{"id":19310,"date":"2022-11-09T09:47:49","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T08:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=219444"},"modified":"2022-11-09T10:05:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T09:05:13","slug":"john-major-a-brief-guide-to-britains-prime-minister-in-the-1990s","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/john-major-a-brief-guide-to-britains-prime-minister-in-the-1990s\/","title":{"rendered":"John Major: a brief guide to Britain\u2019s prime minister in the 1990s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 09 November 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Margaret Thatcher \u2013 who served as Britain\u2019s first female prime minister from 1979 to 1990, having won three general elections \u2013 was always going to be a hard act to follow, regardless of what people thought of her political decisions. Her successor, John Major, at first achieved surprising success by leading the Conservatives to a record-breaking fourth election victory in 1992.<\/p>\n

But soon after that unexpected triumph, things fell apart. For the majority of his time in Downing Street<\/a> he had to battle a succession of crises and internal party enemies. The fact that he was personally liked and respected by many voters was not enough to save him from a landslide loss at the hands of New Labour in the 1997 general election.<\/p>\n

The road to politics<\/h3>\n

Though he was often dismissively described as \u201cgrey\u201d as a politician, Major was born in 1943 to a rather colourful family: his father was an aged, one-time music hall performer and owner of a garden ornament business; his mother was a former dancer. The young Major attended Rutlish School, a grammar school in southwest London, but, amidst his family\u2019s financial troubles, he left with few qualifications. After a few years, he settled into a career in banking. In 1970, he married Norma Johnson and went on to have two children.<\/p>\n

He always harboured political ambitions, however: joining the Young Conservatives as a teenager and being elected as a councillor in London in 1968. In 1979, in the election that brought Thatcher to power, Major was elected to a safe Tory seat, and he quietly grew in influence during the 1980s, entering the cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury. Up to this point, his rise had largely been without trace.<\/p>

While Thatcher had no plans to retire, she came to regard Major as a potential party leader in the future. During her turbulent final phase in office, she appointed him foreign secretary in July 1989, and then, just three months later, chancellor of the exchequer. Not long before her downfall, Major (who by then had become chancellor) helped persuade Thatcher, against her own better judgement, that Britain should join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), which required the value of the pound to be maintained within a fixed band. He saw this as an anti-inflationary tool, but the decision turned out to have catastrophic consequences for his own premiership a few years later.<\/p>\n

Through the doors of Number 10<\/h3>\n

Following Thatcher\u2019s forced resignation<\/a> in November 1990, Major beat two other candidates, Douglas Hurd and Michael Heseltine, in the battle to replace her as leader of the Conservative Party. It was symbolic of his collegial approach that he gave both of his defeated rivals important posts in his cabinet, and yet also revealing of his political cunning that he handed Heseltine the tricky task of replacing the Community Charge (or \u2018poll tax\u2019), the highly controversial local government taxation system that had helped bring Thatcher down.<\/p>\n

From the first, Major had problems with Thatcher, who now sat on the backbenches. \u201cI shan\u2019t be pulling the levers there, but I shall be a very good back-seat driver,\u201d she told journalists. While Major wanted to preserve much of her legacy, he looked to be more emollient and consensual than the \u2018Iron Lady\u2019 had been. He would speak of creating \u201ca nation at ease with itself\u201d and of building a \u201cclassless society\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Following Thatcher\u2019s forced resignation in November 1990, Major beat two other candidates to replace her as leader of the Conservative Party. (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Later in his memoirs, Major explained that when he talked of classlessness, he \u201cwanted to say that the subtle calibrations of scorn in which the country rejoices, the endless puttings down and belittlings, so instinctive that we do not notice ourselves doing them, are awful.\u201d As prime minister, he continued to push forward the privatisation agenda of the 1980s \u2013 in the case of the railways, this created short-term chaos and long-term structural problems. But Major cared genuinely about public services: the 1991 Citizen\u2019s Charter was an initiative designed to make bureaucracy more accountable, more transparent and more focused on ordinary people.<\/p>\n

A few months before Major had become prime minister, Saddam Hussein had launched his invasion of Kuwait, in August 1990. Major quickly established a warm relationship with US President George HW Bush and Britain was part of the coalition that drove the Iraqi forces out again in the Gulf War, which led to Major being generally considered to have had a \u201cgood war\u201d. There was, however, no khaki election: he waited until April 1992 to go to the country.<\/p>\n

By then, Labour was widely expected to sweep to power. Fighting as the underdog, despite being the incumbent, Major took to the streets, addressing the public from a soap box. He was rewarded with an upset win, though with a much-reduced majority, which over the next few years was progressively depleted through by-election losses. His luck was about to run out.<\/p>\n

Scandal, schism and sleaze<\/h3>\n

Membership of the ERM had exacerbated Britain\u2019s ongoing recession, as only painfully high interest rates could sustain sterling at the required parity. The pound came under growing pressure, and in the chaos of 16 September 1992 \u2013 \u2018Black Wednesday\u2019 \u2013 Major\u2019s government was compelled to announce that it was withdrawing from the system. The economy recovered; the Conservatives\u2019 reputation for economic competence did not.<\/p>\n

Equally damaging for the Tories was their division over the issue of Europe. At the time, the Maastricht Treaty, the foundational document of the European Union, signed in February 1992, looked like a negotiating triumph, as Britain secured important opt-outs on monetary and social policy. Still, a group of Conservative backbenchers, known as the Maastricht Rebels, could not be reconciled to any form of further European integration. They fought a bitter battle in the House of Commons against Major\u2019s government, in which can be seen many of the origins of Brexit.<\/p>\n