Arransian Political History4. 1969-1981 George Rostron held office as Chancellor of Arransia for twelve years from 1969 to 1981, the longest continuous peacetime term in the country's history. He is credited with having steered Arransia through a difficult decade of severe economic and political turbulence throughout the world without suffering mass unemployment, runaway inflation or significant civil unrest. But his policy of keeping a low profile internationally and letting sleeping dogs lie at home meant that a number of major issues remained unaddressed, particularly economic competitiveness and industrial relations, and the lack of capital investment during his term of office created a problem that bedevils Arransia to this day. The Labour Party had suffered during Scullion’s last government from the untimely death of its leader Geoffrey Ingham (1911-68) and the popular and talented Margaret Dewar (1908-67). Therefore Rostron’s new ministerial team in 1969 was not full of well-known faces. Rostron himself had been the relatively obscure Local Government Minister in Ingham’s administration. Malcolm McDaid, the former Finance Minister, took over the Foreign Ministry, while the blunt but shrewd Denis Rawlinson (1918-2003) became Finance Minister. Home Affairs went to Christopher Shand (1916-87), a Danby MP who presented a much more liberal impression than the hard-nosed Alec Rankine who had held the post under Scullion, while Transport was given to the non-driving Eileen Donaldson (1916-98), who had been heard to express the opinion that Arransia was becoming too much in thrall to the motor car. The first priority was obviously to calm down the febrile atmosphere in the country, and the police were unofficially told during 1969 to effectively ignore all cannabis offences, and to go very easy indeed on any kind of youthful protest or demonstration. This was never made entirely explicit, but Shand said clearly that a new and more tolerant era had dawned, and the message certainly got through. Although Arransia was relatively slow to take up the spirit of the 1960s, when the country did so it seemed determined to make up for lost time, and during 1969 it often felt, to the astonishment of outside observers, that the hair was longer, the skirts shorter, the music wilder and the aroma of dope headier than anywhere else on the planet. The long, hot summer of 1969 is regarded as Arransia’s “Summer of Love”, and it is often said half-jokingly that “if you can remember 1969, you can’t have been there”. A stir was caused by the newly-elected Labour MP Jane Davidson (b 1942), an attractive blonde who turned up at the opening of Parliament wearing a very mini miniskirt. However, she never made a great impact on politics and lost her seat in 1977. In later life until her recent retirement she was Professor of Social Policy at the University of Stainton and found her brief career as a pin-up somewhat amusing. Indeed there are many late middle-aged Arransians in senior positions in public life whose hairstyles and mode of dress in the late 60s and early 70s are now a cause for some embarrassment. August 1969 saw the famous Verne Island Pop Festival which, as the island was linked to the mainland by a narrow two-lane bridge, caused one of the biggest traffic jams in Arransian history. The highlight was a psychedelically-enhanced performance by the Arransian progressive band Harvest of Dreams, who are still going strong, and still seemingly only having a tenuous grasp on reality, in 2006. In the autumn of 1969 a revised Dangerous Drugs Act was passed which was modelled closely on the equivalent Brunswickian legislation and separated illegal drugs into three classes, with appropriately graded penalties. Since then, Arransia has usually been reasonably successful in controlling the spread of hard drugs, but in practice on the ground tends to be more tolerant of cannabis possession than Brunswick. This is especially true in some of the colonies of mainly Brunswickian hippies who in the 1980s and 1990s moved in to some of the decaying industrial towns in Arransia’s uplands. For various reasons, the countercultural gale of the late 1960s seemed to blow itself out after 1969 and never again appeared to pose the same threat to the foundations of society. The pipe-smoking Rostron was himself an old-fashioned, conservative figure who hardly seemed in touch with modern trends, but he seemed to exhibit the puzzled tolerance of a kindly uncle rather than, like Scullion, giving the impression that he thought serving time before the mast would be the best thing for the youth of today ¹. The urbane Christopher Shand was known to move in artistic circles in Danby and seemed to have his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture far more than any of his Liberal predecessors. (Alec Rankine’s favourite leisure pursuit was shooting wildfowl). Shand was also on good terms with the rather artistically-inclined young Royal couple of King Malcolm and Queen Imogen. There had been concerns that Queen Imogen, who had married King Malcolm VII in 1968, had been having difficulty conceiving a child, but in October 1972 she gave birth to a healthy daughter who was christened Fiona. Fiona remained an only child and therefore, assuming she outlives her father, will become only the second reigning Queen in