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How Blair was driven off course by protest

The Government

Marie Woolf,Chief Political Correspondent
Wednesday 13 September 2000 00:00 BST
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"Crisis? What crisis?" It was a question that Labour wished to forget. But when David Blunkett yesterday referred to the Sun headline that helped keep Labour out of power for 18 years, a Downing Street aide visibly winced.

"Crisis? What crisis?" It was a question that Labour wished to forget. But when David Blunkett yesterday referred to the Sun headline that helped keep Labour out of power for 18 years, a Downing Street aide visibly winced.

Number 10 had succeeded in avoiding allusions to Jim Callaghan and the Winter of Discontent. A reference to the last Labour prime minister's famously flippant remark - suggesting that strikes by truckers, panic buying of food and an impending state of emergency in Northern Ireland did not amount to "mounting chaos" - was the last thing the present Government wanted.

On Monday night, Downing Street sought to calm quaking nerves about the supply of petrol and declared that fuel supplies would get through to the public. But by 10pm on Monday night Tony Blair was tearing up his schedule for a tour of northern English cities and preparing to head back to London to enter critical talks.

Plans for a keynote speech on the economy and an education policy launch were swiftly shelved as Downing Street realised that the Prime Minister's absence from London during the crisis would be a liability. The change of tone overnight was dramatic.

The night before the Prime Minister was playing down the implications of the protests and reassuring the public that emergency buying would not be necessary. On Monday afternoon Mr Blair and his entourage of advisers even found time, between a speech to business leaders in Loughborough and a public event in Sheffield, to stop at a country house hotel for tea.

The Prime Minster used the break to call ministers for an update on the crisis. But protesters glimpsing Mr Blair sipping tea in his shirt sleeves in the grounds of the Roley Manor Hotel, while guests played croquet, might have been forgiven for thinking that Downing Street was not taking the issue seriously enough.

Within an hour of leaving the hotel yesterday, Tony Blair was experiencing the depth of discontent about the fuel crisis for himself. After he had made a speech at Hull City Hall to mark John Prescott's 30 years in Parliament, a blockade of 50 tractors, trucks and cars jammed the roads and stopped his convoy in his tracks.

Countryside protesters, including a contingent of Pony Clubbers, had earlier forced the Prime Minister to leave Hull City Hall, where a rally for the PM was being held, by the back way.

The Prime Minister, on advice from his security men, abandoned the dinner on Monday night. "It was a late night," said a Downing Street aide the next morning. The PM had been up until 3am with his advisers discussing how to deal with the blockades.

Mr Blair's day began at 6am yesterday when it became clear that the Prime Minister's engagements in the North, including a key education announcement, would have to be cancelled.

Downing Street said that the Prime Minister's tour would demand too much police attention, because of the threat of protesters targeting him. But by then it had become clear that the blockades were spreading and petrol supplies becoming ever scarcer.

As the Prime Minister left the Hilton in Sheffield queues of cars, eager to stock up on fuel, were already forming outside the Esso station opposite.

A short drive away, at the Firth Park Community College in Sheffield, David Blunkett was preparing to make a key announcement encouraging parents to get more involved in their children's education.

The Education Secretary had received a call from the Prime Minister early that morning saying that Tony Blair would not be able to join him as planned. That morning Mr Blunkett was asked by an ITN crew about the crisis. A spin doctor's worst nightmare occurred when the Education Secretary directly evoked memories of Jim Callaghan's fate during the 1970s.

"We are all bound in by history and we all remember the 'Crisis? What Crisis?' of 30 years ago," Mr Blunkett remarked. "We are on the edge of a very real problem as we can't resolve the difficulties of getting petroleum in the pumps.'

Rapid calls were made to Downing Street. Moments later it emerged that Tony Blair had pulled out of a traditional dinner planned with union leaders. Mr Blair would be heading back to London, and not to the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress in Glasgow, where fuel protests were on every union leader's lips.

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