Blue Skies in Camelot (Continued): An Alternate 80s and Beyond

[President_Lincoln]

Greetings all!

Thanks for the feedback on "The Bare Necessities". Glad that you enjoyed the history of Disney ITTL.

HERE is the link to Closer to Home (Redux). I will also be adding the link to my signature.

I can't wait to see your entries!

Best wishes,
President_Lincoln

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 153 - Take it on the Run: 1981 Off-Year Elections in the United States

Above: Kenneth Gibson (D - NJ) and Chuck Robb (D - VA), Democratic nominees for governor of New Jersey and Virginia in 1981, respectively.​

“You take it on the run, baby
If that's the way you want it, baby
Then I don't want you around
I don't believe it
Not for a minute
You're under the gun
So you take it on the run” - “Take it on the Run” by REO Speedwagon

“Wherever America is going, New Jersey will get there first.” - Ken Gibson, on the campaign trail

“The fact that our hearts don't speak in the same way is not cause or justification to discriminate.” - Chuck Robb, explaining his support for decriminalizing “sodomy” in the state of Virginia

Though (perhaps understandably) not as widely covered as the midterms, off-year elections are sometimes treated as bell-weathers for the popularity of the president and their party on the national level. For the people of the states of New Jersey and Virginia, of course, there are chances to vote on who will occupy the governor’s mansions of their respective states. For national political wonks, they are also a testing-ground for campaign messaging and strategy. In 1981, both the Garden State and the Old Dominion were due for new chief executives due to both having term-limited incumbents.

Above: Brendan Byrne (D - NJ), outgoing governor in 1981, AKA “the man that couldn’t be bought”.​

In New Jersey, that incumbent was Brendan Byrne. A Democrat, originally from West Orange, Byrne first rose to prominence as a prosecutor in the 1960s. While in that position, he was referenced by mobsters operating in the state who’d been wiretapped by the FBI as “the man who couldn’t be bought”, due to his high ethical standards. That comment, combined with an environment in the Tri-State area at the time that considered corruption a critical issue propelled Byrne to statewide fame. In 1973, he was elected Governor, using his “couldn’t be bought” title as a campaign slogan. During his first term, Byrne signed the state’s first income-tax into law, violating a campaign pledge not to do so. Despite a spirited primary challenge and a hard-fought general election in 1977, in which he was widely expected to lose, Byrne defied the odds and won a second term. He spent the next four years overseeing the opening of the state’s first gambling casinos in Atlantic City, increasing openness and transparency in the state government, and preserving a large majority of woodlands and wildlife areas in the state by restricting development. At the tail end of his second term, Byrne’s popularity had rebounded somewhat, but he was leaving office a highly polarizing figure. Conservatives and moderates were still furious that he’d broken his “no income tax” pledge and believed that his restriction on development had cost the state jobs.

The field of Democratic candidates to succeed Byrne was quite crowded. Because the governor declined to name any preferred successor early on, the candidates staked out bold stances on the issues of the day to try and differentiate themselves. Unsurprisingly, they also attempted to tie themselves strongly to President Robert Kennedy, whose approval ratings (in the wake of the attempt on his life by Mark Chapman) hovered around 60% nationally. None of the candidates had a close personal relationship with the president, but that did not stop them from claiming one anyway. Some of the major candidates in the Democratic primary included:

• Herbert J. Buehler, former state senator from Point Pleasant Beach
• John J. Degnan, New Jersey Attorney General
• Frank J. Dodd, state senator from West Orange
• James Florio, U.S. Representative from Runnemede
• Kenneth A. Gibson, Mayor of Newark
• William J. Hamilton, state senator from New Brunswick
• Ann Klein, Human Services Commissioner, former Assemblywoman from Morristown, and candidate for governor in 1973
• Barbara McConnell, state assemblywoman from Flemington

Among the candidates, Jim Florio had run against Byrne in the Democratic primary four years prior, and thus enjoyed the most name recognition throughout the state. Florio staked out his ‘81 campaign on two key issues: a renewed pledge for no new taxes; and being the only Democratic candidate to receive an endorsement from the National Rifle Association. “Pro-gun” and “anti-crime”, Florio vowed to continue to fight corruption in Trenton. His campaign suffered, however, as he remained in Washington, D.C., serving out his term in Congress.

Florio’s absence and Byrne’s initial refusal to back any one candidate (he eventually endorsed Degnan, but by then the impact of the endorsement was probably minimal) stood to benefit the rest of the field, of course. Among the other candidates, one in particular was able to leverage this vacuum in the media and on the stump to his advantage.

Kenneth Allen Gibson, born May 15th, 1932, was the 36th Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, a position which he had held since first being elected back in 1970. Thanks to that position, Gibson became the first African American to serve as mayor of a major city in the Northeastern United States.

Above: Ken Gibson on the cover of Newsweek.​

Gibson was a Newark native. As a teenager, he attended Central High School, where he played with a dance band after school to bring in income needed for his family. After graduation, he studied civil engineering in college, but financial challenges forced him to drop out of school after a few months in school. He then worked in a factory, served in the military and later worked for the New Jersey Highway Department, completing his engineering degree in 1963 by taking night classes.

In 1970, Gibson won election as Mayor as a reformer. At the time, Gibson noted that, “Newark may be the most decayed and financially crippled city in the nation.” He alleged that the previous mayor, Hugh Addonizio, had been “hopelessly corrupt”. Sure enough, shortly after Gibson was elected, Addonizio was convicted of conspiracy and extortion.

Gibson was also seen as a representative of the city’s sizable African-American population, many of whom were migrants or whose parents or grandparents had come North in the Great Migration. The city's industrial power had diminished sharply, however. Deindustrialization since the 1950s cost tens of thousands of jobs when African Americans were still arriving from the South looking for better opportunities than in their former communities. Combined with forces of suburbanization and racial tensions, the city encountered problems similar to those of other major industrial cities of the North and Midwest in the 1960s - increasing poverty and dysfunction for families left without employment. The city was scarred by race riots in 1967, three years before Gibson took office. Many businesses and residents left the city after the riots and were reluctant to return.

After being re-elected in 1974, Gibson went on to become the first African-American president of the United States Conference of Mayors, serving in that role for just over a year from 1976 - 1977.

Though he was viewed by many, both within Newark and beyond as a symbol of hope and the possibility of change, some of his supporters did feel alienated by some of his policy decisions while in office. Namely, in a bid to bring businesses and jobs back to Newark, he approved tax breaks and sweetheart deals to state and corporate interests, and increased funding for the city’s police force, even as its social services saw their budgets’ slashed due to a shrinking tax base.

Nevertheless, he won a third term in 1978 and by 1980, for most, the bloom was very much still on the rose, so to speak. 49 years old in 1981, Gibson announced his candidacy for governor by claiming that he was “the candidate for progress”. He barnstormed the state, delivering impassioned speeches, and calling on his fellow Garden Staters to embrace the “change” that he claimed to represent. For many, the unspoken nature of that “change” was, largely, the color of Gibson’s skin.

Gibson aimed to be the first African-American governor not just in New Jersey’s history, but across the Northeast in general. “If Charles Evers can be elected the United States Senator from Mississippi on the Democratic ticket,” Gibson privately told his staff. “Then I believe that the people of New Jersey may be ready for a man of color as governor.” That said, Gibson was also careful not to paint himself as the “black candidate” for that office. He feared (unfortunately, justifiably) that tying himself too closely to that label could backfire on him. Instead, he spoke in more vague terms of “change” and “progress” and “a new generation of leadership”. In that way, he largely adapted the Kennedy brand of optimism and hope for the future.

Across the state, people’s eyes turned to Gibson. The crowded nature of the primary played to his advantage as well. By cultivating a loyal, dedicated following, Gibson outshone several of the less well-known candidates, and set himself up to challenge the “absentee candidate” - Florio. When the Democratic primary was held, on June 2nd, 1981, the number of candidates was thought to be the deciding factor.

With just 26.2% of the vote, Ken Gibson, Mayor of Newark, managed to eke out a win over Florio, who scored 25.4%, as well as all the other candidates. Though hardly a decisive victory, Gibson would be the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey in 1981. In a massive rally in his hometown, Gibson celebrated with his wife, Camille, and a crowd of devoted supporters.

In the general election, which was framed by the national media as a referendum on President Kennedy and his agenda (in particular, his economic and tax policies), Gibson would be going up against Thomas Kean, the former Speaker of the State Assembly and runner up for the GOP nomination in 1977.

Born on April 21st, 1935 in New York City to a long line of Dutch American and New Jersey politicians, Tom Kean seemed destined for greatness. His mother was Elizabeth Stuyvesant Howard and his father, Robert Kean, was a U.S. representative from 1939 until 1959. Kean's grandfather Hamilton Fish Kean and great-uncle John Kean both served as U.S. senators from New Jersey. His second great-uncle was Hamilton Fish, a U.S. senator, governor of New York, and U.S. secretary of state. Kean is also descended from William Livingston, who was a delegate to the Continental Congress, was the first governor of New Jersey, and is considered a founding father of the state.

Above: Tom Kean, the Republican candidate for Governor of New Jersey in 1981.​

After attending a number of elite prep schools as a boy, Kean later attended Princeton University, where he performed “groundbreaking research” on the constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and earned a BA in history. He would later earn an MA (also in history) from Columbia University and become a social studies teacher at St. Mark’s, the private Episcopalian boarding school he’d attended in his adolescence. He later got involved with Republican politics in New Jersey, serving as a volunteer and surrogate for numerous state level campaigns before eventually becoming a candidate for office himself.

A moderate, dyed-in-the-wool “Romney Republican” and proud member of the so-called “Eastern Establishment” of the GOP, Kean launched his campaign with pledges to foster job creation, to clean up toxic waste sites, to reduce crime, and to preserve what he called “home rule” for his state. This was largely seen as a jab at President Kennedy and the Democrats, who seemed to stand for increased federal involvement in the nation’s economic affairs. Kean won the endorsement of former President George Bush fairly early on in the race, which enabled him to capture the nomination.

As the general election campaign got underway over the summer, both candidates sought to contrast themselves on economic issues, down to the personal contrast between Kean as the scion of a wealthy, WASP-y political dynasty and Gibson as the upstart African-American symbol of upward mobility. Gibson continued his praise of President Kennedy’s economic program and worked to link Kean to Ronald Reagan and his “dangerous ideals of ‘slash and burn’ conservatism”. Meanwhile, Kean distanced himself from the conservative wing of the GOP, even going so far as to turn down Roger Stone’s offer to work for him as a “hitman”. Stone had proposed a series of highly controversial ads filled with dog whistles that would attack Gibson and his “element”, and question whether he was “ready to lead New Jersey”. Kean feared that these ads would lead to blowback and refused to work with Stone. Instead, Kean tried to pivot, attacking Gibson as “just another tax and spend liberal”, who would do nothing to clean up the state.

As the race wore on and it became clear that President Kennedy and his policies remained popular with the people of New Jersey, Kean even tried to paint himself as the perfect candidate for “bipartisanship”. In a series of two debates held at Monmouth College and later, before the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, Gibson decried Kean’s economic policies as “voodoo economics” (echoing former President Bush) and claimed that a Kean governorship would lead to “financial devastation, possibly even bankruptcy”. Kean accused Gibson of speaking in hyperbole and of seeking to “continue Governor Byrne’s failed regulatory policies”. Both candidates postured as being “tough on crime”, a theme that would go national the following year.

In the final days of the race, the Republican National Committee (RNC) dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars to blanket the state in television and radio ads. One famous TV ad featured Kean playing bocce, in an evident attempt to appeal to ethnically Italian voters. To counter this, Vice President Lloyd Bentsen and Senator Bill Bradley appeared frequently with Gibson at his campaign rallies. President Kennedy even made a highly-publicized appearance a few days before Election Day, in which he endorsed Gibson and delivered a rousing speech on his behalf.

In the end, the race was close, a real nail-biter.

Early returns on election night showed a narrow lead for Gibson. But the race was widely reported on as being “too close to call”. Two networks - ABC and CBS - both declared Gibson the winner, only for the Kean campaign to demand a recount, as the margin appeared to be down to less than a thousand votes. A recount was held, but in the end, the results held. By a margin of only 507 votes, Kenneth Gibson was elected Governor of New Jersey.

The result, considered a major upset despite President Kennedy’s popularity, sent shockwaves through not just the state of New Jersey, not just the Northeast, but throughout the entire nation. In a decidedly purple swing state, an unabashedly liberal Democrat (and a man of color, no less) had just defeated a moderate, Romney Republican who came from one of the most storied and well-established political dynasties in the country.

The world, as they say, had turned upside down.

Above: Ken Gibson, in his newly won office as Governor of New Jersey, Jan. 1982.

…

Above: John Dalton (R - VA), Governor of Virginia prior to the 1981 election.​

If New Jersey in 1981 was a northeastern swing state in need of reform, then Virginia was a leading state of the “new South”.

Though Democratic Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., the state’s dominant politician, remained a steadfast opponent of the changes (namely, desegregation) sweeping the country throughout the 1960s and 70s, Virginia did, slowly but surely, come into the modern world. Most of the state’s Democrats eventually joined Johnson’s “machine” of communitarians - that is, socially conservative, fiscally liberal. Most accepted (however reluctantly) desegregation as a fait accompli, but shifted their anti-change rhetoric toward other issues, like abortion and so-called “sexual liberation”. They continued to favor “states’ rights” and “strict constitutionalism” against “federal overreach”. Voters in the South, whether Democratic or Republican, remained a very conservative demographic overall, with much of its population comprising white, evangelical protestants, who still made up strong contingents of both parties.

This was only part of the picture in Virginia, however.

By 1981, much of the Old Dominion’s burgeoning growth and prosperity was centered in the northern part of the state. This was chiefly due to employment related to Federal government agencies and defense, as well as an increase in technology in Northern Virginia. The north’s proximity to DC shifted its demographics toward becoming increasingly wealthy, increasingly educated, and increasingly liberal (at least, socially). The suburbs outside of major cities like Richmond also exploded. Thus, a divide formed between the cosmopolitan north of the state and the more traditionally “southern” south, west, and east.

With Governor John Dalton being term-limited (Virginia does allow for a person to serve multiple terms, but they cannot be consecutive), the Republicans obviously hoped to retain the governor’s mansion and maintain their in-roads into the South. They nominated the state’s Attorney General, 39 year old Marshall Coleman of Staunton.

Coleman’s father - William Warren Coleman - had been a factory worker-turned-minister and instilled in his son both a strong, protestant work ethic and devout religious beliefs. Those beliefs would be shaken, however, when on January 15th, 1952, a nine year old Coleman was shocked to find his father, who had become badly injured in an automobile accident the previous year, had committed suicide in their basement. The event was said to have deeply traumatized the boy and left a profound impact upon his life.