Arransia’s history. The only significant change Denis Rawlinson made to the tax system he inherited from Frank Agnew was to introduce a capital gains tax. As the Arransian stock market, and asset values in general, were to suffer a major slump during the 1970s, in its early years this brought in virtually no revenue. He also tightened the rules on death duties. During 1969 and 1970 the economic boom continued, and indeed 1970 was the first year in which over 200,000 new cars were sold in Arransia. However, from 1971 onwards there was distinct weakening of economic performance, and the government were forced to bail out ACV, the commercial vehicle manufacturer, the now defunct Grimshaws shipyard at Gosforth, and a number of textile firms. This led to criticism from Agnew that the government were not doing enough to encourage capital investment to boost Arransia’s competitiveness. There was also a rising level of industrial unrest as the unions strove to gain a larger share of the cake for their members. Agnew and especially Alec Rankine were scathing about the government’s tendency to use their influence in part-public corporations to buy off potential disruption through over-generous pay settlements. For the first time, a specific recommendation was issued that the counties should adopt comprehensive rather than selective secondary education. This was enthusiastically adopted by the Labour-supporting industrial counties, but much more halfheartedly elsewhere, and this is not an issue where central government has felt it can force change through. Even today, Bucklow and Verne remain wholly selective and Edirn mainly so, while a number of other counties have substantial pockets of selection. This change was accompanied by the widespread adoption of fashionable but later discredited educational theories, and it must be said that during the 1970s both academic performance and discipline deteriorated in Arransian schools. Measures were brought in to ensure equal pay for women and to outlaw racial discrimination. Arransia had not seen large-scale immigration of people from different ethnic groups, but by the early 1970s there were about 25,000 from the Terrapin Islands and maybe 20,000 from former Brunswickian colonies, mainly engaged in the restaurant trade, so it was felt that any potential problems should be nipped in the bud. Six national parks were designated in 1970, as much to encourage tourism as to protect wild areas. The government succeeded in closing down the shipborne pirate radio stations that had been a thorn in Scullion’s side, and replaced them with the rather anodyne Modern Channel of the Arransian Broadcasting Corporation. Fewer new roads were approved than under the previous government, and the National Roads Agency was disbanded. However, during this period the major projects begun by Martin Fogarty, such as the six-lane A1 between Stainton and Hebburn, and the boldly-aligned A2 from Danby to the Brunswick border, were completed, and began to make a major difference to the ease of transporting goods and passengers around Arransia by road. A new generation of railway locomotives and carriages was ordered, and plans were made to eliminate the remaining pockets of steam working by 1978. Mandatory vehicle condition tests were introduced to address the risk from old and badly maintained cars, and in 1972 motorcycle helmets were made compulsory. The latter measure was strongly opposed by motorcyclists, including a 20,000-bike rally outside Parliament House in Danby, and propelled the Arransian Motorcycle Guild from an insignificant club to a major lobby group. Even after it was introduced, the national traffic police – all of whose patrol officers were qualified motorcyclists – were accused of being lukewarm in enforcing it, and to this day it is much more common to see helmetless riders in Arransia than in Brunswick. Eileen Donaldson set up a committee to investigate the introduction of rural speed limits, as it was noted that Waldenberg was now the only other developed country to still have derestricted rural roads, although Colmar had (and still has) no speed limits on many autobahns. Martin Fogarty made great play of the fact that neither Mrs Donaldson nor Rostron himself had a driving licence. In the late 1960s there had been growing concern about the exhaustion of fish stocks in the seas around Arransia, and in 1971 the government declared a 200-mile Economic Exclusion Zone within which only a limited amount of fishing would be allowed by foreign vessels, mostly from Denhulme and Esparta. This was extremely unpopular in both these countries, and the Arransian enclave of St Cuthbert on the north coast of Denhulme was effectively blockaded for several weeks. However, neither country was in a position to challenge it militarily, and once it became clear that the Arransians were enforcing it very firmly they had to swallow their pride and negotiate what quotas were on offer. The new policy also involved imposing quotas on the domestic fishing fleets that typically were only about two-thirds of what they had been catching before. This again was highly unpopular and the fishermen staged demonstrations that resulted in both the Tean and Esk being blocked for the best part of a day. The Liberals had traditionally been the party that represented the fishing interest