70 years ago, the government faced a very different kind of crisis

“Events, dear boy, events.” Harold Macmillan’s famous words must have run through the head of Theresa May in recent months on more than one occasion. The result of the EU referendum brought her to the top political office in the land, but that same event is posing the greatest of strategic challenges to her administration as she nears the triggering of Article 50 before the end of March. Indeed, governments are often judged not on manifesto promises, but on how they respond to crises. This century, the events of 9/11 shaped Tony Blair’s premiership; the global financial crash of 2007-8 defined Gordon Brown’s time in office. David Cameron liked to gamble on events. He survived two referendums, on the alternative vote in 2011 and Scottish independence in 2014, but not the third.

Seventy years ago, events during this same wintery time of year were threatening the ability of the government to keep houses warm, and people in work. The then Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, was the quintessential chair of Cabinet, who, on the whole, left his ministers to get on with the job without undue interference from the top. One of those ministers, Emmanuel Shinwell, brought grim news to Cabinet on Friday, 7th February 1947. Snow had been falling across the UK for just over two weeks, accumulating into giant drifts that reached five metres in some areas. The Central Electricity Board had warned Shinwell, as Minister of Fuel and Power, that, without further coal, power stations all over the country would be closed down. The country was in a deep freeze and there was a severe shortage of fuel.

On the face of it, Shinwell’s request at Cabinet that day was a simple one. He asked his colleagues to agree to all electricity being cut off from households for five hours per day, and for supplies to cease to all industry in London, the south sast, the north west and the midlands. But the consequences were far-reaching. Shinwell’s words were, recorded the Chancellor, Hugh Dalton, a “complete thunderclap.” Unemployment, which had stood at around 2.7 per cent the previous month, spiked to 12 per cent, with nearly two million people left idle as businesses closed.

With the worst of weather continuing, it was not until twelve days later Attlee was able to announce that there had been progress in dealing with the situation. On 20th February, The Times recorded that, in the Commons on the previous day: “Attlee, with one elbow on the dispatch box, did not linger over the reading of his statement… His repetition, in a sharply emphatic voice, of his opening sentence, that the position had improved, was greeted with loud Ministerial cheers.”

The political damage was widespread. The Conservative opposition had their slogan for the next General Election, “Shiver with Shinwell,” and the Minister found himself demoted to the War Office before the end of the year. Stafford Cripps, who succeeded Dalton as Chancellor, declared that the fuel crisis had cost the nation £200m. The problem was that a perceived policy failure had such a negative impact on people’s daily lives.

Some months before, on 18th October 1946, Attlee had written to Dalton and Shinwell that he was “disturbed by the coal prospects for the coming winter.” By early November, officials from the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Power had put together a plan for compulsory rationing which was thought acceptable to both sides of industry, the Federation of British Industries and the Trades Union Congress. But, in an attempt to avoid imposing such a draconian measure, Shinwell had proposed a cut in coal deliveries rather than allocations.

This was certainly ingenious, and Shinwell drew on his wide previous experience, both as a Glasgow trade unionist outside parliament, and as Secretary for Mines in the two previous Labour governments. But the Cabinet would have been better off taking such an unpopular decision then, rather than delaying the inevitable; after all, Shinwell was already predicting a shortage of coal by the end of the year running into the millions of tons.

Shinwell’s defence was that he believed the miners would always produce the coal that was needed. Such faith was not misplaced. At the height of the crisis, on 16th February, which became known as “Coal Sunday,” the South Wales miners voluntarily worked a full shift to help the nation. But the miners could not reasonably be expected to produce coal on the scale that was required.

“I may have erred in not finding expert advice to forecast the phenomenal rise in industrial consumption of coal and power, but I could not prophesy the weather,” Shinwell wrote in his memoirs, as yet another politician undone by events. Perhaps the ultimate lesson is never to forget Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.