ABSTRACT
The story of this project-the latest in a long line of attempts to build a fixed link across the Channel-really begins early in 1975, with the abject failure of another, completely separate, scheme. Two years before, agreement had been reached between the British Prime Minister Edward Heath and the French President Georges Pompidou to build a Channel Tunnel. But within months Pompidou had died, Heath had lost the 1974 general election in the wake of the three-day week and the miners’ strike, and new Prime Minister Harold Wilson was desperate to cut out all “unnecessary” spending.