and they rather shamelessly exploited the issue for electoral gain. However, the wiser heads amongst the fishing communities knew that there was evidence of overfishing and dwindling stocks, and in time they grudgingly accepted the cuts. From today’s viewpoint, with a thriving fishing industry, and healthy stocks, this appears one of the wisest and most far-sighted measures introduced by a post-war Arransian government. Relations with Brunswick continued to be cooler than they had been in the l950s and early 1960s, but there were no significant disputes beyond the usual Brunswickian grumbling about Arransian trade protectionism. With a long coastline of her own, Brunswick did not fish in Arransian waters and indeed was supportive of Arransia’s stance on the fishing issue. The Terrapin Islands were given their independence in 1972, although the King of Arransia remained head of state. In practice their economy continued to depend on Arransia buying their sugar and banana crops at favourable prices and little really changed. Although there were signs of clouds on the economic horizon, in the Spring of 1973 Rostron’s government appeared to have been a successful one, that had defused the social tensions of the 1960s and introduced a number of worthwhile progressive reforms. They were rewarded by a comfortable election victory, although their majority was reduced from 26 to 14. The Liberals regained more votes than this suggests and had managed to reestablish themselves as a credible electoral force, with Agnew making some effective criticisms of government economic policy and the growing level of industrial unrest. It seemed distinctly possible that, as the electoral pendulum swung, Agnew could be elected Chancellor in 1977. After the election, McDaid, who was now 68, chose to retire, and was replaced as Foreign Minister by Stephen McAllister (b 1920), the former Trade and Industry Minister, who had extensive experience of negotiations with other countries. Rostron’s re-election was swiftly spoilt by a shock move by the Middle Eastern oil producing countries to impose a dramatic increase in the price of oil, which doubled between August and October 1973. This was spurred by political factors largely unrelated to Arransia, which had never directly engaged in oil production in the region, but certainly hit her, and her neighbouring countries, very hard. The fourth quarter of 1973 became the first since the third quarter of 1964 to show negative growth in the country. In November and December 1973 a combined Brunswickian and Arransian fleet was sent to the main oil-producing region in a kind of sabre-rattling exercise that achieved nothing and only seemed to provoke the oil producers. This was a rare example of the two countries co-operating for real-life military purposes rather than just exercises, but set an unedifying precedent. Not only was the mission fruitless, but on the return journey the Queen Margaret rammed the Brunswickian destroyer Samuel Fletcher in thick fog, causing extensive damage although fortunately no loss of life. Each country held a board of inquiry which the other refused to attend, each predictably reaching the conclusion it was the other’s fault. This was followed by an overnight stopover in an Espartan port in which a mass brawl between Brunswickian and Arransian sailors virtually turned into a pitched battle and had to be broken up by the Espartan Guardia Civil using CS gas and plastic bullets. The oil price shock affected the Brunswickian and Arransian economies in surprisingly different ways. Brunswick was much more dependent on oil, and had even built a handful of oil-fired power stations after the war. The effect here was to administer sharp upwards pressure on prices, with the country narrowly averting a bout of hyperinflation and seeing the consumer price index rise by nearly 50% between July 1973 and July 1975. Arransia was much less oil-dependent, with no oil-fired generation, and at this time taxed road fuel at a much higher level than Brunswick, so the impact on consumer prices was far less. But the Arransian economy was more highly geared to general world trade, through export industries and shipping, and suffered disproportionately from the international downturn. In addition, the country’s industrialists and shipowners had failed to invest anywhere near enough in modernisation and so were very vulnerable to changing market trends. Even in 1973, almost 10% of Arransia’s merchant shipping tonnage dated back to before the Great War, and the shipping companies had not foreseen the shift to containerisation. The result was a severe slump, with economic output falling for six successive quarters from October 1973 to March 1975, and the country recording a 4% contraction in 1974. Consumer prices hardly rose at all, and in fact fell in 1974. Further disruption was caused by the fact the exchange rate was slow to reflect these changes, although this did help matters by making Arransian exports for a while unusually cheap in Brunswick. This caused a surprising reversal in the standing of the two countries’ currencies. Since the war, the AA$ had typically been worth around 85-90% of the BN$, but Brunswick’s bout of inflation led by the end of 1975 to one AA$ being worth about 1.35 BN$. Since then, Arransia has tended to be slightly less inflation-prone