Talk:James Callaghan

Father's death

His early life has his father dying at age 9. Can you please correct it to say his father died when Callaghan was aged 9? Thanks.

FAC?

Is this good enough for WP:FAC? Should I WP:PR it first? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:27, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Unemployment Soaring?!

Towards the end of this article it states that during the winter of discontent that Unemployment was soaring but this is not the case. Between 1977 and 1979 when Mr. Callaghan left office UK Unemployment levels fell slightly. Unemployment only started soaring after Mrs. T got in and it hit 3 Million in the early '80s.

                                         Holden 27

Addition of Flanders and Swann Reference

Some six months on, author of below comment notes: the below comment was made by me some six months ago, and then at a later time I felt embarrassed by it and tried to retract it (this time not logged in properly to wikipedia, but just making an edit as an anonymous IP address.) Another user "un-did" my retraction and restored it. To this day I have no way of knowing on which level my "un-redactor" was being kind to me or just perhaps preemptive of some other potential censor's work, but a half a year on may I say that learning more of the UK's political history has been absolutely instructive for me in all sorts of ways. So that I am now doubly embarrassed for ever having raised a peep. But there are those of us in the 'States who know where our system of government (good or ill) originated. Still trying to improve our International Relations. Alan Canon 09:38, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

A perfectly strange thing just happened to me. James Callaghan's photo, but not his article, rated the front page of the English language edition of Wikipedia as a featured article. The article was on the United Kingdom corporation tax.

I looked at the photo of Callaghan, without recognizing him, and glanced at the article, and thought "Now, that's just a perfectly fine and typical-looking British Cabinet Minister, like that Harold Wilson and what's his name that Flanders and Swann used to sing about. So I decided to look up Harold Wilson, and from there was able to recover the name of James Callaghan, his Chancellor of the Exchequer and also mentioned in the song by Flanders and Swann.

The strange thing is that when I jumped from reading about Wilson to reading about Callaghan, Callaghan's picture looked familiar. I knew I'd seen that face before...no, wait a minute, it was the very picture from the featured article on the Wikipedia home page (at the time of writing, June 7, 2005.)!

What makes it strange is that I'm an 36-year old American who has only been to England for two weeks of his life, my only time out of the States. There's no particular cultural reason for me to remember these names aside from the Flanders and Swann reference. I just tangentially browsed my way into a little vortex of references, and it was "pot luck" that the person the picture reminded me, stereotypically, was none other than the person I was thinking of.

And how sad to hear that he's just passed away, after all this time. Rest in Peace, Hon. Mr. Callaghan. This Kentucky boy salutes you, and thanks to Wikipedia will remember now a little more about you.

I added a reference to the Flanders and Swann song to the page at the very end with a "James Callaghan in Popular Culture" section (but above the See Also section. I should like best for any person offended by my doing so, especially any British person who is so offended, to redact or eliminate this section. What I added is true, but I leave it to others to decide if it is appropriate. Alan Canon 02:28, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Name

Is the "g" in "Callaghan" stressed or silent ? How is the name pronounced in Ireland? Bastie 17:12, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, in the UK, it is almost invariably "Ca-la-han" with three shorts "a"s, primary stress on the "Ca" and secondary stress on the "han". -- ALoan (Talk)

Interesting, I've just heard Bernard Ingham pronounce the name Callag-an, and it's not the first time I've heard that pronounciation used. Bastie 03:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC

Edit

I have added some extra information on Callaghans early years before he was MP for Cardiff. I have also made a new subsection on his personal life - moving paragraphs on his wife and children etc into this section. LordHarris 15:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Height

An unsigned user added this comment in the main text which I RVed: I think this is incorrect. According to Andrew Robert's biography, Lord Salisbury was 6ft 4in. Don't know if this is true, any thoughts? MarkThomas 09:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's possible this might be due to the source in the Callaghan article being 10 Downing Street. Although Salisbury was PM, he wasn't first lord of the treasury (I'm not 100% on this), the traditional occupant of number 10, he was in fact foreign secretary. So if there is an official 'downing street tailor' or something who provides the stats, it may be that Callghan is the tallest ever first lord of the treasury, but not tallest PM. But I dunno.

Why not just rephrase it to say that he was one of the tallest Prime Ministers and not theactual tallest? Think the unassigned user was me. LordHarris 11:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I was the person who added to the main article, I wasn't aware of the 'wiki-quette', and frankly can't be bothered reading about it, so thanks to Mark Thomas for pointing it out to me. Lord Harris' suggestion seems like a good one to me. And, incidentally, if you're interested in British Prime Ministers, Roberts' biography of Lord Salisbury is superb.

I've heard that Tony Blair is "very tall": probably taller than Callaghan's 6'1". Millbanks 11:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

No, Blair is about six foot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.141.240.102 (talk) 10:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit

I have just purchased the new biography of Callaghan and will be adding lots of new info to the article. I have already made additions to his parents, his time in the royal navy, his standing for MP in Cardiff and his subsequent landslide election. I have also added references to support some of the new information. As I continue to read the biography I will make new additions to the article. If anyone is interested in working together to make the article on Callaghan more accurate, more academic and in more depth I would welcome the opportunity; especially on his years as Prime Minister (the section is very short giving his time and impact (winter of discontent) at Number 10. LordHarris 16:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I have now made new additions to early life and to his years as Chancellor, expanding the section to its own sub section in its own right. LordHarris 17:41, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Have finished expanding the Chancellor section (though the PM section now needs a lot of work). Have started expanding the home secretary section and added a few more references, including some sourced written statements. LordHarris 15:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Irish Roots

I'd always thought that Jim Callaghan's father was Irish, but in the Irish Times today, Brian Walker of Queen's University, Belfast, disputes this: "his father only assumed this name when he joined the navy to escape his family."Millbanks 22:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure I recall hearing that the family name was originally Carraghan (unsure of spelling.) Still sounds Irish, though! RodCrosby 12:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Lieutenant?