Nonetheless, Coleman pressed forward with his education. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A., in 1964, and received his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1970. Between his studies in Charlottesville, Coleman served in the United States Marine Corps (1966–1969) including 13 months as an “advisor” on the ground in Vietnam. Upon admission to the Virginia bar, Coleman practiced law, as well as almost immediately ran for public office. In 1973, Coleman won election to the Virginia House of Delegates. Four years later, in 1977, he was elected the state’s Attorney General at just 35 years of age. He became the first Republican to hold that position since Reconstruction. While Attorney General, he argued (and lost) four cases before the US Supreme Court. Most of these concerned cases involving habeas corpus.

Opposing Coleman in the 1981 general election was a fellow marine - Lt. Governor Chuck Robb, a Democrat. Virginia separately elects its governors and lt. Governors, rather than having them serve as a combined ticket.

Above: Chuck Robb, then Lt. Governor of Virginia, speaks to guests at a luncheon during the Virginia General Assembly's tour of Marine Corps Base Quantico on February 1st, 1981.

Charles “Chuck” Robb was born June 26th, 1939 in Phoenix, Arizona, but grew up in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County, Virginia. After graduating from Mount Vernon high school, Robb attended Cornell University in Upstate New York before earning a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity

A United States Marine Corps veteran and honor graduate of Quantico, Robb became a White House social aide. It was there that he met and eventually married Lynda Johnson, the daughter of then-U.S. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson in a service celebrated by the Right Reverend Gerald Nicholas McAllister. Robb went on to serve a tour of duty in Cambodia, where he commanded Company I of 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in combat, and was awarded the Bronze Star and Cambodia Gallantry Cross with Star. Following his promotion to the rank of major, he was attached to the Logistics section (G-4), 1st Marine Division.

In 1972, he worked as an aide on his father-in-law’s presidential campaign. He was bitterly disappointed when LBJ failed to capture the White House. But Robb went back to school, earning a JD from the University of Virginia Law School in 1973, and clerked for John D. Butzner, Jr., a judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Afterwards he resided in McLean, Virginia and entered private practice. Robb eventually became active in Virginia politics as a Democrat, winning election as Lieutenant Governor in 1977. As the only Democratic to win statewide office that year, Robb became the state party’s de facto leader as well.

Despite his father-in-law’s success at building a “new Southern machine” in the early 1970s, Virginia’s Democratic Party had, by 1977, been anemic and rudderless for the better part of a decade. Republicans had occupied the governor’s mansion since 1969 and the aforementioned Harry F. Byrd, US Senator, repeatedly waffled on whether he even wanted to remain a Democrat at all, what with “how far left” the national party had gone.

Thus, Robb, who was easily nominated for governor in ‘81, had a number of choices to make. He was essentially given free reign to shape the Virginia state party as he saw fit. Electorally, he had to set a strategy. Which groups within the state would he try to appeal to? Which regions? In the end, Robb rejected the “communitarian” archetype that so many Southern Democrats were embracing, in favor of a platform that more accurately represented his personally-held political beliefs.

Robb was a moderate Democrat, but not in the manner typical for the South. He was fiscally conservative, favoring balanced budgets and pro-business policies and socially progressive, championing not only civil rights, but pro-choice on abortion and in favor of toleration and liberation for LGBT+ Americans. He made it his mission, beginning in 1977, to build a more progressive Democratic Party in Virginia than the one that had ruled it for decades before. Turning not just to his father-in-law, but also to Terry Sanford and Ralph Yarborough for inspiration, Robb made himself the candidate for the young and the liberal throughout the state.

This definitely played to his benefit in 1981. Coleman ran as a run of the mill conservative Republican, which helped Robb stand out and appeal to both liberals and moderates. Independents in particular seemed to favor Robb over Coleman. Coleman attempted to court the support of the state’s sizable evangelical population by making hay out of Robb’s support of one issue in particular - repealing Virginia’s statewide “anti-sodomy” laws. Unfortunately for him, this plan largely backfired.

During a debate between the two candidates for governor, Robb eloquently stated, “The fact that our hearts don't speak in the same way is not cause or justification to discriminate.” Robb did not argue for gay marriage or full equality (such a position would have been seen as "radical" for the time), but to even openly support toleration of gay and lesbian people in the South in 1981 was seen as quite the progressive step forward.

As in the race in New Jersey, both candidates positioned themselves as “tough on crime”, with Robb going so far as to state his “openness” to the idea of being the first governor of Virginia in 25 years to use the death penalty for capital crimes. Again, this portented the national mood on “law and order” issues that the national party would seek to address the following year.

On election night, Chuck Robb was elected the 64th Governor of Virginia, winning 53.5% of the vote to Coleman’s 46.4%. This represented a margin of some 100,000 votes. Robb’s victory, when taken with Gibson’s in New Jersey, seemed to demonstrate strong national support for President Kennedy and the Democrats at the tail end of his first year in office. The people’s party hoped to maintain that edge into 1982 and the midterm elections.

Meanwhile, the Republicans continued their tail-spin. Once again frustrated by the robust New Frontier Coalition, the GOP took the defeats in Virginia, and especially in New Jersey, rather hard. Tom Kean had seemed the perfect candidate, especially when put up against Kenneth Gibson. The idea that “white ethnics” (Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc.) had chosen an African-American candidate over a white one ran counter to the prevailing political calculus of the day. Indeed, Republicans came to believe that if they wanted to stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of ever regaining political relevance, then they needed to expand their electoral coalition beyond just the well-to-do and suburbanites worried about inflation. Beyond winning back “Kennedy Republicans” as they came to be known, the party needed to find wedge issues that could cleave off portions of the Democrats’ support.

Two schools of thought emerged over the next several years on how to achieve this.

One, advocated for by the liberal wing of the party, called for moderate economic policies, the “Dime Store New Deal” detested by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, but embraced by Dwight Eisenhower, George Romney, and George Bush, the last three Republicans to be elected to the Presidency. By courting support of moderates and independents among college-educated voters, these “Romney Republicans” claimed, they could undercut Democratic support in the Northeast, the Midwest, and on the West Coast. It was in those regions that these Republicans had the most cache. This school of thought seems like it could have helped in Virginia, which appeared to be more liberal socially than previously thought. But it seemed refuted by the results in New Jersey, where Kean, a perfect example of this type of Republican, had been edged out by Gibson.

The other approach, favored by the party’s conservative wing (now led by Senators Paul Laxalt of Nevada and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, among others) called for a hard tack to the right on social issues, to cleave off socially conservative voters. It held the most support in the South and West. But it was also rapidly gaining support in the Midwest as well. Ronald Reagan’s defeat to Bob Kennedy in 1980 should have been the death knell for this wing of the party. Reagan was, after all, conservatism’s best known and most well-liked spokesman in the United States. But the party base continued to clamor for it. And conservatives, feeling abandoned by the Democrats, still sought to move the GOP right to find a new home.

For now, the Republicans remained badly divided, to the benefit of the Democrats.

Next time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Pop Culture in 1981​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Pop Culture in 1981 - The Music Video Revolution

Above: In August of 1981, MTV broadcast for the first time on cable television in the United States, playing music videos 24 hours a day. This would change popular music forever.

Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 1981 (Top Ten):

1. “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes
2. “Endless Love” by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
3. “Starting Over” by John Lennon*
4. “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield
5. “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang
6. “Kiss on My List” by Hall & Oates
7. “I Love a Rainy Night” by Eddie Rabbitt
8. “In the Air Tonight” by Genesis
9. “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton
10. “Keep on Loving You” by REO Speedwagon

News in Music​

January 1st - Joy Division released the single “Ceremony” and its B-side “In a Lonely Place”. Highly successful in their native UK, the songs also hit the US top 40 as well. Joy Division continue their ascent to the top of the rock world. Their style of post-punk - austere yet accessible - rejects the artifice of rock n roll in favor of the realities of everyday life. It will come to be highly influential on an emerging new genre - “Alternative”.

January 11th - Country singer Hank Williams Jr. releases his 32nd album, Rowdy. It is quickly certified Gold by the RIAA.

January 18th - Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics is arrested in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for simulating masturbation with a sledgehammer on stage. In a scuffle with the police, Williams is pinned to the floor and receives a cut above the eye requiring twelve stitches.

January 24th - Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler is killed in a motorcycle crash near his home in Boston, Massachusetts. He is deeply mourned both by fans and his young daughters: Liv (aged 3) and Mia (aged 2). Shortly after his funeral, Aerosmith announces that they are permanently disbanding. Tyler was only 32 years old.

RIP Steven Tyler
March 26th, 1948 - January 24th, 1981​

February 9th - Genesis release the album Face Value, whose opening track “In the Air Tonight” popularizes the gated reverb drum sound that would become ubiquitous for the next ten years. The song will become arguably the band’s biggest hit.

February 12th - Rush release the highly regarded album Moving Pictures which eventually becomes the band's sixth platinum album.

February 14th - British punk/new romantic band Generation X hits it big with their song “Dancing with Myself”. With his photogenic good looks, lead singer Billy Idol becomes a punk rock heartthrob.

February 25th - The 23rd Annual Grammy Awards are presented in New York, hosted by Paul Simon. Pink Floyd won album of the year for The Wall.

March 14th - Suffering from bleeding ulcers, Eric Clapton is admitted to United Hospital in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. Clapton's 60-city tour of the US is canceled, and he remains in hospital for a month. He does, thankfully, ultimately survive the ordeal.

March 27th - Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a dove at a CBS record label gathering in Los Angeles.

April 1st - The Go-Go's sign to IRS Records.

April 11th - Eddie Van Halen marries actress Valerie Bertinelli.

April 12th - Soviet orchestral conductor Maxim Shostakovich (son of Dmitri) defects while on tour in West Germany with his son. This serves as a minor diplomatic coup for the West during the escalating Cold War.

May - Rolling Stone Magazine declares that “New Wave” has taken over popular music on both sides of the Atlantic. Groups like Blondie, Joy Division, The Talking Heads, and others are helping make pop “artsy” and “weird” again. Others call the genre “refreshing”. In any event, the heady days of progressive and hard rock excess appear to be coming to an end.

May 14th - Diana Ross signs a $20,000,000 deal - the most lucrative recording contract in history at that time - to re-sign with her label, Motown Records. She had originally been considering defecting to RCA or EMI, but Motown managed to convince her to stay.

June 4th - The Hype (Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr.) appears on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, their first U.S. television appearance.

June 6th - Kerrang! magazine publishes its first issue. Angus Young and Bon Scott of AC/DC are on the cover.

June 30th - Rock N Roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis is rushed to hospital in Memphis for emergency surgery for a tear in his stomach. Tragically, he dies shortly afterward from complications. He was forty-five years old. Pall-bearers at his funeral include Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.

RIP Jerry Lee Lewis
September 29th, 1935 - June 30th, 1981​

July 13th - Duran Duran released the single "Girls on Film". Accompanied by a highly controversial music video that is censored for airplay on MTV and banned by BBC. The song becomes the band's first big hit, eventually peaking at number 5 on the UK Singles Chart during an 11-week chart run.

August 1st - MTV broadcasts for the first time on cable television in the United States, playing music videos 24 hours a day. First to air is "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.

August 23rd - The Violent Femmes are discovered by members of The Pretenders busking outside a Milwaukee venue and are invited to play a 10-minute acoustic set as a second opening act in the Pretenders' show that night.

September 5th - Soft Cell tops the UK Singles Chart with "Tainted Love". The song also tops the chart the following week and becomes the second best selling single in the UK in 1981.

September 19th - Simon & Garfunkel perform a free reunion concert in New York City's Central Park attended by over 500,000 fans.

September 25th - The Rolling Stones open their US tour in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

September 26th - Iron Maiden hires Geordie lead singer Brian Johnson to replace Paul Di'Anno.

October 31st - Punk band Fear makes a memorable appearance on Saturday Night Live. A group of fans storm the stage and damage TV equipment while moshing, resulting in the show cutting to commercial.

December 31st - The tenth annual New Year's Rockin' Eve special airs on ABC, with appearances by Four Tops, Rick Springfield, Barry Manilow, Alabama and Rick James.

Throughout - Synthpop enjoys mainstream popularity in the UK, with groups such as Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and The Human League releasing hit singles and albums. The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" become the year's best selling singles in the UK.

1981 in Film - The Year’s Biggest & Most Memorable​

Raiders of the Lost Ark - Action-adventure. Lucasfilm/Paramount Pictures. Directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman.

Set in 1936, the film stars Tom Sellek as Indiana Jones, a globetrotting archaeologist vying with Nazi German forces to recover the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, which is said to have the power to make an army invincible. Teaming up with his tough former romantic interest Marion Ravenwood (Barbara Hershey), Jones races to stop rival archaeologist René Belloq (René Auberjonois) from guiding the Nazis to the Ark and its power.

Lucas originally conceived of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the early 1970s as The Adventures of Indiana Smith. (Indiana being named after Lucas’ dog, also the inspiration for Chewbacca.) Seeking to modernize the serial adventure films of the early 20th century, he developed the idea further with Kaufman, who suggested the Ark as the film's goal. Kaufman, however, was committed to directing the Clint Eastwood-led western The Outlaw Josey Wales at the time and was thus unavailable to direct. Lucas shelved the project in order to focus on making Star Wars. But following that film’s success, and with The Empire Strikes Back already well in development, Lucas felt that the iron was hot for him to return to his Adventures of Indiana Smith project. He brought it to his friend, Steven Spielberg.

At the time, Spielberg was in high-demand in Hollywood.

After directing blockbuster after blockbuster (1975’s Jaws; 1978’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind; and 1979’s Superman), Spielberg had his eyes set on directing a James Bond picture. That would ultimately fall through, however, leaving him free to direct Raiders of the Lost Ark and later, Return of the Jedi (though there were plenty of political issues that had to be worked through for these, due to Spielberg’s membership in the DGA and Lucasfilm not being a union shop). Together with Spielberg acolyte Kasdan, Spielberg and Lucas reworked elements of the story until they were just right.

The plot, which originally involved a trip to Nepal, a cart chase through a mineshaft, and a nightclub in Shanghai (elements which would later be recycled for a subsequent film), was simplified. The protagonist’s surname was changed from “Smith” (which Spielberg hated) to “Jones”. The love triangle between Jones, Ravenwood, and Belloq was simplified to a mutual attraction between the first two, with Belloq’s attraction for Marion being made one-sided. Most importantly, with the early stages of the “So Have I” movement beginning to work their way through Hollywood, Spielberg called Lucas out on a particularly problematic element that Lucas had wanted to include.

At some point in the process of writing the script, the decision was made for Jones, an anti-hero, archaeologist and college professor, to have had a previous relationship with Marion Ravenwood.

