ABSTRACT
With the initiative having passed to the private sector consortia in October 1968, the period of Labour administration came to an end some twenty months later, while the parties were still considering their response to the Government’s invitation to come up with a new scheme. The election date – 18 June 1970 – had been chosen for a number of reasons, not least the good local election results in May. There was even a suggestion that Labour expected to derive some advantage from a successful performance by England in the football World Cup. In the event, England fell at the quarter-final stage on 14 June, and Labour’s overall majority of 96 in 1966 was turned into an unexpected Conservative majority of 30. 1 Of course, football was not an election issue – the main concerns in a rather pallid campaign were the state of the economy and industrial relations. But neither was the Channel Tunnel, which was not mentioned in any of the manifestos and does not appear to have attracted debate at the hustings. 2 Edward Heath, like Harold Wilson before him, was no a priori enthusiast for a Tunnel. 3 Indeed, his belief in the need to reform Whitehall and move ministers towards strategic planning rather than day-to-day matters may lead us to assume that he would have eschewed direct involvement in a specific project such as this. In the autumn of 1970 he announced the establishment of two new super ministries, the Department of the Environment [DOE], a merger of Housing & Local Government, Public Building & Works and Transport, and the Department of Trade and Industry [DTI], together with a ‘think-tank’, the Central Policy Review Staff [CPRS]. These important innovations suggested that the detailed consideration of a tunnel would have to pass through several layers in the new structure before reaching the top. 4 Furthermore, the establishment of the unwieldy DOE, a reform anticipated by steps taken by the previous administration, did nothing to elevate the concerns of transport and the Tunnel within the Whitehall hierarchy. The new department may have functioned satisfactorily under Peter Walker, Secretary of State until November 1972. However, it was less effective thereafter, and there seems little doubt that as a result the old Ministry of Transport functions ran less smoothly until they achieved their ‘independence’ again in 1976. 5 The responsible minister also experienced a downgrading. When the new Government took office in 1970 John Peyton was appointed Minister of Transport (but without Cabinet status, like his predecessor, Fred Mulley). Four months later he became Minister for Transport Industries, a junior post within the DOE, ‘that great spongy heap’, as he described it. 6 On the other hand, Heath’s stance on Europe may have predisposed the Government to arguments linking the project to improved Anglo-French relations. There was no doubt that the Prime Minister was enthusiastic about joining the EEC, his manifesto pledging that Britain would enter into negotiations. He had also doubted Wilson’s conviction about membership, notwithstanding the latter’s application to join, which had produced a second veto from de Gaulle, in November 1967. President Pompidou had apparently let it be known that the Tunnel would be seen as a test of ‘British conversion to the European ideal’, and Heath may have been susceptible to this argument, even if there is no direct evidence to substantiate it. 7
