rioters right outside there on Whitehall! A flash alert to be ready has come in the preceding hours but the go-order is still a surprise for those involved at London District and then at the various garrisons throughout the wider London area where sub-unit commanders are told to take their men out onto the streets. Deployment plans are issued and rules-of-engagement made firm to junior officers and men. At Four in the evening, CANNONBALL begins.

Soldiers from two battalions of Foot Guards move out of Chelsea Barracks in trucks and spread throughout Central London. The Grenadier Guards & the Scots Guards are ‘public duty’ rolled but that involves mounting ceremonial guards and taking part in parades. They are soldiers though and are being deployed into a hostile area. The Irish Guards, currently on GRINDSTONE duties, see the rest of their men sent out from Wellington Barracks too. The Royal Green Jackets have men at Hyde Park Barracks (the Knightsbridge side) and they begin additional CANNONBALL tasks. These infantry-trained soldiers are joined by personnel from the Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers and the Royal Corps of Signals – all combat support troops – moving out of various sites in and around London too. There are military bases all over the place and from out of them come soldiers heading towards assigned sectors. British Army helicopters are soon in the evening skies too with their task being to provide communications relay as well as observation. All told, CANNONBALL begins with close to six thousand troops. There isn’t a tank in sight: this isn’t that type of mission!

The Met. Police provide directions as to where the worst of the reported trouble is. London District HQ is officially supporting them despite this being a military deployment and so they are the ones ultimately calling the shots. The soldiers within the middle of London are carrying their rifles, with bayonets attached too, but are only to open fire in the most extreme circumstances. Their physical presence will deter the need for that as per the plans drawn up for their use. Such thinking is proved correct. Whereas the police have been in visible retreat and are far outnumbered, when there are lines of soldiers making a show and careful march along major thoroughfares, the crowds disperse away from them. Projectiles are rarely thrown and only the very foolish try to get in their way. Should the protesters on the streets have stood firm and refused to move, things might get difficult. This doesn’t happen though. Across Central London, the anarchy comes to a rapid end. Those attacking property, the police and onlookers disperse. The intimidation factor of CANNONBALL works a treat. Westminster is secured and so too are neighbouring portions of the middle of the city. It does come with a very nasty incidents though.

A platoon of the Scots Guards moving across Lambeth Bridge towards the South Bank after marching down Horseferry Road towards the Thames have shots directed against them from afar. Someone uses sighted rifle and one guardsman is badly injured. Return fire is held though unless a target can be identified. When one isn’t, the guardsmen move onwards over the river with a low-flying helicopter now above them as they enter South London. In St James’, where the Irish Guards are on foot through that ravaged area, a petrol bomb is thrown towards one of their platoon when they are near to the arson-hit Reform Club (one of those gentlemen’s clubs deliberately targeted by Red Action today) and two gunshots ring out. Guardsmen take carefully-aimed shots against another man aiming to likewise throw another petrol bomb and he is killed without anyone else hit. When the Grenadier Guards secure Parliament Square, they exchange shots with several people who it later is discovered were those who fire-bombed Westminster Hall. Sergeants keep their men in order with that return fire well-directed as others manoeuvre into position for a final assault against a pinned down opponent. It is a case of poorly-trained wannabe revolutionaries armed with pistols against disciplined and well-equipped professional soldiers with automatic rifles. There can only be one winner. Four people – one of them it turns out later is wholly innocent – are killed in these exchanges.