Originally, Lucas called for Marion to have been only eleven years old at the time of their past relationship, with Jones having been a young adult (perhaps twice her age) at the time. Lucas thought that this could make for an interesting dynamic - with Jones originally not being interested in a girl he saw as a child (which, of course, she was), only to be attracted to her once they met again in the film’s present of 1936. This idea made Spielberg immensely uncomfortable, however. He told Lucas point blank that quote, “We had better make them the same age, George.” Lucas, seeing that his idea could potentially make moviegoers uncomfortable as well, and seeing Spielberg’s point, agreed. The script was amended so that Marion and Indiana Jones had been classmates in college.

The main character’s personality and characterization also underwent significant reform under Spielberg’s direction. Lucas originally conceived of Indiana Jones as a “playboy” and an “anti-hero” driven primarily by profit and other selfish motives. His heroism was, in a sense, almost incidental. In retrospect, Lucas would later admit, he wanted a change of pace from the selfless, heroic nature of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

Spielberg worried that it would be difficult to get general, movie-going audiences to root for Jones if he was too self-interested, even if the villains were literal Nazis. Spielberg, as a Jewish man becoming increasingly aware of and interested in his heritage (his father claimed to have lost “between fifteen and twenty” relatives in the Holocaust), wanted Jones to become a “symbol for America” in the 1930s.

Jones begins the film only interested in profit, and in delivering the artifacts he finds to museums (representing America’s isolationism and cynical trade relationship with Nazi Germany and other fascist states during the 1920s and 30s). But later, as he comes to understand what the Ark (a symbol of Biblical, supernatural power from the Old Testament) might mean if it falls into the hands of the Nazis, he is roused to defeat them, just as America was during World War II. This arc (self-interest to noble interventionism), Spielberg believed, could be reminiscent of Rick Blaine’s, the hero of the 1942 classic Casablanca. Lucas, seeing the value in telling such a story (especially in light of the once-again escalating Cold War and a general feeling of “malaise” in American culture at the dawn of the 1980s), agreed to Spielberg’s suggestions. He worked with Kasdan to trim and edit the script to fit them in.

Critics would later praise the film as a sort of thinly-disguised “Jewish revenge fantasy” against the Nazis, allowing catharsis for Jewish viewers to see a “tough, no nonsense American action hero” who punches Nazis, blows up their war machine, and disproves their notions of superiority on the big screen. Spielberg’s interpretation of the character would be added to the Jewish-American tradition of creating “Star-spangled fascist-bashers' ' alongside Superman and Captain America.

With the script finally complete, casting was also a critical step in the film’s development, of course. Lucas wanted a relatively unknown actor, willing to commit to a trilogy of films, to play Indiana Jones (as he had with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher for Star Wars). Those considered for the role included Bill Murray, Nick Nolte, Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Tim Matheson, Nick Mancuso, Peter Coyote, Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, John Shea, Sam Elliott, and Harry Hamlin. Casting director Mike Fenton favored Bridges, but Lucas' wife and frequent collaborator Marcia Lucas preferred Tom Selleck.

Selleck - only just beginning to become a household name - was contractually obligated to filming the television series Magnum, P.I. if it were to be made into a full series. Lucas and Spielberg asked the show's studio, CBS, to release him 10 days early from his contract. Realizing Selleck was in demand, CBS greenlit Magnum P.I.. This would have forced him to drop out, leaving the production with no lead actor only weeks before filming. But thankfully for Lucas and Spielberg, The 1980 actors' strike put the show on hiatus for three months, which allowed Selleck to star as Jones. Selleck would later call this series of events a “happy accident” that “launched his career” in film.

For Jones' love interest Marion Ravenwood, Spielberg wanted someone akin to early 20th-century leading female icons like Irene Dunne, Barbara Stanwyck, and Ann Sheridan, who equaled their male counterparts. Lucas wanted Debra Winger, but she was not interested, and Spielberg wanted his girlfriend Amy Irving, but she was unavailable. They also considered Stephanie Zimbalist, Karen Allen, and Sean Young. In the end, they went with Barbara Hershey, who they felt would lend the role a certain gravitas.

Belloq was intended to be a sophisticated villain to counter the "beer-drinking" hero. René Auberjonois was best known at the time as a stage actor in New York. He’d won a number of Tony awards, but had as of yet failed to make a big splash in Hollywood, mostly playing bit parts. He impressed both Lucas and Spielberg with his “French accent” (which was actually based on his own Swiss immigrant father’s) and his personal lineage (his mother was descended from one of Napoleon’s marshals) and knowledge of French aristocracy. This element (being associated with Napoleonic France) was added to Belloq’s backstory in the final film as a nod to this. The film also starred Egyptian actor and activist Mahmoud Kabil as Sallah, an Egyptian excavator and old acquaintance of Jones; Denholm Elliott as Marcus Brody, a museum curator and Jones’ loyal friend; and Roy Scheider (who had previously worked with Spielberg on Jaws) as Nazi officer Colonel Dietrich, the film’s true villain.

Above: Barbara Hershey (left); René Auberjonois (center); and Roy Scheider (right); Marion Ravenwood; René Belloq; and Colonel Dietrich, respectively.​

Raiders of the Lost Ark wrapped production in June 1980, with an intended release date of the following summer. The context of the film’s release would only add to how impressive its eventual success truly was.

By the summer of 1981, the film industry had been in decline for over a year. This was the result of few box office successes, rising film production costs, diminishing audiences, and increasing ticket prices. The season was predicted to be down 10% or $250 million against the previous year. Over 60 films were scheduled for release - more than the previous year - by studios eager to make the next blockbuster. This increased competition to attract audiences, mainly those aged 12 to 24, at the most profitable time of the year.

The superhero film Superman II (helmed by Richard Donner) was expected to dominate the season, and based on industry experts and audience polling, films like History of the World, Part I (Fox), the latest James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (United Artists), and The Great Muppet Caper (Disney), were also expected to perform well. Conversely, audience polling by CinemaScore showed little awareness or anticipation for Raiders until nationwide previews a week before its release. The New York Times reported that Paramount (the studio backing Raiders) had provided theater owners with a more beneficial deal than usual to ensure Raiders was screened in the best theaters and locations.

Any and all doubts about the film’s chances were swiftly put to rest, however.

Raiders of the Lost Ark would eventually earn $213 million against a budget of $20 million, making it, by far, the highest-grossing film of 1981. It made more than twice the amount made by its closest competitor, Superman II (which made just under $105 million), and was, to boot, greeted with universal acclaim from critics and audiences alike. Especially praised were Spielberg’s direction, the fabulous practical effects, visual aesthetic, and the performances by the cast. Various elements of Selleck’s character - the fedora hat, the whip, and of course, John Williams’ theme - became iconic in cinematic history.

Roger Ebert, for instance, called the film “a series of breathless and incredible adventures inspired by and celebrating childhood stories told in comic books and movies.” He concluded that the film “was successful in its singular goal of entertaining, creating an adventure epic in the vein of Star Wars, the James Bond films, and Superman. Two thumbs way up.”

In short, it succeeded in virtually every aspect of making a fun, exciting cinematic experience.

Given the film’s success, it was only a matter of time before Paramount began pressing Lucas and Spielberg for a sequel. For the time being, Lucas remained aloof, knowing that he and Spielberg would need to focus their full attention on Return of the Jedi. But another Indiana Jones film - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death - would eventually be released, in 1984.

…​

Book of the Dead - Supernatural horror. Independent/New Line Cinema. Written and directed by Sam Raimi (in his feature film directorial debut). The film stars Raimi’s childhood friend Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManincor, Betsy Baker and Theresa Tilly. The story focuses on five college students vacationing in an isolated cabin in a remote wooded area. They find an audio tape featuring a translation of the so-called Necronomicon (the titular “Book of the Dead”) that, when played, releases a legion of demons and spirits; four members of the group then suffer from demonic possession. This forces the fifth member, Ash Williams (Campbell), to survive an onslaught of increasingly gory mayhem. Raimi, producer Robert G. Tapert, Campbell, and their friends produced the short film Within the Woods as a proof of concept to build the interest of potential investors, which secured $90,000 to begin work on Book of the Dead.

The film’s title and concept were inspired by Raimi’s interest in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft; especially the stories around one of Lovecraft’s most popular creations - the Necronomicon. Its eventual success would help generate interest in the author and his work among fans of the film and horror fans in general. In this way Book of the Dead can be seen in retrospect as a trend-setter for adaptations of Lovecraft’s work that would continue throughout the 1980s, most notably with Stanley Kubrick’s The Colour Out of Space the following year (1982) and later, Re-Animator (1985).

Principal photography for Book of the Dead took place on location in a remote cabin located in Morristown, Tennessee. It was a difficult filming process that proved to be extremely uncomfortable for the cast and crew. The film's extensive prosthetic makeup effects and stop-motion animations were created by artist Tom Sullivan and were seen as “instrumental” in the film’s success. Once completed, Book of the Dead attracted the interest of producer Irvin Shapiro, who helped screen the film at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. Horror author Stephen King gave a rave review of the film, which resulted in New Line Cinema acquiring its distribution rights, helping it be seen by a much wider audience than it probably would have otherwise.

Book of the Dead grossed $2.4 million in the United States and between $2.7 and $29.4 million worldwide, making it, proportionally, one of, if not the most profitable films of all time. Both initial and subsequent critical reception were universally positive. And in the years since its release, the film’s legacy has only grown, having developed a reputation as one of the most significant “cult” films ever made, possessing a huge influence on the film industry and horror films in particular.

Thanks in no small part to the film’s unprecedented success, Raimi and Campbell were immediately approached by New Line Cinema (with further financial backing from Warner Bros., on the recommendation of King) about the possibility of making a sequel. The concept had been discussed while filming Book of the Dead. Irvin Shaprio, the film's publicist, pushed Raimi to devise a premise for such a film. Working with screenwriter Sheldon Lettich and Campbell, Raimi settled on a story in which Ash was sucked through a time portal to the Middle Ages, where he would encounter more deadites. Thanks to King’s urging, New Line and Warner Bros. bought the script. Production on the sequel began in May 1984.

It would ultimately be released in April 1985 as The Medieval Dead. More on that soon.

Above: An early promotional poster for Book of the Dead (left); “King of B-Movies”, Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams (right).

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King Arthur - Medieval romance. Paramount Pictures. Written and directed by John Boorman.

Boorman had planned a film adaptation of the King Arthur legend as early as 1969, but when submitting the three-hour script written with Rospo Pallenberg to United Artists at the time, they rejected it, deeming it too costly. They offered him J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (to which they owned the rights) instead. Boorman was allowed to shop the script elsewhere, but no studio would commit to it. That is, until the success of Ridley Scott’s Tristan and Isolde for Paramount in 1980. Something of a sleeper hit the year before, Tristan and Isolde gave Paramount the confidence in the concept they needed to greenlight King Arthur. Boorman got his funding and went to work to try and make movie magic once again.

The screenplay for King Arthur is primarily an adaptation of Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur. It sought to recontextualize the Arthurian legends as an allegory of the cycle of birth, life, decay, and restoration, by stripping the text of “decorative or insignificant details”, according to Boorman. Arthur is presented as the “Wounded King” whose realm becomes a wasteland to be reborn thanks to the Holy Grail, and may be compared to the Fisher (or Sinner) King, whose land also became a wasteland, and was also healed by Sir Perceval.

“The film has to do with mythical truth, not historical truth,” Boorman remarked to a journalist during filming. The Christian symbolism revolves around the Grail, perhaps most strongly in the baptismal imagery of Perceval finally achieving the Grail quest. “That's what my story is about: the coming of Christian man and the disappearance of the old religions which are represented by Merlin. The forces of superstition and magic are swallowed up into the unconscious.”

Boorman cast (at the time) largely unknown actors for several of the principal roles. These included Arthur (Irish actor Liam Neeson, whom Boorman had seen in a production of Of Mice and Men); Merlin (English Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart); and Guinevere (Cheri Lunghi). In fact, the only “major star” he cast for the project was Helen Mirren in the role of Morgan Le Fey.

King Arthur was the number one film during its opening weekend of April 10th-12th, 1981, eventually earning nearly $35 million in the United States alone against a budget of just under $11 million. Though not the runaway blockbuster that Paramount had been hoping for, the film could, again be considered a modest commercial success.

Though audiences seemed to generally enjoy the film, critics were divided in their response. Roger Ebert called it simultaneously, “a wondrous vision” and “a mess”. To speak broadly, critics praised the film’s direction, sets, and aesthetic, which Ebert admitted were “brilliant to look at”, as well as some of the performances, especially that of Patrick Stewart as the conniving Merlin. But they panned the script and Boorman’s poor direction. The consensus among critics appeared to be that Boorman wrote these characters not as heroes or even sympathetic human beings, but rather as “giants of myth come to life”. This made some of their dialogue feel stilted, almost robotic. Boorman shot back that this was the entire point. The story was a myth put to film, after all. But to each their own.

Today, the film is generally seen by most cinephiles as okay to great, depending on your tastes.

…​

An American Werewolf in London - Comedy/Horror. Universal Pictures. Written and directed by John Landis. An international co-production of the United Kingdom and the United States, the film stars David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne and John Woodvine. The title is a portmanteau between two classic films - An American in Paris and Werewolf of London. The plot follows two American backpackers, David and Jack, who are attacked by a werewolf while traveling in England, causing David to become a werewolf under the next full moon.

Landis wrote the first draft of the film’s screenplay in 1969 and shelved it for over a decade. Prospective financiers believed that Landis' script was too frightening to be comedy and too humorous to be horror, leading most to pass on it.

After achieving success in Hollywood with the comedies The Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers, however, Landis was able to secure financing from PolyGram Pictures to produce the film.

An American Werewolf in London was released in the US by Universal Pictures on August 21st, 1981. It was a critical and commercial success, winning the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup. Since its release, it has become a cult classic, and mandatory viewing for any and all fans of “classic movie monsters”. It also proved as The Medieval Dead and Re-Animator would in 1985, that horror and comedy actually worked really well as a fusion genre.

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Time Bandits - British adventure/fantasy. HandMade Films. Co-written, produced, and directed by Terry Gilliam. Starring Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan and David Warner. The film tells the story of a young boy taken on an adventure through time with a band of thieves who plunder treasure from various points in history.

After Gilliam (of Monty Python fame) failed to find financial backing for his surrealist adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 - variously titled: 1984 ½; The Ministry; and even Brazil, he then decided that it might be easier, in the current state of the film industry, to make a family-friendly film instead. Co-written by fellow Python Michael Palin and financed by ex-Beatle George Harrison’s company HandMade films, Time Bandits was filmed in England, Wales, and Morocco on a budget of $5 million.

Released on July 2nd, 1981 in the UK and November 6th, 1981 in the US, the film debuted at number one at the box office in both countries and was met with positive reviews by critics. By the end of its run in theaters, Time Bandits would earn $36 million, giving Gilliam the footing he needed to make what would ultimately become The Ministry.

