ABSTRACT
On the day that Sir Alec Douglas-Home was being overthrown by the ballot-box, Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was overthrown by a Kremlin intrigue. Harold Wilson reflected later, 'It was an open question whether, if the news from Moscow had come an hour or two before the polls closed, there would have been an electoral rush to play safe and to vote the existing Government back into power.'l He could also have mentioned that on the same day the Chinese were exploding their first atom bomb. However, millions of people around the world were not watching events in London or Moscow but in Tokyo, where the Olympic Games were in full swing, thus reflecting the economic success and stability of Japan. In South Africa Nelson Mandela was attempting to come to terms with the hard realities of the ruthless prison sentence which had just been imposed upon him. Happy to be Prime Minister but disappointed that his majority was only four, Wilson moved quickly to construct his government.