Central London is secured within the space of a few hours. Those Foot Guards units and the Royal Green Jackets soldiers do excellent work. They take control with only the bare minimal of force used in nearly all incidents apart from the shots fired in St. James’ and near Parliament. Elsewhere, in the absence of bullets or bayonet tips being used, the stocks of the SLR rifles are employed where necessary against the skulls of a few diehard revolutionaries. There are a number of people who will not disperse, who refuse to do what anyone sensible does and run away, and so the soldiers employ ‘minimal force’ as per their standing orders. Reports back to London District HQ update the commander – and thus Healey at Chevening – that the riot in the middle of the capital has been put to an end. The anarchy is over with. There is quite the terrible toll though. There is extensive damage all over the place. Including those landmarks known about, rioters have attacked County Hall – home of Livingstone’s GLC – and places such as Westminster School and the cinemas in Leicester Square. They’ve seemingly broken as many windows as they can find and attacked cars, buses and taxis at random. Train and Underground stations have been smashed up in acts of wanton violence. Looting of shops has been especially bad up Regent’s Street but extended elsewhere too including the sex shops in Soho as well. Hotels along Park Lane and nearby have been subject to much vandalism in their lobbies. The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square has been struck though the damage isn’t as bad as first feared. The list goes on and on… and on. Firefighters are assisted by the soldiers in trying to supress some of the worst blazes raging but the number of fires ongoing is at this time uncountable. Moreover, there are bodies in the streets of policemen and civilians. Dozens of deaths have occurred, all for seemingly no purpose.


CANNONBALL operations are more about Central London though. As the rioting there goes on throughout the day, trouble erupts elsewhere across London in impoverished inner-city areas. In these places it is about criminality rather than political protest. Those troops from artillery, engineering & signals units are deployed as infantry outside the better-known parts of the city in trouble hit areas to the north, the south, the east and the west. The Royal Green Jackets later redeploy to aid the efforts in North London with soldiers sent to Hackney, Harringay and Tottenham. Men from the Royal Artillery out of Woolwich Barracks are reinforced by the Grenadier Guards before midnight too on anti-riot duties through South London.

Waves of destruction hit large parts of London. Television images during the day of rioting in the middle have been watched by youngsters and criminals elsewhere. It has been said that the police have been overwhelmed and are pouring into Westminster. Troublemakers have come out on a nice day to join in with the anarchy with the belief that they will not be stopped. Muggings, random physical attacks and looting has been ongoing. None of it is concentrated in a (relatively) small area as seen near to the centre of the city. Neighbouring areas around where riots do occur escape all of this. The Armed Forces now find themselves stretched more than anticipated and it is in these places where there is real use of force employed by those on CANNONBALL tasks. They have to do so when faced with attacks made against them and the police who they have come to aid. Shots are fired at them and are returned. More gunfire is directed skywards in warnings than is sent towards armed civilians yet when the latter does occur, those in the way of bullets fired by those in uniform come off the worst from these encounters. Nineteen civilians are shot tonight by soldiers with ten of them losing their lives. The Armed Forces lose a trio of their own men to add to police deaths of more than a dozen as well… gunfire also kills four innocents during crossfire too. The sun going down and the urban environment contribute to these deaths. There is also the use of those bayonets attached to rifles. CANNONBALL instructions are for them to be employed as part of intimidation instead of having to open fire. On a few occasions, the soldiers jab at rioters who are fighting them rather than shooting them. The stab wounds from these are quite something but is justified as ‘reasonable force’ in place of gunfire.

Bringing soldiers out onto the streets when they have with such haste, though following those standing plans, has been ordered by the government in part because they don’t want the rioting to continue into the night where it is feared it will involve a greater loss of life. This is achieved within Central London but the scale of the unrest elsewhere in London has spun out of control far beyond the worst expectations. It will be after midnight before it all finally comes to an end. The situation is exasperated by other factors including football fans leaving stadiums and pubgoers out for a night out despite all that has been going on throughout the day. The death toll climbs all night. Men from the Parachute Regiment coming up from Aldershot (entering London District control) deploy into areas of South London where there is the last of that rioting and there are also Royal Military Police units brought in across the East End. These extra soldiers join with the expanding police presence as neighbouring forces aid the Met. with riot teams too. Combining, the weight of numbers clears concentrations of rioters and criminals away from where they have gathered. They start going home if they haven’t been arrested, some with ill-gotten gains but others carrying injuries. Hospitals are where many others who’ve been on the streets during today end up. CANNONBALL plans have included military medical units but there aren’t many of them and their task has been to treat wounded soldiers and help in Central London rather than assist the NHS outside the middle of the city. A&E departments at multiple hospitals are scenes of near pandemonium where soldiers are sent to in the early hours to help put down trouble using their presence rather than bullets. Drunks are the real problem here: the looting during the day has seen many participants steal alcohol and then consume that before taking a trip to the hospital.