…​

For Your Eyes Only - 007 Spy thriller. United Artists. Directed by John Glen (who had previously worked on the Bond series as an editor). Written by Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson, from the short story by Ian Fleming. Though the downturn in the film industry meant that the budget for For Your Eyes Only would be slightly lower than previous outings in the franchise (still much higher than the average film at the time at nearly $30 million), director Glen decided to turn this into an asset, rather than a liability. As his predecessors had with Moonraker, the decision was made to keep For Your Eyes Only as a grounded, realistic thriller, rather than a campy romp.

Julian Glover returns for his fifth film as MI6 agent James Bond/007. The plot begins in earnest with the murder of the Havelocks, a British couple living in Jamaica who have refused to sell their estate to Smekhov Ilyich (Walter Matthau), a former KGB officer who is the chief of counterintelligence for the Cuban Secret Service under Fidel Castro. They are killed by two Cuban hitmen at the direction of their leader, Major Gonzales (Danny Trejo - in his film debut); all three work for Ilyich. The Havelocks turn out to be close friends of M (Robert Brown - Bernard Lee was set to return for his twelfth outing as M, but was tragically diagnosed with stomach cancer and could not accept the part. He died on January 16th, 1981. For Your Eyes Only is dedicated to his memory), who served as the groom's best man during their wedding in 1946 (just after World War II, in which they’d served together).

M subsequently gives Bond a voluntary assignment, unconnected to sanctioned Secret Service duties; to travel to Vermont via Canada, find Ilyich at his rented estate at Echo Lake and assassinate him as a warning to future criminals who might think to target British citizens. At first, Bond is conflicted about taking the assignment, given its clandestine nature. Upon reflecting on his experiences during the last film, however, Bond reluctantly agrees.

When Bond arrives on the scene, he finds the Havelocks' daughter, Judy (Kim Basinger), who intends to carry out her own mission of revenge with a bow and arrow. She and Bond agree to work together and also develop a mutual attraction. While scoping out Ilyich’s estate, they learn that he purchased the home in Vermont to try and spy on the nearby American disease research facility in Stovington, with the hopes of developing a biological weapon for the Soviet Union to use in the Cold War.

In the film’s climax, Judy kills Ilyich by shooting him in the back with an arrow from 100 meters away at the exact moment that he dives into a lake. A shoot-out then occurs between Bond and Gonzales and the two Cuban gunmen. Bond kills all of them and returns to Canada with Judy, who has been wounded during the gunfight.

Above: Kim Basinger, the American actress who starred as Judy Havelock in For Your Eyes Only. Already a rising star thanks to a semi-nude shoot for Playboy magazine in 1981, Basinger’s role in the film shot her into superstardom and made her one of the decade’s most enduring sex symbols.

For Your Eyes Only turned out to be something of a disappointment for United Artists. Though the film made a profit (just over $100 million against a budget of around $30 million), this was far less than the studio had hoped for. Enthusiasm amongst both fans of the franchise and general audiences was tepid at best and critical reviews were decidedly mixed.

Though as usual, Glover put in a “fine” performance as 007, less favorably received were the performances of the rest of the cast and the script. Critics felt that although Matthau in particular was a “fabulously talented” actor, in both comedic and more serious roles, he felt “miscast” as Ilyich. As written in the script, the villain’s demeanor seems to vacillate wildly between menacing and cowardly in a way that many critics found “downright silly”. While critics tended to be kind to Kim Basinger, “she proves she’s more than just a pretty face”, they complained that her character “lacked depth”. Her revenge-oriented characterization struck critics as one-note and rather boring. Indeed, the entire film attracted complaints about it being underdeveloped and overwrought. And too long. At nearly 140 minutes, the film seemed to drag, especially because much of the second act - devoted to Bond and Judy’s love story - lacked “any discernible chemistry” between Glover and Basinger. While Moonraker worked as a grounded, almost realistic Cold War espionage thriller, to many fans of the series, For Your Eyes Only hardly felt like a Bond film at all.

Ultimately, For Your Eyes Only would mark Glover’s final appearance in the franchise. Frustrated by what he saw as a “lack of direction” to the series, and no longer under contract, Glover quietly announced that he would not be returning for the next film. United Artists decided to go back to the drawing board.

…​

On Golden Pond - Family drama. IPC Films/Universal. Directed by Mark Rydell from a screenplay written by Ernest Thompson, adapted from his 1979 play of the same name. It stars Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda (in his final theatrical film), Jane Fonda, Doug McKeon, Dabney Coleman and William Lanteau. In the film, Norman (Henry Fonda), a crusty, retired professor grappling with many effects of aging, is estranged from his daughter, Chelsea (Jane Fonda). At their summer home on Golden Pond, Norman and his wife Ethel (Katharine Hepburn) agree to care for Billy, the son of Chelsea's new boyfriend, and an unexpected relationship blooms.

A classic in just about every sense of the word, On Golden Pond would gross more than $120 million on a budget of just $15 million, making it one of the biggest hits of 1981. It was also well-received critically, especially for its performances and script. The father-daughter dynamic of stars Henry and Jane Fonda was seen as “very natural”, and Katherine Hepburn “shined”, according to critics.

(More Movies to Come in a Subsequent Update!)

The 54th Academy Awards - March 29th, 1982 - Hosted by Johnny Carson

Best Picture: Chariots of Fire; Produced by David Puttnam
Best Director: Warren Beatty for Reds
Best Actor: Henry Fonda as Norman Thayer, Jr. in On Golden Pond
Best Actress: Katherine Hepburn as Ethel Thayer in On Golden Pond
Best Supporting Actor: Howard E. Rollins, Jr. as Coalhouse Walker for Ragtime
Best Supporting Actress: Jane Fonda as Chelsea Thayer Wayne in On Golden Pond
Best Original Screenplay: Colin Welland for Chariots of Fire
Best Adapted Screenplay: Ernest Thompson based on his play On Golden Pond

News in TV & Film Throughout the Year​

February 14th - Funky 4 + 1 performed "That's the Joint" on NBC's Saturday Night Live. This made them the first hip hop act to perform on primetime television. Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry hosted (and performed on) this episode, shortly after the release of "Rapture", which later hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart as the first number-one song to feature rap vocals.

February 20th - Comedian Andy Kaufman disrupted sketches and started a brawl while broadcasting during ABC's sketch series Fridays, an occurrence that was later disclosed to have been entirely staged.

February 27th - The made-for-television film The Munsters' Revenge was broadcast on NBC. Based on the 1964 -1966 sitcom The Munsters, the film reunited original cast members Fred Gwynne, Yvonne De Carlo, and Al Lewis. This was the last production to be made with most of the original actors from the 1960s TV series.

March 17th - Norman Fell and Audra Lindley made their final appearances as Stanley and Helen Roper on Three's Company.

March 30th - An assassination attempt against President Robert F. Kennedy in Washington, DC, in which White House Communications Director was killed and several others wounded, interrupted programming on the three major networks and CNN at 2:42 pm. Millions of viewers worldwide witnessed footage of the shooting and the chaos that followed. ABC News was flooded with unconfirmed reports, which pestered the chief anchor Frank Reynolds, one of which falsely stated that the President had himself been hit. This was also reported by CBS News and ABC News. Coverage of the assassination attempt continued for hours on the big three networks, and for two days on CNN. As a result, the Academy Awards were postponed for a day.

April 21st - "Weird Al" Yankovic made his first television appearance on NBC's The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder.

May 1st - The season-four finale of Dallas, entitled "The Ewing Affair", aired on CBS.

May 15th - The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island, the third and final made-for-television film that reunited the cast of the 1964 - 1967 sitcom Gilligan's Island, aired on NBC.

June 8th - Marvin Davis acquires 20th Century Fox for $720 million.

June 24th - The series finale of Charlie's Angels aired on ABC.

September 26th - Elvira's Movie Macabre, hosted by Cassandra Peterson AKA “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark”, aired for the first time on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles.

September 28th - WRGB in Schenectady, New York, NBC's first-ever television affiliate, ended its 42-year relationship with the network (dating back to its days as experimental station W2XB) and swapped affiliations with CBS affiliate WAST, which changed its call letters to the current WNYT to mark the new affiliation.

October 30th - John Carpenter's 1978 horror film Halloween made its broadcast network television premiere on NBC (the same day that its first sequel was released in theaters and the day before star Christopher Lee guest-hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live). To fill the two-hour time slot, Carpenter filmed 12 minutes of additional material during the production of Halloween II. The newly filmed scenes include Dr. Loomis at a hospital board review of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis talking to a then-6-year-old Michael at Smith's Grove, telling him, "You've fooled them, haven't you, Michael? But not me." Another extra scene featured Dr. Loomis at Smith's Grove examining Michael's abandoned cell after his escape and seeing the word "Sister" scratched into the door. Finally, a scene was added in which Lynda comes over to Laurie's house to borrow a silk blouse before Laurie leaves to babysit, just as Annie telephones asking to borrow the same blouse. The new scene had Laurie's hair hidden by a towel, since Jamie Lee Curtis was by then wearing a much shorter hairstyle than she had worn in 1978.

November 8th - ESPN televised its first live flag-to-flag NASCAR race, the Atlanta Journal 500, which was won by Richard Petty.

November 16th - Luke and Laura's wedding on the ABC soap opera General Hospital became one of the most-watched weddings in American television history, second only to the wedding of Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Amanda Knatchbull.

November 25th - Norman Lear and his partner Jerry Perenchio agree to buy Avco Embassy for $25 million.

November 29th - Actress Natalie Wood narrowly avoids drowning after a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island in California.

December 24th - HBO began broadcasting 24 hours a day.

December 25th - Chuck Woolery hosted his last episode of the NBC game show Wheel of Fortune, quitting after a salary dispute with series producer and creator Merv Griffin. The next Monday, December 28, Pat Sajak began hosting.

1981 in Sport​

Super Bowl XV - The Oakland Raiders (AFC), led by QB Jim Plunkett as MVP, defeat the Philadelphia Eagles (NFC) - 35 - 17.

World Series - Due to a 51-day strike over free agent compensation, the MLB season is split into two halves. Ultimately, the World Series sees NL champions the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the AL champions the New York Yankees. The Yankees clinched a narrow victory in game 7 at Yankee Stadium to win the series for New York. Outfielder Dave Winfield is declared series MVP.

NBA Finals - Boston Celtics won 4 games to 2 over the Houston Rockets.

The Stanley Cup - New York Islanders sweep the Minnesota North Stars.

1981 in Professional Wrestling​

June 20th - At the Spectrum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Don Muraco pinned Pedro Morales to become the new WWF Intercontinental Champion.

November 23rd - At New York's Madison Square Garden in a Texas Death Match, Pedro Morales regained the WWF Intercontinental Championship by pinning Don Muraco.

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year - Lech Wałęsa

Leader of the Polish Solidarity trade union and architect of the Gdańsk Agreement until his arrest by the communist authorities and the imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: More Movies from 1981!​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Pop Culture Update - More of Blue Skies at the Movies - 1981

Above: Promotional posters for Das Boot; Clash of the Titans; and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, three “cult classics” that were first released in 1981.

Das Boot - American/West German war film. Neue Constantin Film. Written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Robert Redford, Herbert Grönemeyer and Klaus Wennemann. An adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim's 1973 German novel based on his experiences aboard German submarine U-96, the film is set during World War II and follows U-96 and her crew, as they set out on a hazardous patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.

During production, Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, the captain of the real U-96 during Buchheim's 1941 patrol and one of Germany's top U-boat “aces” during the war, and Hans-Joachim Krug, former first officer on U-219, served as consultants. One of Petersen's goals was to guide the audience through “a journey to the edge of the mind” (the film's German tagline Eine Reise ans Ende des Verstandes), showing “what war is all about”.

Produced on a budget of DM (Deutschmark) 32 million (equivalent to $18.5 million), this price tag was among the highest in the history of German cinema. The returns at the box office, however, more than made up for the hefty price tag. The film was picked up by Columbia Pictures for distribution in the United States (both the original German version with English subtitles and an English-dub, lead actor Robert Redford delivered his own lines in both versions). The film would gross $85 million internationally, and be nominated for six Academy Awards, including best director and best adapted screenplay.

…​

Clash of the Titans - Fantasy adventure. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Directed by Desmond Davis and written by Beverley Cross, loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus. Starring Mel Gibson, Judi Bowker, Burgess Meredith, Maggie Smith and Laurence Olivier, the film features the final work of stop-motion visual effects artist Ray Harryhausen. Co-produced between the United States and United Kingdom, it was theatrically released on June 12th, 1981 and grossed $41 million at the North American box office on a budget of $15 million, making it the eleventh-highest grossing film of the year.

Critics largely praised the film (Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel gave it 3 and a half stars out of 4), calling it an “old-fashioned tale, a grand and glorious romantic adventure, filled with brave heroes, beautiful heroines, fearsome monsters, and awe-inspiring duels to the death. It is a lot of fun.”

The film’s star, 24 year old Australian actor Mel Gibson had only been featured in one prior leading role, in Peter Weir’s World War I drama Gallipoli (1981). Sensing that Gibson (with his good looks and impressive physique) might be a star in the making, MGM scooped him up for a multi-film contract.

Clash of the Titans also represented the next step in the popular boom of sword & sorcery/fantasy films in the 1980s. Arguably, the trend began the year before with Tristan & Isolde for Paramount, which launched that studio’s “Arthurian myth series”. 1981’s King Arthur served as the second entry in that series, and was even more successful than the first from a box office standpoint. Given audiences’ desire for escapism (and the popularity of the nerd subculture, including games like Dungeons & Dragons), fantasy films continued to see success in cinemas.

The concept of a “cinematic universe” - a series of connected films all set in the same continuity or “shared universe” - was still in its infancy at the time. Arguably, Universal Pictures first pioneered the concept in the 1930s and 40s with their horror films about the “classic movie monsters” - Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible man, etc. These characters could appear in one another’s films and interact, aiding or hindering the protagonists as needed (even if those protagonists happened to be Abbott and Costello).

Taking inspiration from Paramount, MGM decided to test out the concept for themselves. They would use Clash of the Titans to “test launch” their own cinematic universe based on Greek Mythology. A second film in the franchise, based upon the ever-popular Hercules, was slated for production in late 1981-1982, with a goal for a summer release in 1983. The first step was to have a script written, then to choose a director and cast a leading man. For the last of these, the studio turned to Lou Ferrigno, the former professional bodybuilder and star of The Incredible Hulk television series. This, if executed well, could be Ferrigno’s big break in film.

…​

Escape from New York - Science fiction/Action. AVCO Embassy Pictures. Co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter. starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau and Harry Dean Stanton.

