James Callaghan

James Callaghan was born in Portsmouth in 1912 and grew up in poverty. Unable to afford university, he joined the Inland Revenue and became a trade union official. After serving in the Royal Navy in the Second World War, he was elected MP for Cardiff South in 1945. He was Chancellor from 1964 to 1967, resigning after the devaluation of the pound, then Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary. He won the Labour leadership after Harold Wilson resigned in 1976. His government had no secure majority and relied first on the Liberals and then on other parties. Strikes in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-1979 were followed by a lost confidence vote by 311 to 310, and Labour lost the 1979 election. He became a life peer in 1987 and died in 2005.

Admirers praise Callaghan as a steady, popular figure who held a divided cabinet together during the 1976 IMF crisis and kept a minority government going for three years. Critics on the left saw the IMF cuts and his 1976 conference speech as an abandonment of Labour's commitment to full employment, while critics on the right held his government responsible for inflation that reached almost 17 percent and for failing to control union power. His record as Home Secretary on the 1968 immigration law remains controversial. The Winter of Discontent became a lasting symbol in British politics and helped bring Margaret Thatcher to power.