than Brunswick, so that the current exchange rate is around 1.45. This is something that older Brunswickians still find rather hard to accept, although it doesn’t in any sense reflect fundamental economic strength. By early 1974 the government were looking at the prospect of a major economic implosion and felt compelled to call in Agnew to try to agree a bipartisan approach. Agnew was criticised for this by some of his back-benchers, but he correctly pointed out that the economic crisis was not of the government’s making and it was his patriotic duty to do his best to help out. A package of measures was adopted including putting factories on short-time working to avoid major redundancies, encouraging early retirement and slashing interest rates to near-zero to try to stimulate domestic demand. A unilateral 12-month pay freeze was imposed, and when a few unions, most notably the power workers, tried to break this, Rostron was untypically scathing and threatened them with a state of emergency. In the event, Arransia narrowly avoided falling off the economic cliff, but it was all something of a confidence trick, with the plain-spoken Rawlinson consistently sounding upbeat and concealing his inner concerns. Unemployment just failed to break through the dreaded half a million barrier. The slump was prolonged by an unusually harsh winter, with ice floes on Dunsmere, all the canals frozen solid, and the daytime temperature at inland Petersburgh not exceeding 0° C for 42 consecutive days in January and February 1975. Arransia’s power stations were put under severe strain, and the solitary nuclear station at Thurness was run continuously at overload level for seven weeks, somewhat to the alarm of its Brunswickian designers, although there were no ill-effects. There were no power cuts, but this led directly to the approval of the giant Aizleby Moss coal-fired station which, when it opened in 1980, was the largest of its type in the world. Eventually, the economic needle flickered back into the black. The second quarter of 1975 saw 0.2% growth, and eventually 1.1% was recorded for the full year. The nation breathed a profound sign of relief, and was able to take advantage of the hot, dry summer of 1975, which was the best since 1969. For twenty months from November 1973, a nationwide 50 mph speed limit was applied for fuel-saving reasons, to which allegedly the national traffic police under Commissioner Rod McGregor (1921-1993) effectively turned a blind eye. He argued that his job was to promote safety and this should not be abused for extraneous political purposes. A fair number of people were convicted of doing speeds above 50 mph (generally above 70 mph), but nowhere near as many as the government expected, and it was felt that in virtually all cases it was simply being used as a proxy for a negligent driving charge. This led to considerable ill-feeling between McGregor and the Transport Minister, Eileen Donaldson. Press reports appeared in early 1975 saying that the temporary limit would be replaced by national limits of 60 mph on all-purpose roads and 70 mph on Expressways, but eventually the limit was quietly rescinded from 1 July 1975 and the previous status quo applied, as it continues to do today. McGregor remained in post until his official retirement date in 1981, and the non-driving Mrs Donaldson was moved to another post prior to the 1977 Election. This served to give the traffic police, previously a low-key and uncontroversial body, a much higher profile and incidentally greatly aided recruitment. The Arransian Motorists’ Association, originally mainly a breakdown organisation, also took up a much more political stance both in opposition to the temporary speed limit and in campaigning for more roadbuilding. Incidentally, Waldenberg, the only other country to still have unrestricted rural highways, adopted a similar 80 km/h fuel-saving limit in January 1974 which remains in force today on single-carriageway roads, although 100 km/h is allowed on dual carriageways and 110 km/h on autobahns. 1975 saw Arransia abolish the death penalty for murder (although it retains it for some offences of treason). Arransians traditionally have believed in strict punishments but at the same time had a strong sense of justice – which leads the country to have some notoriously grim prisons, but at the same time shorter sentences for many offences than in a lot of other countries. By the 1970s the death penalty for murder was restricted to those carried out in the commission of a crime, sexually aggravated murders and those which were clearly planned for personal gain. Arransia had about 120 murders a year but typically only hanged about 15 people. In 1973 there was a particularly gruesome case where a loner in his mid-20s who was widely regarded as a “weirdo” and had a large stash of adult pornography, was convicted of the brutal rape and murder of a ten year-old girl, and executed. This was seen by many newspapers as a strong argument for the retention of the death penalty. However, two years later, conclusive evidence emerged that the murder had in fact been carried out by the child’s uncle, who was a respected pillar of the community, and the character of the original accused had been deliberately vilified by the police. This blatant miscarriage of justice really offended the popular