The film's storyline, set in the near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by anti-government insurgents who deliberately crash it into the walled borough. Ex-soldier and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell) is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the President of the United States, after which, if successful, he will be pardoned.

​

Carpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to a number of social issues including: the assassination of President George Romney; the Cambodian Conflict; the Hoover Affair; and most notably, the near financial collapse and dissolution of New York City. After the success of Halloween (1978), Carpenter had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Louis, Missouri, on an estimated budget of about $6 million. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had previously collaborated with Carpenter, portraying Michael Myers in Halloween.

Released in the United States on July 10th, 1981, the film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing more than $25.2 million at the box office. The film was nominated for four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction.

The film also helped Kurt Russell finally begin to shed the “squeaky clean” image he was saddled with as a former child star who spent almost his entire career up to that point with Walt Disney Productions, appearing in toothless, bland family-friendly comedies. Russell engaged in a strict diet and training regimen to “get in shape” for the role. The film’s popularity ensured that Russell would be a go-to star for action films in the years to come.

…​

Arthur - Romantic comedy. Orion Pictures/Warner Bros. Written and directed by Steve Gordon. The film stars John Belushi as Arthur Bach, a drunken New York City millionaire who is on the brink of an arranged marriage to a wealthy heiress - Susan Johnson (Jill Eikenberry) but ends up falling for a common working-class girl from Queens - Linda Marolla (Liza Minneli). It would be the sole film directed by Gordon, who tragically died in 1982 of a heart attack at age 44.

The film received critical acclaim - particularly the performances of Belushi and Minneli, who were said to have “excellent chemistry and comedic timing”. Though it underperformed at the box office per Warner Bros. expectations (probably due to a muddled and ill-conceived marketing campaign), its returns improved throughout the course of its run thanks to strong word of mouth. It would end up raking in just over $100 million at the box office against a budget of just $10 million, making it the fourth-highest grossing film of 1981 and one of the most profitable.

… ​

Cheech & Chong Join the Army - War comedy. Columbia Pictures. Directed by Ivan Reitman. Starring Cheech Martin and Tommy Chong, as well as numerous actors including John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn, Judge Reinhold, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield, and Bill Paxton, who appear in their very first on-screen roles. Reitman wrote the film with Len Blum and Dan Goldberg, the latter of whom also served as producer alongside Reitman. Cheech & Chong wanted “complete creative control”, but eventually learned to collaborate successfully with Reitman. A summary of the film’s plot follows:

In the course of one day, Los Angeles cab driver (and stoner) Cheech loses his job, his apartment, his car, and his girlfriend Anita (Roberta Leighton), who has grown tired of his immaturity. Realizing his limited prospects, he decides to join the Army and persuades best friend Chong, a vocational ESL teacher, to join as well. The two visit a recruiting office and are soon sent off to basic training.

Upon arrival, they meet their fellow recruits and their drill sergeant, Sergeant Hulka (Warren Oates). Following in-processing, the recruits introduce themselves and explain their reasons for enlisting. One of them, the overweight Dewey "Ox" Oxberger (John Candy), wants to slim down and be respected by his fellow trainees and women in general. Cheech irritates Hulka with his slacker attitude, and he and Chong become romantically involved with MPs Louise Cooper (Sean Young) and Stella Hansen (P.J. Soles).

As graduation approaches, Hulka is injured when the haughty and dull-witted Captain Stillman, the recruit company's commanding officer, orders a mortar crew to fire without first setting target coordinates. Later, members of Hulka's platoon sneak off base and visit a mud wrestling bar, where Cheech persuades Ox to compete with a group of women. When MPs and police raid the club, Stella and Louise help Cheech and Chong escape. The rest of the platoon are returned to base, where Stillman reprimands them for being arrested and threatens to report them to the base commander, General Barnicke (Robert J. Wilke), and make them repeat basic training.

Cheech and Chong have sex with Stella and Louise, then return to base. John motivates the disheartened platoon with a speech and begins preparing them for graduation. After a night of practice, they oversleep and wake up an hour late for the ceremony. They rush to the parade ground, where Cheech leads them in an unorthodox but highly coordinated drill display. Impressed upon learning that they completed their training without a drill sergeant, Barnicke assigns them to a secret project he is overseeing in Italy.

Upon arrival in Italy, the platoon is reunited with a recovered Hulka and tasked with guarding the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, an armored personnel carrier disguised as a recreational vehicle. Cheech and Chong steal it to visit Stella and Louise, who are stationed in West Germany. When Stillman finds the vehicle missing, he launches an unauthorized mission to retrieve it, against Hulka's objections.

Stillman inadvertently leads the platoon across the border into Czechoslovakia. Hulka jumps from their truck before the Soviet Army captures it, and sends out a radio distress call that Cheech and Chong hear. Realizing that their platoon is in danger, Cheech, Chong, Stella, and Louise take the EM-50 and infiltrate the Soviet base where the platoon is being held, and rescue them with aid from Hulka.

Upon returning to the US, Cheech, Chong, Louise, Stella, and Hulka are hailed as heroes, and are each awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Hulka retires and opens a restaurant franchise; Cheech, Chong, Ox, Louise, and Stella are featured in various magazines; and Stillman is reassigned to a weather station near Nome, Alaska.

Cheech & Chong Join the Army was well-received by both the duo’s die-hard fans and by general audiences. Though critics were divided on the film, with the consensus generally being that it was “lazy, but amiable”, the film’s box office success largely spoke for itself. Join the Army made $86 million on a budget of just $10 million.

It also represented, in its own small way, a major step forward for the portrayal of interracial relationships on screen in Hollywood. Cheech, who identifies as Chicano, is shown in a romantic relationship with Sean Young’s character, a white woman, while Chong, who is of mixed Chinese and Scottish/Irish ancestry, does the same with P.J. Soles, another white woman. When the initial casting decisions were announced by Reitman and the producers, the studio executives at Columbia privately pressured them to recast Soles and Young. Reitman wouldn’t budge. When Cheech and Chong caught word of the attempted move, they threatened to walk out of the production as well. In the end, Young and Soles would retain their roles, and contrary to the expectations of Hollywood bigwigs, the sky did not in fact fall.

Some conservative groups denounced the film, but as Cheech and Chong pointed out, these groups probably would have anyway.

“We’re a couple of guys of color who make stoner comedies.” Chong later said of the “controversy”. “They’re not exactly our target audience.”

…​

Mad Max; The Road Warrior - Australian post-apocalyptic/dystopian/action. Kennedy Miller Entertainment/Warner Bros. Directed by George Miller. It is the second installment in the Mad Max franchise, with Geoffrey Rush reprising his role as "Mad Max" Rockatansky. The film's tale of a community of settlers moved to defend themselves against a roving band of marauders follows an archetypical “Western” frontier movie motif, as does Max's role as a hardened man whose decision to assist the settlers helps him rediscover his humanity. Filming took place in locations around Broken Hill, in the Outback of New South Wales.

Following the release of Mad Max, director George Miller received a number of offers from Hollywood, including one to direct the Rambo film First Blood, but he instead decided to develop a rock and roll movie, the working title of which was Roxanne. After working together on the novelization of Mad Max, Miller and novelist Terry Hayes teamed up in Los Angeles to write Roxanne, but the script was ultimately shelved. Miller then became intrigued with the idea of returning to the world of Mad Max, as a larger budget would allow him to be more ambitious.

He said: “Making Mad Max was a very unhappy experience for me. I had absolutely no control over the final product”, but “There was strong pressure to make a sequel, and I felt we could do a better job with a second movie.” Inspired by Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the work of Carl Jung, as well as the films of Akira Kurosawa, Miller recruited Hayes to join the production as a scriptwriter.

The film was released on Christmas Eve 1981 to widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise given to Rush's performance, the musical score, cinematography, action sequences, costume design and sparing use of dialogue. It was also a box office success (generating more than $36 million against a budget of just $4.5 million), and the film's post-apocalyptic and punk aesthetics helped popularize the genre in film and fiction writing.

The Road Warrior is widely hailed as both one of the greatest action movies of all time and one of the greatest sequels ever made; fan clubs for the film and “road warrior”-themed activities continue well into the 21st century.

…​

My Bloody Valentine - Canadian Slasher. Canadian Film Development Corporation/Paramount Pictures. Directed by George Mihalka and written by John Beaird. It stars Paul Kelman, Lori Hallier, and Neil Affleck. The plot tells about a group of young adults who decide to throw a Valentine's Day party, only to incur the vengeful wrath of a maniac in mining gear who begins a killing spree.

Conceived and produced entirely over the course of around a year, the film was shot on location in Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia, in the fall of 1980. It was theatrically released on February 11th, 1981 by Paramount Pictures, coinciding with the Valentine's Day holiday. Despite a mixed response from critics (Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel both gave the movie a “thumbs down” and wrote it off as “yet another cheap rip-off of Halloween), and grossing $5.7 million at the box office (barely enough to break even on its nearly $3 million budget), the film has developed a large cult following over the years since its release.

Influential writer/director Quentin Tarantino has called My Bloody Valentine “[his] favorite slasher”, and other subsequent evaluations have been kinder than Ebert and Siskel were. My Bloody Valentine differentiates itself from other slashers of the era (Halloween; Friday the 13th; Prom Night; Black Christmas; etc.) by shifting the setting away from suburbia and the victims away from teenagers or college students and toward a working class mining town. Some see My Bloody Valentine as a commentary on the state of the Canadian and North American economy in the early 1980s.

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The Shining - Horror. Warner Bros. Directed by David Lynch, produced by Richard Kobritz, from a script by Stephen King and Mark Frost, based on King’s novel of the same name. Already covered earlier in this chronicle, The Shining, as directed by auteur David Lynch was surreal and terrifying.

Jack Nance stars as Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a new position as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Debuting child actor Sean Astin plays his young son Danny, who has psychic abilities ("the shining"), which he learns about from head chef Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers). Danny's imaginary friend Tony warns him the hotel is haunted before a winter storm leaves the family snowbound in the Colorado Rockies. Jack's sanity deteriorates under the influence of the hotel and the residents, and Danny and his mother Wendy (Meryl Streep) face mortal danger.

Though not as immediately successful as some of the other early King adaptations (Carrie and Salem’s Lot), The Shining has since undergone a critical reevaluation and is now widely considered one of the greatest and most influential horror films of all time. Lynch’s dark, nigthmare-fueled vision of the Overlook Hotel works perfectly with King’s macabre sensibilities and Mark Frost’s sincere dialogue and the cast’s grounded performances. Quite simply, it’s a horror masterpiece.

King would eventually write a sequel - Doctor Sleep - in 2014, which tells the story of Dan Torrance as an adult, coping with his own past, traumas, and alcoholism. A film adaptation of the sequel, with Sean Astin reprising his role as Dan Torrance, was made by writer/director Mike Flanagan in 2019, opening to rave reviews.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: A Few More Films from 1981​

 

[President_Lincoln]

More Like Carpenter’s original idea for this…​

Halloween II - Slasher/Horror. Universal Pictures. Directed by Rick Rosenthal, in his directorial debut, written and produced by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, and starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Lee, who reprise their roles as Laurie Strode and Dr. Sam Loomis, respectively.

Originally conceived during the filming of the original Halloween back in 1978, the sequel takes place three years after the events of the first. Carpenter and Hill decided during the development of the second Halloween that, in Carpenter’s words, “If we were going to do another one, we wanted it to have a purpose. We didn’t just want to do the first one over again.” They decided that in order to keep the script fresh whilst retaining the same protagonists and antagonist, they would opt to shift the setting and supporting cast.

At the start of the sequel, Laurie Strode is now a college student at Northwestern University and living in a high-rise apartment building in nearby Chicago, Illinois. Still deeply traumatized by the events of the first film, Laurie is hesitant to make new friends at college. She maintains a correspondence with Dr. Loomis, who insists that the gunshot wounds he delivered to Michael at the end of the first film were “definitely fatal”. Laurie is less certain, however, as no body was ever discovered by the police.

As Halloween night approaches, Laurie is invited to a party by her roommate and her roommate’s boyfriend, who hope to introduce Laurie to his friend, Chet. Laurie declines, however; Halloween is when her trauma surrounding the events of the first film is at its worst. For comfort and self-defense, Laurie begins to take boxing lessons from a retired prizefighter and World War II veteran, Mortimer “Mort” Douglas (Lee Van Cleef).

Through her lessons with Douglas, Laurie learns that to defeat your opponent, you must first understand him. To do this, Laurie acquires Loomis’ notes on Michael’s psychology. According to Loomis’ observations, Michael has developed an obsession with Laurie and “preserving her innocence.” He has made her into a surrogate for his older sister, whom he murdered after catching her having sex with her boyfriend in their childhood home. He wants to “possess” Laurie and kill her ritualistically, so that, in a sense, he can “preserve” her, before he loses her, just as he “lost” his sister to sin.

We, the viewers, discover through clever framing and dramatic irony that Michael is back and stalking Laurie, watching her through empty apartment units near hers, and spying on her friends as they come and go to various college parties.

When students at Northwestern begin turning up dead, both Laurie and Loomis (albeit more reluctantly) begin to suspect that Michael may be to blame. The film then makes use of its high-rise setting to set up unique kills, turning the hallways and stairwells of the apartment building into a labyrinth of shadows, where death, in the form of Michael, could be lurking around every corner.

In a shocking twist, Dr. Loomis arrives on the scene only to himself be killed when Michael lures him to the building’s boiler room and kills him with a blast of pressurized steam. This forces Laurie to once again face Michael alone. Unlike the first film, however, this time, Laurie is prepared. Having learned to defend herself (and studied Loomis’ notes on Michael), Laurie lures the killer into a trap of her own. She pretends to call Chet over, acting like she is ready to lose her virginity. When Michael appears to stop her, however, she greets him with a shotgun blast to the chest that sends him through a window to his (apparent) demise more than twenty stories below.

Halloween II was another commercial success for the fledgling franchise, scoring $26 million at the box office against a budget of just $2.5 million. Largely, this was due to Lee being willing to work for a relatively small fee of just $250,000 as a favor to Carpenter, whose work he respected.

On the critical front, however, the film was more of a mixed bag. Unlike the original, which was nearly universally praised for codifying the tropes that defined the modern “slasher” film, the sequel seemed… unnecessary to most critics. Roger Ebert, who gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four praised it for “being more than just a retread of the first”, but questioned “whether this story really needed to be told, for any reason besides lining Universal’s pockets.” Indeed, the script was largely panned, with cheesy lines and a lack of interesting characters besides Laurie herself. Carpenter later admitted to “drinking a lot of beer” while working on the script, and stating that he “felt that there wasn’t much of a story to tell there.” He felt that he’d said all that he needed to about Michael Myers in the first film.