It’s all over long before the sun comes up on the Sunday morning. CANNONBALL has been a success. Order is restored to the streets of London, be they those the streets in Westminster or Peckham. The cost is one hundred and fourteen lives lost throughout the preceding day. Now, the ramifications will come.

The National Executive Committee is the ruling body within the Labour Party. It meets in the aftermath of Healey’s resignation as Prime Minister among an intense backlash against his actions. There is a clamour within the party for action to be taken against him. He pre-empts this and notifies them that he is resigning with immediate effect from his post as Deputy Leader. This leaves Labour without an acting leader weeks away from their party conference. Healey goes further than this in his requesting from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be appointed to the position of Crown Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. This is accepted and Healey is no longer an MP either. The legal fiction of ‘taking the Chiltern Hundreds’ has been done by MPs before him so as to leave the House of Commons due to there being no other method of resigning as an MP apart from ‘accepting an office of profit under the Crown’. Out of Parliament Healey goes though his (now former) party are more concerned as to how he has left them rudderless at such a time as this. They are meant to meet in Blackpool starting October 1st and are already in the process of delaying that by a week so that there can be a leadership contest ahead of the conference leading to an announcement then in the Lancashire resort. Healey is clearly not in the race to succeed Foot but he has left the party in a dire state by walking away. The NEC doesn’t appoint anyone else to fill the gap at the very top and instead arranges things themselves. Nominations for the leadership, deputy and the shadow cabinet open on September 18th and close two days later. Hurried hustings are arranged and everything else is sped up with how the component parts of the electoral college system for those elections will take place. These procedures are only a few years old and give trade unions forty per cent of the vote, constituency parties thirty per cent & MPs in the Commons a further thirty per cent. There have been arguments within Labour for some time to make the leadership contest ‘one member, one vote’ but that has come to nothing: this recent electoral college systems has been a compromise all about making things more democratic with regard to the will of the party yet it has many detractors. There are MPs who want to run for the leadership yet know that they will get nowhere in the face of union block voting and also the radicals who make up the membership of all of those hundreds of local parties.

Three candidates run for the leadership. Tony Benn, Neil Kinnock (having served as Education Secretary through the Summer) and Peter Shore (the recent Chancellor) make it onto the ballot. At a time like this, the end result has never been in doubt when it is announced in Blackpool. Shore is in a distant third while Kinnock makes a very decent run to gain a strong second: he was one of the few in the Foot Ministry to really shine. Benn wins though, fulfilling the fears that many inside and outside of Labour have long had that he would take the leadership. His acceptance speech takes place on the last day of the conference. Benn promises that the party will stick to its course and he will ensure that that is democratic socialism. Throughout the year, Benn has been a critic of the People’s March For Jobs / People’s Front but he now praises what they were trying to achieve. The new leader states how he deplores what was done on September 15th where a Labour government sent British troops onto British streets to attack demonstrators who were seeking for the party to honour its promises. He makes no mention of the ongoing anarchy that day nor all of the murders committed but instead focuses upon how those soldiers were sent out. It was an act worthy of a corrupt tin-pot dictatorship! This brings him wild applause from many in the conference hall yet at the same time there are contrasting expressions from others here who do not agree how Benn has framed this argument. Healey’s actions haven’t won him praise yet it is recognised by a good portion of the party that they were a ‘necessary evil’. It would be better if Healey was here to defend himself, or that could be done by either Hattersley or Silkin (here but staying out of the way), yet that isn’t to be. Those who don’t agree with how Benn is framing things with regard to the position on what happened with CANNONBALL don’t have a single, unifying figure to speak up on their behalf. Benn’s comments are feared by them to be used against Labour. Nothing has been declared but another general election is regarded as a certainty and they worry that the Conservatives will do all that they can to portray Labour as a party of extremists tied to those murdering attempted revolutionaries.