sense of fairness and in a bipartisan decision the death penalty was suspended early in 1975 and formally abolished later in the year. Of course, this meant that the real murderer only received life imprisonment, but nobody was too upset when he himself was murdered in prison in 1982 by another “lifer”. Just as Arransia seemed to be returning to a reasonably even keel, another serious crisis erupted in Sabrantia, this time more political than economic. Since 1974, Brunswick had been suffering from a sustained campaign of Communist-inspired terrorism by the so-called “Red Front”. This never spread to Arransia to any significant extent, and indeed many Arransians felt a sense of schadenfreude given the way Brunswick had found Arransia’s difficulties in 1968 amusing. However, in February 1976 it suddenly became very serious when the President of Brunswick, Christopher Warren, was assassinated. The Brunswickian authorities tracked down the perpetrators very swiftly and subjected them to a process of summary trial and execution that drew much tut-tutting from other countries. Brunswick imposed martial law for over a month and for a while there seemed a genuine danger of the breakdown of law and order in the country. With hindsight this seems to have been a little exaggerated, but it felt very real at the time. Arransia was understandably concerned that Brunswick’s nuclear weapons would fall into terrorist hands and it is believed that contingency plans were prepared, in the event of a revolutionary situation, to request Brunswick’s ballistic missile submarines to make for Arransian ports, and for the Marine Corps to occupy South Holburn and the Regina area as a pre-emptive measure. This was the first time since 1949 that the re-occupation of South Holburn had been publicly discussed ². Arransians are great lovers of political/military thrillers of the Frederick Forsyth type and one of the best of the genre deals with precisely that situation. In the event, the crisis eventually passed, and Rostron won himself many friends in Brunswick by showing a degree of understanding of the situation the Brunswickians found themselves in. “If our own King was assassinated by evil, cowardly terrorists, and we knew fine well who had perpetrated the deed, would we really wish to observe every last nicety of the legal process?” Rostron made a state visit to Aubourg in June 1976 and joined the new Brunswickian President Brian Flitcroft in making an uncompromising condemnation of Communist terrorism. For this, he was voted “International Statesman of the Year” by a respected Brunswickian magazine. This seemed to mark a turning point in relations between the two countries and led to an increase in economic and military co-operation. The two respective navies formally agreed that the ramming of the Samuel Fletcher by the Queen Margaret had seen both captains equally to blame, and the slate was wiped clean on this issue. Although Rostron had won many plaudits for steering Arransia through two serious crises, there was a widespread feeling that this had led to domestic issues being ignored. Many infrastructure projects had been shelved in 1974 and not revived, and there seemed to be a feeling of drift and inertia in the government. By the middle of 1976, the Liberals had nosed ahead in the opinion polls and Frank Agnew seemed set fair to become Chancellor in 1977. However, in October 1976, at the age of 58, he unfortunately died from a freak shock reaction to a relatively minor gardening accident. He was widely mourned and described by more than one person as “the best Chancellor Arransia never had”. At the subsequent leadership election, Martin Fogarty narrowly defeated Alec Rankine, and the latter, who was then 61, abandoned any further hopes of becoming Liberal leader. Rankine, who died in 2002 at the age of 87, remains a controversial figure and is often dismissed as an unfeeling hardman. However, he held senior positions in Arransian politics for twenty years, including two of the major ministerial offices, and was a serious, principled politician who represented a distinct strand of economically and socially “dry” Liberalism. Unlike many of his contemporaries he was conspicuously fair-minded to his subordinates and did not take advantage of the perks of office, whereas both Scullion and Rostron were known to be very insistent they were fed and watered with nothing but the very best. Rankine was very devoted to his daughter Claudia, who had Down’s syndrome, and in his retirement showed a perhaps surprising interest in advancing the interests of the disabled. He was also very well liked by his constituents in Poiseby, Edirn, and often gained over 75% of the vote. Fogarty was a very able and intelligent man with a less divisive image, but he suffered from being a dull public speaker. Despite this, the Liberals entered the 1977 election campaign ahead in the opinion polls and looking forward to forming the next government. Fogarty not surprisingly chose to make transport a major campaign theme, and they came up with the slogan “Move on with the Liberals”, which combined references to the government’s cancellation of many road schemes with the general mood of inertia. They produced a well-known poster of “Labour’s Transport Policy” showing an elderly steam locomotive with a handful of trucks