The famous dictum – that all political lives end in failure- was certainly true of James Callaghan. The man who became Prime Minister exactly 50 years ago today, will be forever associated with the so-called Winter of Discontent – a disastrous wave of strikes in late 1978 and early 1979 which effectively brought down his minority Labour government. This left the door of Number 10 wide open for Margaret Thatcher, who then – according to the dominant narrative – sorted the whole thing out. Indeed, people’s memories of that period – and its vivid imagery of the rubbish piling up high in Leicester Square, and pickets here, there and everywhere – were such that it was nearly 20 years before the electorate trusted Labour to govern again.

Had Callaghan called and won an election in October 1978 then the 1980s would have been very different

Had Callaghan called and won an election in October 1978 then the 1980s would have been very different

Yet if ‘that winter’ is all that we remember Callaghan for it’s rather sad. Because in many ways he was a highly effective premier who in just over two years turned the nation’s fortunes around and introduced a number of practical reforms which benefited millions, such as the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme, a valuable addition to the basic state pension.

Indeed, if we look at the period from 1976-78 Callaghan’s administration has serious claims to be the most successful since the second world war – particularly when you consider that for most of its term it didn’t have a parliamentary majority.

Callaghan – the first and to date only man to hold all four great offices of state – could hardly have become Prime Minister at a more inauspicious........

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