That is exactly what is done a week after Benn’s coronation when the Conservatives meet in Brighton. Gathered down at the other end of the country, their conference is nearly 'interrupted' by the IRA. Anti-terrorism officers with Sussex Police intercept a truck-bomb intended to blow up the Grand Hotel which is being used by attendees. Thankfully, what would surely be a mass of casualties is averted. Unity is the message of the conference in contrast to Labour’s division, something which has been played out much in the press recently. However, there are many behind-the-scenes problems within the Conservatives. The Heath and Thatcher wings of the party are still in dispute with how Tebbit has run things. He is blamed for the election result back in May which saw the Conservatives forced from office to allow for those mad few months of Labour rule. Whispers of replacing Tebbit are still rife. Nonetheless, nothing like that gains any traction in public at Brighton though. Tebbit gives his leader’s speech on the final day and during that he makes a surprise statement to those inside the event and elsewhere. The Prime Minister announces that he intends to seek a new electoral mandate this year – an election before Christmas – to ensure stability for the country. Of course, this isn’t up to him but he aims to get his way.

That Tebbit does. The Queen gives her approval when asked a few days later, changing her opinion on the need for one from which last month she said that there wasn’t. Civil servant’s advice is once more the key factor but Tebbit goes all out in bringing her around too… especially after making such a public declaration of intent beforehand. November 15th is the day chosen, a Thursday in mid-October. Concerns over the weather negatively effecting turnout don’t play out though it is hardly the nicest day for people to be out voting. The results come in later that night and into the early hours of the Friday morning. Once more, the Conservatives win the most seats six months after doing so before yet this time they gain a majority. What a majority it is too! In a landslide, Tebbit’s party wins four hundred and four seats. One hundred and twenty-nine seats are won by Labour with Benn thus losing more than half of his MPs. The story of the night is the SDP surge. Owen takes them up to eighty-two (from nineteen in May) with nearly all of those wins as he quadruples the SDP’s total coming at the expense of Labour. The Alliance with the Liberals is officially dead and Steel’s party win only twelve seats (down nine) yet there has been some cooperation between these two former allies in hundreds of seats. Once everything is sorted once Parliament is opened and MPs sworn in, Tebbit has a working majority of one hundred and fifty-nine: in agreement struck in the face of Labour opposition, the SDP gain one of the Deputy Speakership roles in the House of Commons. This is put together by the Conservatives to aid themselves as outsiders in a war between Labour and the SDP over who really forms the opposition to Tebbit.

In Bristol East, Benn comes extremely close to losing his own seat. He was lucky to win back in May and even more fortunate now: the Conservative candidate comes within three dozen votes of forcing him from Parliament. Aside for his own near misfortune, Benn has just presided over an absolute failure by Labour. They haven’t had such a low number of MPs in the Commons since 1931. Massive divisions over CANNONBALL and their opponents focusing on law-and-order has destroyed them. Attempts are made in the aftermath to force Benn out. He hunkers down though, determined not to go anywhere. He will not resign and will continue to fight for his vision of what the Labour Party should be. There were many MPs from the party’s centralist and moderate wings considering defections to the SDP or sitting in the Commons as Independents should Tebbit have not called the election straight after Benn’s leadership election. To at once join the SDP, who they fought against on November 15th, doesn’t seem to be the best idea yet the option of withdrawing from the Benn-led Labour remains. Through November and December, that will be done by thirteen of them. Benn’s supporters react by accusing them of treachery and also making sure they maintain a grip on the NEC and other elements of the party bureaucracy to keep him in power. This only alienates more MPs. In addition, Labour is losing the support of more than just MPs. There are party officials and members who fear that Benn will lead the party into long-time decline more than just this one awful election result. The reaction to questions raised and criticism made is vicious counterattack against those who speak up. From the Conservatives and the SDP, there is only glee. They watch with smiles as Labour tears itself more and more apart without any more of their ‘help’.