picking its way through a desolate industrial landscape. The result was that the Liberals had a definite although not overwhelming lead on the first round. However, there were still over 60 constituencies to be decided, and in the intervening two weeks both party leaders gave major interviews, with Fogarty coming across as markedly less convincing than Rostron. In the end, Labour scraped a narrow victory of two seats, which, with an all-time record low of 3 Independents, was the closest election result of the post-Revolution era. Even so, the Liberals still had a slight majority of total first preferences. This result showed the electorate were still reluctant to move away from Rostron’s safety first policies, but was hardly a ringing endorsement. Eileen Donaldson had already been replaced by Bill Johnston (1919-87) as Transport Minister, and Rostron also replaced Shand, who had seemed a little limp on law and order issues, with the trusty John Methuen (1925-2004) who was already coming to be seen as Rostron’s likely successor, as Rawlinson would be 63 by the next General Election. A limited number of new road schemes were approved, most notably the completion of the A1 “missing link” Expressway between Petersburgh and Stainton. However, the pace of road construction remained very slow. It was now clear that the substantial pocket of steam rail traction in the north-west would not be eliminated by 1978 and was likely to linger on into the 1980s. In late 1980, following a serious ferry accident that resulted in 43 fatalities, the government gave the go-ahead for the massive and extremely costly Esk Suspension Bridge at Headlam. This had been discussed for many years, but the decision seemed to be a blatant poisoned chalice for the Liberals who looked likely to win the forthcoming general election and would have to fund the project. In 1978, somewhat later than in most other comparable countries, a fixed drink-driving limit of 80mg/100ml was introduced. In a country that took great pride in its distilling and brewing traditions this was somewhat controversial at the time, but most informed opinion recognised the need for it, and in this case the government consulted fully with the traffic police beforehand rather than imposing a measure that they might feel reluctant to enforce. The legislation did not require disqualification for first-time marginal offenders, and in general has been used in a targeted rather than heavy-handed manner. It has, however, been one of the factors contributing to an impressive reduction in road fatalities, which fell from 1241 in 1972 (which was the peak) to 568 in 2002 and 514 in 2005, despite much higher traffic levels. In fact, despite still having unrestricted rural roads, Arransia by some measures has the safest roads in the world. There was a little tinkering with social policy, but nothing very major, the most notable being a liberalisation of the abortion law to extend the time limit of 18 weeks and slightly relax the criteria. This was criticised by the Church, but remained stricter than the regime in some other countries, and there remained a limited amount of “abortion tourism” to Colmar and Skania. Brunswick had a fairly similar law to Arransia and also did not permit abortions for foreign residents on short-term visits. The government also took the first steps towards disbanding the old-fashioned mental institutions and changing to a more community-based model of care. Martin Fogarty, feeling doubtful as to whether he really had what it took to be Chancellor, resigned as Liberal leader in 1978. The resulting leadership election was fought between two surprisingly youthful relative unknowns, Adam Sinclair (b 1932) and Daniel Clarkson (b 1934), although both had been effective front-bench spokesmen. In the event, Sinclair, who had received Patrick Scullion’s endorsement, narrowly triumphed. He was a former Royal Marine Commando officer from a well-to-do background and represented a distinct change from the technocratic type of leader exemplified by Agnew and Fogarty. He was handsome, articulate, humorous and irreverent, and proceded to give the ageing and flat-footed Rostron a hard time in Parliament. He also found a very effective lieutenant who had a thorough knowledge of economics in Robert Knox (b 1935). As well as their earlier troubles with the traffic police, the government also came into serious conflict with the Navy. In the mid-1970s, the Navy, under the visionary Admiral of the Fleet Theodore McLeod (1916-77), had spent about half a million dollars producing a detailed design for a replacement for the Queen Margaret, which was now over twenty years old and becoming distinctly long in the tooth. The proposed ship was half as big again, and Rostron rejected the idea out of hand, telling the Navy clearly that they had obtained a lot of hardware from Brunswick in the 1950s either free or at a knock-down price, which Arransia could not necessarily afford to replace on a like-for-like basis, let alone enhance. There was something of a hiatus due to personnel changes at the top of the Navy, but in 1978 the senior officers unanimously forced the government to appoint the abrasive submariner John MacAndrew (1921-2000) as Admiral of the Fleet. MacAndrew (who reputedly once called Rostron a “spineless c**t” in an official meeting) was