In retrospect, however, the film has undergone something of a critical reevaluation. For one thing, Laurie’s character arc - learning to defend herself and understand the horror in order to confront it - has since come to be seen by some as empowering, especially in the context of a female lead in a horror film in 1981. Rather than the “damsel in distress” of the first film, who needed to be “rescued” by Dr. Loomis, in the sequel, Laurie is self-assured and defeats Michael on her own merits, albeit with the help of a few men (Douglas and Loomis).

The sequel would also (at least for the foreseeable future) wrap up the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. When pressed by Universal for a third film, Carpenter flatly declined unless he was allowed to do something completely different with it, creating more of an anthology. Universal reluctantly agreed.

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 154 - Abracadabra: Breakup of the Bell System & US-Canadian Relations in 1982

Above: The logos for “Ma Bell” - AT&T - pre-1982 (left) and post-1982 (right).​

“I heat up, I can't cool down
You got me spinning
'Round and 'round
'Round and 'round and 'round it goes
Where it stops nobody knows
Every time you call my name
I heat up like a burning flame
Burning flame full of desire
Kiss me baby, let the fire get higher
Abra abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya
Abra abracadabra
Abracadabra” - “Abracadabra” by Steve Miller Band

“The major advances in speed of communication and ability to interact took place more than a century ago. The shift from sailing ships to telegraph was far more radical than that from telephone to email!” - Noam Chomsky

“Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party.” - Robin Williams

In 1877, the “American Bell Telephone Company”, named after Alexander Graham Bell, opened the first telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut. Within a few years, local exchange companies were established in every major city in the United States.

Use of the Bell System name initially referred to those early telephone franchises and eventually comprised all telephone companies owned by American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), referred to internally as “regional holding companies”.

For more than a hundred years from its founding until January 1982, Bell/AT&T held a virtual monopoly on all telephone service in the United States. It controlled the entire industry through is five major divisions:

• AT&T Long Lines, providing long lines to interconnect local exchanges and long-distance calling services, and international lines including submarine cables
• Western Electric Company, Bell's equipment manufacturing arm
• Bell Labs, conducting research and development for AT&T and Western Electric; ownership initially equally split between Western and AT&T
• Bell operating companies, providing local exchange telephone services
• AT&T, the American Telephone and Telegraph company, who led the combined enterprise in planning and finance.

The company managed to make it through the progressive era largely unscathed, by signing what came to be known as the “Kingsbury Commitment” in 1913. Signed in response to the federal government finally beginning to hear antitrust arguments against the company, the Commitment enabled AT&T to avoid break-up or nationalization in exchange for divesting itself of Western Union (a major finance company) and allowing non-competing independent telephone companies to interconnect with its long-distance network. Twenty-one years later, in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assumed regulation of AT&T.

The strength of the company’s vertical monopoly was so great that by 1940, the Bell System effectively owned most telephone service in the United States, from local and long-distance service to the telephones themselves. Bell could thus prohibit its customers from connecting equipment not made or sold by Bell to the system without paying harsh fees. For example, if a customer desired a style of telephone not leased by the local Bell company, said customer was required to purchase the instrument at cost, furnish it to the telephone company for rewiring, pay a service charge, and a monthly lease fee for using it.

This sort of cutthroat behavior was detested by the American people, but there wasn’t much that they could do about it. AT&T had built their obscene fortune on just these sort of ruthless tactics, from boardroom takeovers and buyouts to outright intimidation (and even alleged cases of violence in its early days). Meanwhile, the federal government offered only token resistance.

In 1949, the Justice Department argued that Bell was using its near-monopoly to unfairly establish an advantage in related technologies at the expense of potential competitors. Bell Labs, for instance, received credit for inventing the transistor. But if AT&T wanted to enter the fledgling computer industry, then they were going to be challenged on their telephone monopoly.

Ultimately, AT&T agreed to a new “consent decree” in 1956. The decree limited AT&T to 85% of the United States’ national telephone network and certain government contracts. It also forced AT&T to divest itself from its interests in Canada and the Caribbean, where the company previously enjoyed virtual monopolies as well. While Bell Canada and Northern Electric would go on to be highly successful companies in their own right in Canada, AT&T was allowed to continue to dominate the American market.

The consent decree also forced Bell to make all of its patents royalty-free. This led to substantial increases in innovation, in particular in the electronics and computer sectors, and is arguably credited with launching the open-source movement, which would have massive ramifications for the future of computer and networking technological development.

Even the concessions forced upon AT&T by the 1956 decree were relatively minor in the grand scheme. They did little to disrupt the behemoth’s profits. At the same time that the company was divesting from its Canadian and Caribbean holdings, it was (for the time) allowed to keep the massive holdings it held, for instance, in Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), among other foreign investments. For several more decades, AT&T was able to argue that the monopoly it held was a “natural” one - on account of its building and maintaining all of the infrastructure necessary for telecommunications.

The rise of cheap microwave communications equipment in the 1960s and 1970s opened a window of opportunity for competitors, however. No longer was the acquisition of expensive rights-of-way necessary for the construction of a long-distance telephone network. In light of this, the FCC permitted MCI (Microwave Communications, Inc) to sell communication services to large businesses. This technical-economic argument against the necessity of AT&T's monopoly position would hold for a mere fifteen years until the beginning of the fiber-optics revolution sounded the end of microwave-based long distance.

Above: An AT&T advertisement from the early 1970s (left); President Mo Udall (D - AZ), a lifelong opponent of monopolies, including AT&T (right).​

During this same period, tireless antitrust crusaders and progressives within the Justice Department, the FCC, and other regulatory bodies involved in interstate commerce continued to bring cases against AT&T. This legal battle began in 1972 under President George Romney, continued under the Bush administration, and kicked into high-gear with the election of noted “trust-buster” Mo Udall to the White House in 1976. Though he would grab far more headlines by breaking up the “Seven Sisters” oil companies late in his term in office, it can be argued that Udall’s efforts against AT&T were equally impactful in the development of the burgeoning information age. Though Udall would not serve long enough to see these specific efforts bear fruit, his successor would. Likewise an opponent of monopoly, Robert Kennedy was happy to see efforts on the case continue.

On January 8th, 1982, just under a year into President Kennedy’s first term in office, the US District Court for the District of Columbia settled a ruling in United States v. AT&T. After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, the progressives finally had their way. And after more than a century of monopoly, AT&T (aka “Ma Bell”) would, in exchange for being allowed to enter the computer business, be broken up into seven independent companies, colloquially known as "Baby Bells".

Above: Map of the seven “baby Bells” created by the breakup of “Ma Bell” in 1982. They were: “US West” (Gray); “Pacific Telesis” (Purple); “Southwestern Bell Corporation” (Yellow); “BellSouth” (Green); “Ameritech” (Pink); “Bell Atlantic” (Red); and “NYNEX” (Blue).

With the American consumer's new ability to purchase phones outright, AT&T and the Bell System lost the considerable revenues which they had previously earned from phone leasing by local Bell companies. Forced to compete with other manufacturers for new phone sales, the aging Western Electric phone designs still marketed through AT&T failed to sell, and Western Electric eventually closed all of its U.S. manufacturing plants. AT&T, reduced in value by about 70%, continued to run all its long-distance services through AT&T Communications (under the new name of AT&T Long Lines), although it lost some market share in the ensuing years to competitors MCI and Sprint.

“Ma Bell’s” loss, which would take until 1984 to fully go into effect, was mostly the American people’s gain.

Immediately following the breakup, competition in the telecommunications industry surged. Companies such as the aforementioned MCI and Sprint challenged the “baby Bells” for market share. Though in the short term, this led to increased local-service costs, these eventually fell as the industry and FCC regulations adjusted to the new reality. Long-distance service costs, meanwhile, plummeted.

The breakup of Ma Bell also changed the way that broadcast networks of both radio (NPR) and television (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) distributed their programming to their local affiliate stations. Prior to the breakup, the broadcast networks relied on AT&T Long Lines' infrastructure and leased line networks to achieve this. By the mid-1970s, however, satellites built and launched by companies like RCA Astro Electronics and Western Union started to give Bell a run for their money. After the breakup, the calculus changed. Satellite distribution was cheaper, more efficient, and provided a higher broadcast-quality. The only delay had been on account of some local ground stations lacking the necessary equipment to receive the satellite’s signals. Following the 1982 ruling, satellite distribution quickly became the norm for broadcast radio and tv.

In order to remain relevant (and profitable) Bell attempted to pivot toward the computer industry. Experts predicted that Bell Labs, which had been so instrumental to the development of early electronics, would be a strong competitor to IBM and Texas Instruments, among others. Unfortunately for Bell, however, years of unchallenged monopoly had made them complacent. Though Bell Labs continued to produce strong R&D concepts, its manufacturing arm, Western Electric, was no longer profitable without being able to strong-arm customers into paying leasing fees for their telephones.

Though AT&T would eventually reinvent itself around its core business of long-distance telecommunications, it would forever be a shell of its former self, paving the way for other names to rise in the burgeoning information age.

…

Above: Prime Minister Flora MacDonald of Canada (left); the flag of Canada, since 1963 (right).​

Since first winning a term as Prime Minister of Canada in her own right in the federal election of February 1980, Flora MacDonald had, in many ways, proven herself to be a trendsetter in North American politics. The first female PM of the Great White North, she was also the second female head of government of any G7 country (after Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom).

MacDonald was born June 3rd, 1926 in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, the daughter of Mary Isabel Royle and George Frederick MacDonald. She was of Scottish ancestry. Her grandfather had been a clipper ship captain who sailed around Africa and South America. Her father was in charge of North Sydney’s Western Union trans-Atlantic telegraph terminus.

In her youth, MacDonald trained as a secretary at Empire Business College and found work as a bank teller at the Bank of Nova Scotia. She used her savings to travel to Britain in 1950. There, she got involved with a group of Scottish nationalists who stole the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey and brought it to Scotland.

After hitchhiking through Europe, she returned to Canada and became involved in politics, working on Nova Scotia Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield's campaign which won an upset victory in the 1956 provincial election. After working for a brief time as a secretary in the office of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, she eventually returned to Stanfield’s staff and became a close political ally of his, as well as something of his protege.

Despite, or perhaps because of Stanfield’s soft-spoken, even-tempered personality, he became the definitive face of Canadian politics in the 1970s. A moderate in the “blue Tory” vs. “red Tory” debate threatening to consume the Progressive Conservatives at that time, Stanfield was, by virtue of his diligence and good nature, perhaps just the man to lead Canada from a time of uncertainty after Pierre Trudeau’s assassination under John Turner into one of cautious optimism about the future. Indeed, much of Flora MacDonald’s political ideology developed at the elbow of Stanfield’s pragmatism.

But although Stanfield (a monolingual, Anglo-Canadian from the Maritimes) managed to dampen the Quebec separatist movement with a new constitution and special recognition for some of that province’s “unique cultural identity”, he was unable to resolve perhaps the other biggest issue facing his nation throughout his time in office: trade with the United States.

Ever since its founding, Canada has felt a natural mistrust and resentment toward its much larger, more economically developed neighbor to the south. Indeed, although Canada and the US share one of the closest relationships in the world, with friendly relations, a strong economic partnership, and a close military alliance (as well as sharing the longest undefended border in the world), the relationship is also decidedly one-sided. Though larger in land area, Canada has always had approximately one tenth the population of the United States. Early Canadian politicians cut their teeth on a “National Policy” of high tariffs on American goods in order to protect fledgling Canadian industry. Canada also relied heavily on its original metropole - the United Kingdom for economic support.

Though the US-Canada relationship warmed significantly as allies during the World Wars, in the Cold War world, Canada struggled once again to find its own identity and sense of sovereignty, rejecting “domination” by the Americans. As many Canadians summed it up, “they produce all our tv shows and movies. We cut the lumber, mine the minerals, and drill the oil, sell it to them, then buy it back for many times the cost in the form of fancy toys - cars, computers, and so on.” Many Canadians wound up feeling like they’d become nothing more than an especially autonomous 51st state.

Thus, although Stanfield had managed to stabilize the Canadian economy, and pleased the oil-rich Prairie provinces (especially Alberta) by rejecting Liberal Party calls for a nationalized Canadian oil industry, he had failed (in the eyes of some) to adequately protect “Canadian national economic interests'' from predatory Americans with deep pockets. The relative economic stability of the mid-seventies fell to recession by the end of 1981, due in no small part to depressed oil prices in the US and throughout the West - the same “oil glut” that was helping to slash inflation back in the States. Meanwhile, Canadian manufacturing suffered, as American firms regained their footing.

Above: A political cartoon from the turn of the 20th Century, depicting British and American capital investment in Canada. Though the investment helped to develop Canada’s economy, many Canadians feared what foreign influence might do to their national sovereignty.

In the 1980 campaign, free trade became a major issue.

Generally speaking, both parties took up their historical positions. Allan MacEachen and the Liberals supported free trade while MacDonald and the Tories opposed it. In one of the campaign’s tensest moments, during a debate between the two, MacDonald accused MacEachen of “insufficient patriotism” because of his opposition to tariffs on American goods. MacEachen, shocked by the attack, famously retorted that he was “plenty Canadian, thank you very much”, but the damage had been done. Combined with her moderate stance on other issues and her campaign message of change, MacDonald managed to eke out a win, even as the PC party lost seats in parliament. Once sworn in, MacDonald then continued the recent trend of tense relations between the Canadian leadership and their US counterparts.

American President John F. Kennedy distrusted Canadian PM John Diefenbaker for “flip-flopping” during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other Cold War flashpoints. George Romney detested Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, and John Turner for their opposition to the War in Cambodia. While George Bush and Robert Stanfield enjoyed a fairly close working relationship, Stanfield could not say the same of Mo Udall, virtually his opposite in every way personally and politically. Nonetheless, Robert Kennedy held high hopes for his rapport with MacDonald when he entered the White House in 1981.

One of his first foreign visits had, of course, been to Ottawa to meet with MacDonald personally. The two got on well enough (MacDonald was famed for her skill as a diplomat and she found Kennedy charming, contrary to the “ruthless bastard” she’d been warned about by advisors), but after RFK left Canada, later that year, Lindy Boggs, the US Trade Representative, received a much frostier reception.

Naturally, as her predecessors had for decades before her, Boggs favored a free trade agreement between the two countries. Eliminating tariffs on exports between them, free trade, she argued, would boost the economies of both nations, raising everyone’s standard of living across North America. This position stood in opposition to that of MacDonald and her Tory government, however.

From MacDonald’s perspective, the only industries which would benefit to any large degree from such an agreement were the resource-extraction and export industries - lumber, mining, petroleum, etc. Canadian manufacturing, especially in developing fields like high tech, needed to be sheltered from overwhelming (and cheaper) American competitors. While Boggs and MacDonald’s economic team eventually managed to work out a few bilateral agreements to reduce tariffs on certain, specific industries (mostly resource extraction and automobiles, a field in which Canada lacked a strong industry of its own), a true free trade agreement remained elusive. It would continue to do so for several more years.

