The Rest Is History

419. Britain in 1974: Countdown to a Coup (Part 3)

2024-02-15

Following a tumultuous election in February 1974, Labour’s Harold Wilson has been re-elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Wilson, an unpretentious, kind man, has inherited a nation in crisis: train strikes in Norfolk, students fighting in Oxford, inflation, an ongoing oil crisis, a terrible cost of living crisis, striking miners, and weekly IRA terrorist attacks. He’s further hindered by his divided minority government, and the dysfunctional environment in Downing Street, in part due to his strange relationship with his private secretary and “po...