PM threatens not to pay EEC budget contributions and colliery blast kills three
This week in 1979 Prime Minister James Callaghan warned that Britain might refuse to pay her European Economic Community budget contribution from 1981 if there was not a major shift in Common Market policies away from wasteful spending on agriculture and towards help for the stricken industries and decaying cities of Europe.
Mr Callaghan told the other Governments at the Common Market summit that unless this happened, the common agricultural policy would eat up all the resources likely to be available for Community policies.
In other political news, the Government issued an ultimatum to civil servants who had refused, on union instructions, to do work normally carried out by striking colleagues.
In a strongly-worded statement with the backing of Mr Bruce Millan, Secretary of State for Scotland, the Scottish Office said: “Do the work – or be sent home without pay indefinitely.” But the message brought an angry reaction from the unions with the Scottish Office being accused of employing nineteenth century management tactics, which could only inflame an already serious situation.
The statement was issued after a day of intense industrial action. Government departments throughout Scotland, and in parts of England, ground to a halt after a big and spontaneous walkout by more than 30,000 angry civil servants.
Also in the news, a fierce political controversy was raging after the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Roy Mason, denied in the Commons that his department were involved in “dirty tricks” and a smear campaign to discredit the police surgeon at the centre of a police brutality row in Ulster.
And in Lancashire three men were killed and another eight were “very critically ill” after an explosion ripped through a colliery. Ambulance men broke their strike to ferry badly burned survivors to hospital after the blast, which happened in a roadway 1800 feet below ground at Golborne Colliery, near Wigan.