During that time, however, America’s economy took off. A surge in aggregate demand caused by the Long-Ullman Tax Reform and lowering interest rates by the Federal Reserve at the tail end of 1981 let loose the American eagle to soar once more. Meanwhile, the Canadian beaver continued its struggle.

Growth remained sluggish or even nonexistent in some years. Wages stagnated. Labor disputes led to frequent strikes that helped paint MacDonald as a “weak” and “indecisive” leader, even if these were unfair labels. Despite whatever gains MacDonald made for her country internationally, domestically, she became increasingly unpopular. The “good feelings” of togetherness and nationalism fostered throughout Canada during the Stanfield years evaporated under MacDonald. Quebecois separatism returned as a major political force, mostly in response to the recession. The Prairies and Maritimes loved MacDonald for her defense of traditional Canadian industries, but the average Canadian felt that she was “old fashioned” and “out of touch” with the needs of the moment.

On the eve of the 1984 elections, the Liberal Party, now under former cabinet minister Jean Chrétien (a young, Francophone man of the Trudeau-school of Liberal politics) seemed ready to ascend to power for the first time in almost a decade.

Above: Jean Chrétien in a Liberal Party campaign ad from 1984.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Another Changing of the Guard in Moscow​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 155 - Who Can it Be Now?: (Another) Changing of the Guard in Moscow

Above: The view from Red Square - state funeral for Mikhail Suslov, January 28th, 1982 (left); Grigory Romanov, Suslov’s eventual successor as Chairman of the Presidium and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (right).

“Who can it be knocking at my door?
Go 'way, don't come 'round here no more
Can't you see that it's late at night?
I'm very tired and I'm not feeling right
All I wish is to be alone
Stay away, don't you invade my home
Best off if you hang outside
Don't come in, I'll only run and hide
Who can it be now?
Who can it be now?
Who can it be now?
Who can it be now?” - “Who Can it Be Now?” by Men at Work

“Sometimes, history needs a push.” - Vladimir Lenin

The rise of Solidarity in Poland (and the political and economic turmoil it portented) created another “crisis of confidence” in the Kremlin. The authority of the Polish United Workers’ Party (that country’s ruling communist party) eroded significantly, and there were some in Moscow who feared that Poland might break away from Soviet-style communism altogether. Acting in his role as head of the Politburo, First Secretary Mikhail Suslov created (and subsequently chaired) a commission on how to handle the “Polish situation”.

Beginning on August 28th, 1980, the commission began to consider Soviet military intervention in order to “stabilize” the region. This course of action was favored by defense minister Ustinov, but opposed by Suslov and Gromyko, the other members of the “troika” leading the USSR at that time. It was also opposed by Wojciech Jaruzelski, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party. Jaruzelski was able to persuade the commission that a Soviet military intervention would only aggravate the situation.

Suslov would write of his decision not to send in the tanks, “If troops are introduced, that will mean a catastrophe. I think that we all share the unanimous opinion here that there can be no discussion of any introduction of troops.” The First Secretary did manage to persuade Jaruzelski to declare martial law in his country until the situation could be contained, however.

The election of Robert F. Kennedy to the presidency of the United States posed a further problem for Moscow. Though both candidates had been hawkish on the campaign trail (by American standards), the troika had strongly hoped for a victory by Ronald Reagan. Reagan was seen as a “lightweight” on foreign affairs, whom the troika and their allies could have “dealt with quite easily”. After all, his inflammatory rhetoric would have made him look, in Gromyko’s words, “like a buffoon” on the international stage. Bob Kennedy, on the other hand, was well-known in Moscow for his “cutthroat nature” and “ruthlessness” while simultaneously enjoying widespread respect and stature abroad. Under Kennedy, the US would once again begin to seriously challenge Soviet influence across the globe.

Suslov made plans for how to “counter” Kennedy, especially after the American president survived the attempt on his life by Mark Chapman, but before the Kremlin could enact them, Suslov developed a coronary thrombosis - the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel of the heart. Four days later, on January 25th, 1982, Suslov died of arteriosclerosis and diabetes just after four in the afternoon, Moscow time. He was 79 years old.

Though little mourned by the Soviet public, Suslov would be missed dearly by many on the politburo. He was widely regarded as the party’s foremost expert on Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy and theory, a true ideologue, committed to communist revolution.

In the immediate aftermath of Suslov’s death, Konstantin Chernenko - his deputy - ascended to the position of “Acting Chairman of the Presidium and Acting First Secretary” until such time as mourning for Suslov could be completed and a new Chairman chosen. Chernenko himself was no spring chicken, already 70 years old in January 1982 and reportedly in poor health. During Suslov’s funeral, Chernenko struggled to be heard, even while mic'd, as he read the eulogy. Chernenko was also ethnically Ukrainian; not a deal breaker for a Soviet leader, but, by the unspoken rules of Russian supremacy within the USSR, not ideal.

Above: Konstantin Chernenko (left); Dmitry Ustinov (center); and Andrei Gromyko (right); the three men who attempted to restore order to the Kremlin in the wake of Comrade Suslov’s death in early 1982.

At the time of his ascent to the country's top post, Chernenko was primarily viewed (as Suslov himself had been) as a transitional leader who could give the Politburo's "Old Guard" time to choose an acceptable candidate from the next generation of Soviet leadership. By this time, they had already more or less settled on their man: Grigory Vasilyevich Romanov.

Romanov was born on February 7th, 1923 in Novgorod Governorate into a peasant family. Romanov served as a soldier in the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War (World War II). Romanov later joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1944. He graduated from the Leningrad Shipbuilding Institute in 1953, and became a designer in a shipyard. He fulfilled several important posts in the party committee of the enterprise he was working at and later in the Leningrad city and regional party committees. In September 1970 he was elected as First Secretary of the Communist Party Committee of the Leningrad Region. In this position, he gained a reputation of being a skilled organizer and well versed in economic matters, winning defense investment for Leningrad over other regions and attracting the attention of the party’s upper echelon, including Yuri Andropov, who subsequently brought him to Moscow and helped promote him in June 1979 to the very prestigious and influential post of a secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU responsible for industry and the military-industrial complex. Throughout the last few months of Andropov’s tenure, Romanov became seen as one of his closest allies.

Indeed, contrary to subsequent evaluations of Romanov by both western observers and the hardliners themselves, it is perhaps more accurate to describe Romanov as a “moderate” than a “conservative”. An ardent supporter of Andropov's comprehensive program for the reform, renewal, and further development of socialism in the Soviet Union and beyond, Romanov simply believed in the Andropov style of reform (economy-first) in contrast with others, such as Gorbachev and Tereshkova, who also favored various degrees of political liberalization.

What Romanov succeeded in, however, was blending in with whatever group he found himself in politically. He made himself into a chameleon, shifting his rhetoric to placate and woo whatever faction he happened to be speaking to at any given time. This, combined with their perception of him as “sympathetic to conservative views” led Chernenko, Ustinov, and Gromyko to favor Romanov as the Union’s next leader.

Following the four days of mourning prescribed by the Soviet constitution after Suslov’s death, Chernenko summoned the politburo and put forth the motion to name Romanov to all positions of leadership. Some questioned the wisdom of handing power to this relative “newcomer”. After all, Romanov had only been a member of the central committee for the last two and a half years. If nominated, his would be the most rapid ascent in the history of Soviet politics. At 57 years old, he was the second youngest member of that body (ahead of just Mikhail Gorbachev - 49). But Ustinov and Gromyko supported the move, believing that not only was Romanov “one of them”, but also that they could “mold” this “naive newcomer” into governing as they saw fit. With any resistance to the motion, tokenistic or hidden (as was the case of Gorbachev), the motion passed. Grigory Romanov became the first leader of the Soviet Union to have been born after the Revolutions of 1917. This was truly a watershed moment in Soviet history and politics.

Above: Grigory Romanov’s first official portrait after being sworn in as Chairman of the Presidium and First Secretary of the Soviet Union on January 30th, 1982.

Somewhat insecure in his new role, Romanov did not rock the boat immediately after entering office. By the beginning of 1982, the stagnation of the Soviet economy was obvious, as evidenced by the fact that the Soviet Union had been importing increasing amounts of grain from the U.S. throughout the 1970s. As soon as President Robert F. Kennedy revoked the grain embargo, the Soviets not only resumed their orders, but increased them. This staved off popular revolt over the availability of bread and other essential goods, but did little to improve the Soviet Union’s prestige and influence abroad. Again, Romanov, like his mentor Andropov, understood the need for reform, but the economic system was so firmly entrenched that any real change seemed impossible.

Eschewing any radical economic or political reforms then, Romanov’s immediate domestic policy leaned heavily toward “restoring discipline and order” to Soviet society. He promoted a small degree of candor in politics and mild economic experiments similar to those that had been associated with the late Alexei Kosygin's initiatives in the mid to late 1960s. Simultaneously, he launched an anti-corruption drive that reached high into the government and party ranks. In an attempt to “model” his new ideal for Soviet leadership, Romanov lived modestly. Eschewing the "decadent dachas" of his predecessors, he favored a simple townhouse in Moscow. He began a public relations campaign to show himself as a “new” kind of leader: professional; efficient; and able to restore the Soviet Union to its “rightful place in the world”.

Unfortunately, the new leader’s situation abroad was no better.

Romanov immediately faced a series of foreign policy crises: the hopeless situation of the Soviet army in Afghanistan; the aforementioned threat of revolt in Poland; growing animosity with the People’s Republic of China under Hu Yaobang; the Iran-UAR war in the Middle East; and brewing trouble in eastern and southern Africa.

Above: Soviet troops battle insurgents in Afghanistan, circa 1982 (left); Mujahideen rebels, also circa 1982 (right).​

By 1982, the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan had increased to approximately 125,000 soldiers as fighting across the country intensified. The complication of the war effort gradually inflicted a higher and higher cost on the Soviet Union’s treasury as military, economic, and political resources became increasingly exhausted. Despite the best efforts of both the Soviets and their allied communist regime in Kabul, resistance to their control over the country not only persisted, but intensified.

To begin with, the political situation shifted, first in 1977, when Pakistan (the USSR’s ally in the invasion) withdrew from the conflict following new elections, which saw the ruling PPP’s leader toppled from power, replaced with an antiwar prime minister. The new Pakistani government renounced their previous war-aim of founding a “client state” of “Pashtunistan” and instead welcomed “any Pashtuns who wished to join Pakistan” to do so. With the withdrawal of Pakistan, many ethnic Pashtuns no longer saw the invading Soviets as their defenders or liberators, and instead began switching sides, joining and supporting various resistance groups. The conflict took on an increasingly religious tone for the Afghani people, who saw the Soviets as “godless communists”, hell bent on subjugating their country to “forced secularization and imperial domination” from Moscow.

Though the resistance groups were by no means united (they fought amongst themselves almost as much as they fought the Soviets), they held a number of key advantages over the invaders.

First, most of the resistance fighters were either from Afghanistan or had at least lived in the country for several years. They were thus far more familiar with the country’s mountainous geography than the Soviets. They fought with a mix of religious zeal and national fervor, willing to give anything, including their lives, to defend their home. Finally, since 1975, the rebel groups had been receiving aid in the form of financial support, arms, supplies, and military training from a coalition of states, including: the United Kingdom; Saudi Arabia; and, mostly through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States.

President George Bush famously called the Mujahedeen “freedom fighters”, a phrase which would be repeated by Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail in 1980. While Mo Udall had felt “uneasy” about arming and aiding them directly, when Robert Kennedy took the oath of office in 1981, he did not share Udall’s reservations. Though Kennedy did not arm just anybody looking for American resources (he explicitly forbade the CIA and its director, former head of Naval Intelligence and Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, from meeting with anyone but indigenous Afghan mujahedeen, let alone arming, training, coaching, or indoctrinating them), he did authorize nearly $5 billion in aid throughout the course of the program - codenamed Operation Hurricane. This was all part of his administration’s renewed commitment to “containment”, as opposed to the “détente” of the last decade and a half.

Above: America’s 39th President, Robert F. Kennedy (D - NY), widely viewed as Grigori Romanov’s “great international nemesis”.​

The most critical threat of all to Romanov and the Kremlin was the “Kennedy Doctrine” launched by the American President at the start of his term. After years of gestures toward peaceful co-existence and treating the Soviets as an equal, Kennedy was, essentially, calling their bluff that Soviet communism in any way seriously rivaled American capitalism and democracy. This was apparent in the “Second Space Race”, but also in international relations. Through a combination of flexing American soft power, technological superiority, and increased diplomatic, financial, and economic pressure (as recommended by the likes of his “wise man” - George F. Kennan), Kennedy’s long term geopolitical strategy aimed to break apart the Soviet Union along ethnic and national lines, and win the Cold War once and for all without firing a single shot. This, in Romanov’s mind, could not be allowed.

But Romanov was playing a very dangerous game. He quickly found himself in the same spot Yuri Andropov had before his ouster: knowing full well that the USSR’s current course was unsustainable and also knowing that he was, in a sense, powerless to alter it. Thus, Romanov’s main response to the Kennedy Doctrine was, unsurprisingly, raising military spending.

In 1982, defense gobbled up an astonishing 70 percent of the USSR’s national budget, and supplied billions of dollars worth of military aid to the United Arab Republic (UAR), Libya, South Yemen, the PLO, Cuba, and North Korea - all “sworn enemies” of the United States. That aid included tanks and armored troop carriers, hundreds of fighter planes, as well as anti-aircraft systems, artillery systems, and all sorts of high tech equipment for which the USSR was the main supplier. Romanov's main goal was to avoid an open war while also placating Dmitry Ustinov and Andrei Gromyko back home. But even this left the Soviets coming up short.

Stated Soviet military spending in US dollars for the year of 1981 came to about $75 billion. Though the actual amount was probably higher (given the sheer size and scope of the military establishment in that country), it still accounted for less than half of US spending - just north of $155 billion heading into 1982. America’s allies in NATO also outspent the USSR’s in the Warsaw Pact, while simultaneously devoting smaller percentages of their national budgets to defense. The cracks in the “paper tiger” that was the Eastern Bloc were beginning to show.

Still, Romanov pressed on.

Above: Soviet Mil Mi-24 helicopters (left) and state of the art MiG-31 jet fighters (right); both aircraft were flown extensively during the latter phases of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

Despite privately recognizing that the Invasion of Afghanistan “had been a mistake”, he continued the occupation and counterinsurgency campaigns. He did dispatch foreign minister Gromyko to explore options for a negotiated withdrawal from the country, but these attempts were quickly dismissed as “half-hearted” by Western observers. So too did Romanov cease even the pretense of working toward arms-reductions with the United States. When asked by a Western journalist in 1982 if there would be any negotiations on the subject before the next scheduled summit in Geneva in 1985, Gromyko (speaking for Romanov) flatly denied the idea. The consensus in the Kremlin was that vague, nebulous “peace movements” in the United States and other Western countries would force an American surrender in the Cold War before the Soviet system collapsed. This line of thinking was either naive or delusional. It was also potentially catastrophic, a proverbial ticking time bomb that threatened to destroy the Soviet Union from within.