Contained within the Conservative manifesto which they have just won their landslide on is a pledge to create a Ministry of Security following electoral success. Discussed by the party ahead of the election following comments made by Tebbit and Heseltine in Brighton, the new MOS is meant to be responsible for ensuring that political violence doesn’t once more rip apart the nation. It will oversee the work of domestic intelligence and also be responsible for the operations of a new National Security Force. The latter is to be a type of gendarmerie as seen in France and elsewhere. The intelligence work and the gendarmerie will make sure that domestic terror groups will be unable to operate as they have done in the lead up to the events of this year and also that there is a national force capable of reacting to any major civil unrest. A Cabinet-level post is issued for the minister responsible for the MOS when the department officially begins its duty at the start of 1985. With his massive majority, Tebbit’s wish to see this new security ministry in-place is fulfilled. There are a number of MPs who abstain, even vote against it though. None of that stops the forward progress but this is the beginning of something bigger. The implications seen by many of a state overreach into the privacy of Britons coming from the MOS is what the opposition to it is about. Growth is feared from this ministry where what is done in the name of ensuring democracy might blur the lines between freedom and oppression. Such an idea is rubbished by the government but the critics will not be silenced.

Tebbit’s premiership in 1985 is defined by his fight with the miners and the GLC. Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers were one of the few trade unions to give much support to the People’s Front and helped bankroll much of its operations when other fundraising sources were unavailable. Scargill has affiliated himself strongly with the Benn-led Labour too. When the government begins a process of closing uneconomical pits nationwide, Scargill forces a strike. It isn’t one which the NUM has had a ballot on though. Opposition from other miners come to Scargill’s action and, with behind-the-scenes government support, there is a breakaway union formed to aid miners who continued to want to work despite ‘Scargill’s strike’. The National Security Force makes its debut where those semi-militarised police combat illegal flying pickets and MI-5 – under the authority of the MOS despite protests against such an absorption – work to undermine the NUM. As to Benn, he doesn’t give them the expected slavish support which Scargill wants. Benn does back the strike just not as strongly as Scargill demands. They are on the same side but have different views on how to proceed, especially since Scargill continues to act in a manner which Benn fears will bring about major unrest. Tebbit crushes the miners eventually. Scargill and the Labour leader have a major break in friendship over the Prime Minister achieving such a victory against a cause which the far left should have been united as one over. After the miners, Tebbit moves onto another opponent. Livingstone still leads the Greater London Council and is a constant thorn in the side of the government. His defence of the People’s Front – even when participants at their last event ransacked and ripped apart County Hall – is one thing but more than that are his continuing social programmes within the nation’s capital. The government pushes through legislation to abolish the GLC with the claim that it doesn’t offer the democracy which more localised institutions can. Livingstone fights the government on this and, like Scargill, loses the battle. Tebbit seems all-conquering and unassailable.

However, the following year sees the fall of Tebbit. It comes unexpected, just as Thatcher’s did. There is a dispute in Cabinet when it comes to an agreement with the Republic of Ireland in progress over the future of Ulster. Heseltine and Tebbit argue but there are wider matters between them too concerning the Home Secretary’s longing for the leadership and the Prime Minister’s desire to nip that in the bud. A reshuffle sees at attempt to have Heseltine moved back to Environment Secretary (where he was right before Thatcher’s fall) but he quits instead. He also initiates a leadership challenge. Heseltine has more supporters than Tebbit realises. His arrogance doesn’t allow him to see the situation growing about his own lack of support until it is too late. Tebbit loses the premiership in May 1986, twenty-two months after his triumphant return to Downing Street. Heseltine’s premiership moves away from some of Tebbit’s policies yet retains many others. The MOS stays the force that it is with Heseltine using the National Security Force against a near-riot by protesters who take to the streets of London on the last days of the GLC. Livingstone claims they are nothing to do with him but he is behind it. Heseltine will not start his premiership by seeing a repeat of the outbreak of violence which necessitated CANNONBALL two years past. The new Prime Minister begins to move Britain closer to Europe though, away from the Atlanticism tilt favoured by Tebbit regardless of all the shameful excesses of the Reagan Administration in foreign affairs that Britain has long had to accept.