adamant that, if Arransia could not afford a new carrier, she would have to upgrade the veteran Queen Maggie to operate the newer and bigger planes. The Brunswickians were initially sceptical, saying the ship was too small, and muttering about new wine in old bottles, but could see how determined the Arransians were, and the detailed designs were given the go-ahead. MacAndrew went to the stage of arranging draft contracts with both the shipyard and the Brunswickian aircraft manufacturers before presenting his case to the government. The entire project was going to cost in excess of $150m. Rostron was very unhappy with these underhand tactics, but knew that doing nothing was not an option, and that to reject the plans outright would be political suicide. So, in late 1980, he reluctantly signed the contracts, and in March 1981 the Queen Margaret entered the fitting-out dock at Cairds’ shipyard at Elswick for her conversion. Adam Sinclair made a very strong attack on Rostron for his foot-dragging on this issue, which was about the first exciting thing to be seen since the televising of Parliament had started in early 1980. This measure also revealed that Rostron in his twelve years as Chancellor had put on an enormous amount of weight, something that could be concealed behind a podium but was only too obvious sitting on the government benches. By 1981 he probably weighed about 22 stone, although he has lost a lot since. This seemingly insignificant factor was another thing to help undermine the government. They were trailing badly in the opinion polls and a clear Liberal victory seemed likely at the general election. Rostron wisely chose to stand down as Labour leader just before the election, leaving Methuen to be elected unopposed, although Rostron continued as Chancellor until the vote. During the election campaign, Sinclair made great play of the inertia and drift that characterised the latter years of Rostron’s administration, concentrating especially on the issues of transport and defence. In the event, the trends of 1977 were repeated, with a distinct swing to Labour between first and second ballots, but a much larger initial Liberal lead was reflected in a workable but not overwhelming overall majority of 6. Sinclair was duly sworn in as Chancellor, with Rankine as Foreign Minister, Knox as Finance Minister, Clarkson as Home Affairs Minister, and Fogarty choosing to revert to his specialism of Transport. The mould of twelve years had been broken and Sinclair promised to take Arransia forward to a new era of prosperity and international respect. In retrospect, Rostron was a very astute politician who managed to guide Arransia successfully through two extremely serious crises. But, like Scullion, he outstayed his welcome, and his third term tended to undo his reputation. Had he handed over to Rawlinson or Methuen in 1978, things might have turned out differently. Scullion received a full state funeral when he died in 1995, the only one to be accorded to a non-royal in 20th century Arransia. Rostron, who in 2006 is still very much alive at the age of 93, has made it clear he does not want anything of the kind. But these two very different men will forever be linked as the twin colossuses of Arransian politics in the second half of the 20th century. An unfortunate legacy of Rostron’s administration was the growing impression of Arransia as a living transport museum. In 1969, while it was clear that the Arransians husbanded their resources more carefully, and were not inclined to erect giant modernist buildings, the country did not obviously appear old-fashioned in comparison with Brunswick. In 1981, it definitely did. Steam locomotives were still widely employed in revenue-earning service, a number of towns that had been planning to replace their trams with new diesel buses had not done so, but still had their rattly 1950s or even 1930s tramcars, and a whole round of model upgrades at the AMC plant had been cancelled, with the result that the dumpy little early 1950s AMC 35 “Ladybird” remained a strong seller, and the bigger AMC 65 and AMC 85 were designs with tailfins dating back to the late 1950s. Arransians are happy to be seen as people with a strong interest in the past, who enjoy restoring and preserving historic machinery, but they strongly object to being regarded as living in a bygone era, and ever since this has been a cause for concern in national life.
¹ Arransia does in fact have a sail training ship, the beautiful three-masted barque Edwin Faulkner, named after Arransia’s brave but unlucky early 20th century polar explorer, who was the third man to reach both the North and South Poles. Although operated with some help from the Navy, she is a civilian vessel, as the steam navy, unlike its counterparts in some other countries, never saw the value of sail training. The ship operates regular training cruises for young people of both sexes, which are generally regarded as a character-building experience.
² Cabinet papers from 1949, released in 1999, actually showed that the Arransians at the time regarded South Holburn as being “more Brunswickian than Arransian in character”, and felt that it would become more so once sovereignty was transferred. It was also seen as having little economic value. How times change!
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