Surely Jim Callagan would have dispensed with the title "Lieutenant" when he left the RNVR after the war? Millbanks 11:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

The Gazette lists his rank in the 1950s listing Kernel Saunters 11:57, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

External link to Royal Historical Society Bibliography

A while ago I added an external link to a List of books and articles about James Callaghan on the Royal Historical Society Bibliography. This was removed by another editor as being contrary to Wikipedia policy. The same thing happened on some other pages about recent prime ministers and it has been discussed on the John Major discussion page. There seemed to be agreement that the link - giving access to a resource which is the most comprehensive online guide to what has been written about British and Irish history - was a useful one, but some doubt remained as to whether I should add such links myself, since I work for the Bibliography (although the service is run from London University, is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is free for anyone to use, so I am not advertising in a commercial sense.) I thought, therefore, that it might be worth continuing the dicussion here. I can see the logic behind a bar on editors promoting resources with which they are themselves involved, but I don't see how such a bar could be enforced - I know that others have done it without it being questioned. It's also the case that permanent deep links of the kind that I can add could not readily be added by someone working outside our project. This instance raises issues that extend more widely than this particular article as I could potentially add similar links to many articles. So if there is a better place to discuss it, I hope someone will suggest it (I am new to editing Wikipedia myself!) Bibliographer07 (talk) 11:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

"...November when the surcharge of imports under the previous Conservative government..."

I do not understand the above line which appears in the section on JC as Chancellor of the Exchequer (third para, I think). If I'm being uniquely dumb about this, please ignore me. Otherwise could someone take a look and translate it into something I can understand. I've a feeling that the writer might have been thinking not of a 'surcharge of imports" but of a "surge of imports". I'm not sufficiently familiar with the trade balance in this period (beyond remembering from my childhood that, as reported, the British trade balance tended to be headline grabbingly negative) to know if that would be true, or a politically biased opinion or both or neither. (And I guess one shouldn't be shocked if entries on politicians contain politics.) But at least 'surge' would make sense here in its own terms to the averagely intelligent generalist reader. Or? And thanks Regards Charles01 (talk) 15:57, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

We do not write everything so a 12 year old will understand it. many scientific articles are difficult to understand without he background in science or logic and that is fine. it is here too. We should do our best to explain things clearly but do not need every reader to understand every line of wikipedia, that would be seriously dumbing down. Thanks, SqueakBox 16:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Your nice general statements make sense to me. I think I broadly agree with them. You have ignored my specific question however. And I'd still be interested in the answer if you know it

What is "a surcharge of imports"? Do you know? Does anyone know? Does it make sense to you? Or did the writer intend to write "a surplus of imports"? Or did the writer intend to write "a surge of imports"? The point may be important and it may be interesting (and if it is neither then the next question becomes obvious...)

I have, as it happens, studied a little bit of economics over the years. But I genuinely do not understand what is intended by the phrase I highlighted here. To me it therefore is unencyclopaedic or nonsense (or at best very ambiguous). If you actually know what it means here, I think you would be doing a service to several of us by rewording or clarifying the sentence. In general terms it's widely accepted that in the early 1960s (as arguably, in an intriguing parallel, at the start of the twenty-first century) UK government indulged in a burst of fiscal incontinence, of which the citizenry came to 'repent at leisure'. But this does not help me with a definition of the phrase 'a surcharge of imports'.

Please. And thank you! Regards Charles01 (talk) 05:17, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Personal Life

Can someone confirm that Callaghan was indeed an atheist? That was clearly not the case when he met his wife. Was he both a "Baptist" and an "atheist"? Richard David Ramsey 04:36, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure there was a "Private Eye" cover round about the time of the 1979 election with the Callaghan family coming out of church, and his grandchildren asking one another something to the effect of "I didn't know Grandpa believed in God." "Only once every five years". So perhaps he occasionally attended church for appearances' sake. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.192.0.10 (talk) 08:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Callaghan was certainly less religious as an adult than in his early life (his background was, frankly, rather fundamentalist), though I've never seen him described as an atheist before. There's quite a bit on Callaghan's religious views in Ken Morgan's biography of him and it might be worth reading through it to check that sort of thing (it's been a while since I've read it and I wasn't exactly looking out for that sort of information at the time). Probably best to revert to just describing him as Baptist until there's evidence to describe him otherwise. Might be an idea to add that he was less religious in mid and later life as well, or something like that (though I'm not sure whether it matters a great deal).

Sibboleth (talk) 17:59, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

In place of Strife

I'm surprised that this article makes no mention that Callaghan led the opposition to In Place of Strife in 1969. The fact that Callaghan managed to block legislation which would have made much of the union activity in the Winter of Discontent illegal, was one of the greatest ironies of his career, which came back to haunt him. G-Man ^? 02:03, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

George Thomas

It is mentioned in the article that Callaghan narrowly beat George Thomas to be the Labour party candidate for Cardiff South in 1945. I assume that this si the same George Thomas who stood and was elected in Cardiff Central that year (George Thomas, 1st Viscount Tonypandy). Could someone confirm this so that we can link him?--Peter cohen (talk)

1962

The article gives the impression that vouchers were introduced in 1968. Actually, they seem to have been introduced in 1962, in an attempt to restrict immigration into Britain.