Heseltine goes to the country in April 1988. The Conservatives win once more. Their tally is three hundred and seventy-two (down thirty-two from the dazzling heights of late-1984) but it cannot be said that Heseltine has failed: those loses now were won when they were by tight numbers. The story of the election is what happens between Labour and the SDP though. They swap places. The new Official Opposition is Owen’s SDP with Benn’s Labour pushed into third place. Securing one hundred and thirty-five to Labour’s ninety-eight, Owen has taken his seven year-old party into second place. The night is one of satisfaction for many when, after a recount, it is confirmed that Benn has lost his own seat. Twice he has rejected offers to move elsewhere to a safe Labour seat and now he has paid the price. However, there are no longer than many safe Labour seats after this general election. The SDP have replaced Labour as the leading force on the left of British politics. They have the activists, financial backing and public support which Labour lack. They look professional and act responsibly whereas Benn has continued to take Labour to the extremes. One thing of note about the SDP is that now they no longer passionately argue for voting reform in terms of Proportional Representation as they did when they were shiny & new and part of the Alliance with the Liberals. First Past The Post suits them now very much and will do so in future. Benn finally goes from the Labour leadership now that he is no longer an MP and elected to replace him is Pat Wall. Militant have expanded their control over Labour in the past few years and now one of their own is at the top of the party. Benn drove many away but Wall will only increase this. In response, breaking away from their electoral alliance with Labour is the Co-operative Party. For decades, the two have been one-and-the-same in the public mind with the difference between them hardly noticed. They are centralists with half a dozen MPs who have tried to stick to what they believe are Labour and Co-operative principles yet cannot do that under the cult of Militant. Merging into the SDP, maybe the Liberals, is something considered for the future but for the meantime, they sit as an independent party force in the new Parliament following the most recent general election. Wall seems content to have them gone and will continue to burn down his party with the policies following and positions adopted in the face of the voter’s stunning rejection of it.


As the years go onwards, further away from the events of 1984, there remains much dispute about what exactly happened during that time of national political troubles. Conspiracy theories are aplenty concerning the assassination of Foot where people involved in that ended up death. The first gunman was killed soon afterwards in a raid conducted by the SAS while the second was later caught alive by Bedfordshire Police. Before he could stand trial, he committed suicide in prison though. It is said that someone did the suicide to him. Banda too dies. His illness while in custody is sudden and then he too can no longer talk about what really happened with the murder of the then Prime Minister. The position of the authorities is that they know what really happened and these are just unfortunate coincidences. Other questions are posed about the death of Peter Tatchell shortly before Foot was killed. Not an MP nor in any position of power/influence, this well-known left-wing activist was killed in a murder blamed on right-wing extremists. They have not been identified, either the killer or who orchestrated that. The ‘why’ with regard to his murder is something that no one can give a proper answer to either. There are people who claim that there were agent provocateurs active on the day of the rioting in London where they were acting to discredit the People’s Front too. No one has ever offered any proof that GB84, who it is said these people belonged to, but the belief that there are many things about that day which do not make sense persist. Regardless, the government considers the matter closed and refuses to delve into what are said to be ‘baseless conspiracy theories’ which ‘dishonour the memory of the innocent dead’.

Heseltine wins another general election in 1992 while the SDP continue to cement themselves as the Official Opposition when their tally breaks the barrier of two hundred seats that May. Wall died eighteen months beforehand, throwing Labour into chaos by his sudden demise due to a heart attack. Taken over by an MP from Liverpool named Dereck Hatton, the now Socialist Labour Party wins less than fifty seats in the Commons. They are in disarray but refuse to see what has happened. Talent has long started going elsewhere away from Labour with the SDP joined by incoming MPs who have defected or could conceivably have run under the Labour banner if that party wasn’t the mess of Militant which it has become. Benn is back in Parliament after winning himself a seat in a by-election three years beforehand and retaining it this time around yet he no longer is the political force that he once was. No one calls themselves a ‘Bennite’ anymore: ‘Militant’ is the latest fad on the far left. Heath, Thatcher and Tebbit all leave Parliament at the 1992 election. This trio of former Conservative prime ministers stand down in their constituencies. Heseltine has changed the party from how it was under each of them as he’s moved to the centre ground on so many issues. The growth of the SDP, once so aided by the Conservatives as it damaged Labour, has seen them closing in upon government with each election. It is argued by many prominent politicians and newspaper columnists that Heseltine is really a social democrat at heart… others will seriously dispute that!

Four years later, the SDP is now led by Charles Kennedy – after Owen retired in 1992 – and he wins the general election that May. Heseltine has miscalculated in having a general election this year when he could have waited until 1997. Kennedy reaches Downing Street on the back of a public despite for change after so many long years of Conservative government along with his party’s ambitious social programmes. His looks like a government ready in waiting whereas the Conservatives don’t at all. The reason for the defeat suffered by Heseltine is Europe. His closeness to the ‘European Project’ in Brussels is what has brought him down. The general election campaign is disrupted by prominent MPs of his arguing over Europe when they really needed to have just kept their mouths shut and fight it out once the election was over. What those Europhobes get it what they really will not like: an SDP government determined to have stronger relations with Europe than anything Heseltine would have had. The own goal is one of utter foolishness. That election sees the Liberal & Co-operative Party – a merger made in 1991, not just an electoral alliance – win third place behind the Conservatives. As to the Hatton-led Socialist Labour Party, they return eighteen MPs to Parliament. While not irrelevant yet, it is clear that they soon will be. There is no way that they can come back from being pushed as far back as they are now. The party of such electoral champions such as Attlee and Wilson, of figures such as Bevan and Jenkins (in his prime), is near finished.

This government led by Kennedy will in 1999 allow for the release of secret information back from 1984. Once the SDP follow through with the campaign pledge to finally get rid of the Ministry of Security and also secure victory in the courts against efforts to keep revelations from fifteen years previously secret, they will allow the British public to find out some hidden truths about that time. Included is video footage shot doing CANNONBALL of soldiers shooting civilians that had long been hidden with it said that these particular incidents in Peckham and Tottenham didn’t happen like it has been rumoured they did. The secrets spilled are in some cases quite spectacular though there are other matters uncovered not as dramatic as it thought they might be. Therefore, regardless of the truth coming out, there are some people who still don’t believe all that they are told. The conspiracy theories will never go away.


The End

Thanks again for another great TL James G, you can take a break, watch news with the Russians invading Belarus, Iran and Venezuela at war with the United States, and so on, just relax and take a break.

Thanks. Ah, yes. That I will probably do!



Thank you. Many changes though in other ways, things will still be the same. I would say for certain that the UK would have joined the Eurozone and be a full member - without opt outs - of the EU in every way. The SDP which wins the 1996 GE will be a very much pro-Europe party more than New Labour would ever have dreamed to be. 

Thank you.
I have a long-delayed plan for a general Middle Eastern war - 1999 to 2001 - involving the whole region from Morocco to Afghanistan, from Turkey to Somalia, but that wouldn't be a WW3 in the sense you mean. I'm still not sure whether to write this one either.
For an 80s or early 90s WW3, I always have ideas but I need a real 'kick' to them. The last one went very wrong trying that so should I do one, I want to know where I am going.
Long-winded and unanswered answer I know!

It is a very good idea. the bigger Congressional component aboard KAL 007, the Burma air bombing and Lebanon would all work well.
I read Able Archer 83 back in the day and I liked it. My only issue was that knowing about Operation RYAN as I did, the notion that to avoid a nuclear strike, the USSR would make a conventional attack - I know the story ends in atoms splitting eventually - to see that off didn't sell me enough.
I'll give it some thought.