Yet, few at the time were willing to admit as much.

Even as some within the political sphere (particularly Mikhail Gorbachev) attempted to raise the alarm about the costs associated with dedicating so much of the Union’s stagnating treasury to “propping up” satellite states around the world, who contributed essentially nothing back to the USSR, nothing meaningfully changed. Romanov liked Gorbachev personally. He even felt that Gorbachev might make for a fine successor to Gromyko as foreign minister once the latter retired. But he could not stomach the idea of pulling back Soviet spending anywhere in the world. To do so, to Romanov (and Ustinov and Gromyko) would represent “surrender” to the West and admitting that the Union was not as strong as it claimed to be. Strength was the only thing holding the Soviet bloc together, Romanov and the hardliners believed. It was not unlike the “useful opulence” strategy employed by the Ancien Regime in France just prior to the French Revolution.

That is to say, all of this was a recipe for disaster.

Sure enough, a pair of them erupted before the end of Romanov’s first years in power: The October Crisis of 1982 (including the so-called “Hårsfjärden War” with Sweden of all places) and the September and November Crises of 1983, which would, once again, bring the world to the brink of thermonuclear war.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: President Kennedy Tackles the Crime Epidemic​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 156 - Breakin’ the Law: The Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1982

Above: A pair of NYPD officers ride the subway in the early 1980s, by that time, crime in New York City was said to have reached “epidemic proportions” (left); Scruff McGruff the Crime Dog, an anthropomorphic animated bloodhound created by Jack Keil (who also voiced the character) through the Ad Council and later the National Crime Prevention Council to increase crime awareness and personal safety in the United States (right).

“There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life
You know what it's called
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law” - “Breakin’ the Law” by Judas Priest

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists upon.” - Robert F. Kennedy

Heading into 1982 - his second year in office - President Robert Kennedy knew that he needed to choose another area to focus on with his major legislative push for the year.

The so-called “Long-Ullman Tax Cut”, Kennedy’s major achievement from the year prior, had delivered on two of his key campaign pledges: turning the budget deficit into a surplus (and in so doing, refilling Congress’ “rainy day fund”); and giving the vast majority of Americans tax relief in order to stimulate the economy.
This had its intended effect.

In addition to easing the financial burden on working and middle class families, these tax cuts, when combined with lowered interest rates by the Federal Reserve, caused aggregate demand to explode at the tail end of 1981 and into the first quarter of 1982. By year’s end, real GDP growth was as high as 5%. The economy, at long last, was leaving behind the doldrums of the “Seesaw Seventies” and roaring back to life.

Democrats, especially the president and his advisors, were eager to take credit for “slaying stagflation” and returning the nation to prosperity. The truth, of course, is more complex and nuanced than this. The efforts of the Bush and Udall administrations to bring inflation to heel were clearly prerequisites for economic success under President Kennedy. But politically, the sunny economic forecasts were great for the administration, especially heading into a midterm election year.

The midterms. Bobby Kennedy thought to himself, as Jack had twenty years prior. It’s already all about the midterms.

Even as he enjoyed approval ratings hovering around the 58% mark thanks to the success of his tax reform bill, the president understood all too well the “what have you done for me lately?” nature of American politics.

For the next task on his agenda, he needed to find an issue which: A, reflected another of his major campaign pledges; B, could make some meaningful difference in the lives of the American public; and C, ideally gave his fellow Democrats something substantial to run on come November. The administration held a series of policy meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill after New Year’s. At these meetings, one issue seemed to come up again and again: crime.

President Kennedy had largely built his own reputation as a crusader against corruption and especially organized crime while working as a counsel for the US Senate in the 1950s.

Beginning at the tail end of his brother’s administration, and really ramping up throughout the 1970s, the national crime rate in the United States more than quadrupled. Especially concerning to the public was the rate of violent crime, which had also risen within the same timeframe. This trend was even reflected in the fact that, beginning with Jack Kennedy, every American president had suffered at least one serious assassination attempt (whether as a candidate or once elected president). Bob Kennedy was no exception. He still carried the bullet fired at him by his would-be assassin, Mark Chapman, and walked with a cane from the subsequent nerve damage.

The causes for this so-called “crime epidemic” were myriad.

First among them were socioeconomic factors.

The 1970s were, as has been covered exhaustively within this chronicle, hard times economically. Wages stagnated while prices shot up. Unemployment rose, increasing rates of poverty and homelessness along with it. For many living in poverty, crime was not necessarily a conscious choice, but rather a means to the end of mere survival.

After decades of “white flight” to the suburbs, many major metropolitan areas lost much of their tax base and subsequently experienced sudden and severe urban decay. As cities struggled to maintain their solvency (most dramatically seen in New York), more municipal and local workers were laid off or had their wages or hours reduced, further exacerbating economic tensions. Rates of mental illness were also high during this period, probably correlated to (if not outright caused by) the aforementioned economic downturn.

On a more sociocultural level, there were other issues.

High divorce rates and a general deficiency of family planning resources resulted in many broken homes across the country. Though expanding Medicare as a public option to cover all Americans who needed health insurance did ameliorate some of the burden on families, both in terms of providing healthcare coverage and access to contraceptives, their use did not become immediately widespread. Teen pregnancy rates were also high during this period, resulting in some parents who were unready to raise children. The social stigma associated with such situations also alienated these young parents and resulted in many not seeking help or assistance, whether from available government programs, or from private charities, or in some cases, even family, friends, and other loved ones.

Conservative pundits also pointed out a breakdown in “American values” such as hard work, individual initiative, and personal responsibility, as possible causes for the crime epidemic, though this argument is difficult to prove due to a lack of quantifiable data.

Also deeply interconnected with the crime epidemic was the so-called “War on Drugs”.

Above: A U.S. government PSA from the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration with a photo image of two marijuana cigarettes (“joints”) and a “Just Say No” slogan (left); the seal for the Drug Enforcement Administration (right).

First launched by the Romney administration in 1970, then massively expanded with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973 by President Bush, the “War on Drugs” contributed heavily to the national crime rate by making actions that millions of Americans performed every year explicitly illegal.

The best analogy for this effect is probably what resulted from the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which forbade the consumption, manufacture, and sale of almost all alcoholic beverages in the United States - “Prohibition” - until its repeal with the 21st Amendment in 1933. Though Prohibition did initially succeed in its goal of reducing drinking in the US, by as early as 1922, drinking was once again on the rise. Had Prohibition not been repealed, it is likely that rates of American drinking would still have surpassed pre-Prohibition levels by 1933. Prohibition was thus roundly condemned as a massive failure and few mourned its loss. But to some extent, this can perhaps be explained by alcohol’s status as a socially acceptable drug, as opposed to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other narcotics.

By the time of President Robert Kennedy’s inauguration in 1981, as many as 90% of all crimes committed in the United States were drug-related, up from just under half during his brother’s time in office. Though statistics show a small increase in drug use during the intervening decade, that small increase did not and could not explain the massive increase in arrests and incarcerated persons related to drug offenses.

Clearly, just as Prohibition had in the 1920s, the War on Drugs was turning everyday, non-violent Americans into criminals, simply as a matter of course. If crime was going to be brought to heel, then so too did the federal government need to review its drug policies.

To that end, two competing philosophies emerged.

The first was the “traditional” method of combating drug use: criminal prohibition and law enforcement. Advocates for this school of thought (mostly conservatives and “law and order” types) advocated “tougher” policies to “revitalize” the War on Drugs. They wanted: mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users, dealers, and anyone involved with the drug trade; so-called “three strikes” policies for drug offenders; and more resources to be allocated for hiring more police officers and better arming and equipping law enforcement to combat gangs and cartels.

Critics of this line of thought (including the president and his brother, Senator Ted Kennedy) argued that this “revitalization” really amounted to an “escalation”. They felt that such methods would fail to address the root cause of drug use and abuse in the first place: addiction. If the government’s primary concern with its drug policy was punishing drug users, without treating their addiction, then recidivism rates would remain high (not to mention, keep non-violent offenders locked up for life sentences). Furthermore, these “tough” drug policies would (and where they existed, already did) unfairly and disproportionately target historically disenfranchised minority groups and communities of color. The Kennedys understood all too well how drug laws could be weaponized, even when that was not a policy’s intention.

“They’ve declared war on a noun.” Bobby privately told Ethel back in 1970. “That never ends well.”

The other method of combating drug use then emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s, powered by a suite of studies conducted at Harvard, Yale, and other prestigious universities and centers of learning. Known as “harm reduction”, this philosophy favored healing what it saw as the root cause of drug use and abuse - addiction itself. Rather than think of drug abusers as criminals who needed to be punished, this method favored treating them as patients, sick with a disease, who needed to be treated and rehabilitated. These were many of the same academics who had successfully lobbied the Kennedy administration the year prior to create “needle exchange sites” in order to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS from infected needles.

In pilot programs in cities and states across the country, municipalities who enacted harm reduction policies saw drops in their rates of drug addiction and recidivism by as much as 75%. Proponents of this philosophy also favored a more nuanced view on drug education, teaching “responsible drug use”, rather than treating marijuana and other drugs as some sort of inherent evil, a boogeyman to be avoided at all costs.

Advocates for both schools of thought worked within the Kennedy administration, splitting opinion on the subject. The president himself was of two minds about the issue. There were also legitimate concerns about “outdated” statutes relating to hate crimes, sexual crimes, and gang-related crime. All of these needed to be addressed if the country was going to get back on the right foot when it came to law and order.

Above: Attorney General Charlie Rangel, chairman of President Kennedy’s 1982 fact-finding commission on crime in the United States (left); seal of the National Association of Chiefs of Police (right).

In order to resolve these inconsistencies and create the most effective bill to address as many of them as possible, President Kennedy formed a fact-finding commission to make a recommendation to Congress. This commission, chaired by Attorney General Charlie Rangel, himself a noted crusader against drugs in his native Harlem and previously in the halls of Congress, worked with the 135,000 member National Association of Police Officers, and scientists at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to craft their suggestions.

Kennedy hoped that his eventual proposal could be, in his words, “tough, but fair”.

In choosing Rangel to chair the commission, however, the president empowered a man who had been, in the words of Ebony magazine, “a front-line general in the war on drugs”. Rangel was quoted in that article about him as saying that, when it came to drug policy in America, “we need outrage!” This was making reference to the slow reaction by both government and religious leaders to the epidemics of crack cocaine, heroin, PCP, and other drugs that hit American streets during the 1970s and 80s. Rangel also believed that attempts to legalize drugs would represent “moral and political suicide”. He did not refrain from criticizing those most affected by drugs, saying that Hispanic and black teenagers had no sense of self-preservation, and that drug dealers were “so stupid they had to eat in fast-food places because they could not read a menu.”

Rangel and his fellow “warriors” criticized what they saw as “timidity” or even “cowardice” on the part of commissioners who favored “harm reduction” over “escalation”. They felt that to shift federal drug policy away from the fight would be tantamount to “surrender”. There are few words more anathema to American cultural identity than “surrender”.

Meanwhile, the “harm reducers”: scientists and academics led by the president’s own brother, Ted, fired back, calling Rangel’s preferred policies “draconian” and in some cases “possibly unconstitutional”. Though both sides supported additional funding for drug prevention and treatment, they disagreed strongly on where and how the money should be spent: law enforcement or medical care.

As the weeks dragged on, word leaked to the press that little to no common ground was being found between the two camps. The Washington Post featured a political cartoon showing Ted Kennedy and Charlie Rangel in a boxing ring labeled “federal drug policy”, with the president sitting at the side as a ring-judge. The ongoing and rapidly escalating culture war made crime a major issue, with conservatives accusing Kennedy and his fellow liberals of “not doing what is necessary to protect the American people”.

Eventually, the president sensed that what should have been an easy, bipartisan victory going into the midterms seemed to be slipping through his fingers; he called for an end to the bickering. He personally intervened to break the stalemate within the commission. With the president personally overseeing the planning sessions, and ensuring that all voices were heard, he helped orchestrate a compromise that left no one fully satisfied, but which would be much more likely to pass both the House and the Senate than either camp’s preferred version.

The compromise version of the bill, which eventually made its way through Congress included:

• The Violence Against Women Act - allocating $1.6 billion to help prevent and investigate violence against women, setting increased federal penalties for repeat sex offenders and requiring mandatory restitution for the medical and legal costs of sex crimes, and increasing federal grants for battered women's shelters, creating a National Domestic Violence Hotline, and requiring restraining orders of one state to be enforced by the other states.
  
  
• The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act - introduced by Representative Jim Moran (D - VA) after an increase in opponents of abortion rights using public driving license databases to track down and harass abortion providers and patients, most notably by both besieging one woman’s home for a month and following her daughter to school.
  
  
• Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act - established guidelines for states to track sex offenders. States were also required to track sex offenders by confirming their place of residence annually for ten years after their release into the community or quarterly for the rest of their lives if the sex offender was convicted of a violent sex crime.
  
  
• The Community Oriented Policing Services Act - Earmarked more than $1 billion per year in assistance to state and local law enforcement agencies to help hire community policing officers. The COPS Office also funds the research and development of guides, tools and training, and provides technical assistance to police departments implementing community policing principles. The law authorized the COPS Office to hire 100,000 more police officers to patrol the nation's streets, and set guidelines that officers should reside in the communities in which they policed.
  
  
• The Money Laundering Control Act - criminalized money laundering for the first time in the United States. This would be used, both Rangel and President Kennedy argued, to tamp down on large-scale criminal activity.
  
  
• The Arthur McDuffie Police Violence Prevention Act - Named for a Black insurance salesman and United States Marine Corps lance corporal who was beaten to death by four police officers after a traffic stop, resulting in the 1980 Miami Riots. The act promoted training in de-escalation techniques, strongly encouraged law enforcement to minimize targeting people of lower socioeconomic status, and earmarked money to invest in crisis intervention teams and to hire mental health professionals (including FBI-trained negotiators) for state and local law enforcement.
  
  
• The People Over Profits Act - abolished the use of for-profit (private) prisons for federal crimes and encouraged the states to follow suit. It also earmarked additional funding for rehabilitation programs, including felon higher-education programs.

Finally, and perhaps most consequentially, the act authorized billions of dollars of new federal spending. Though some would go toward bolstering the ATF, FBI, DEA, and other law enforcement agencies (much to the delight of Rangel and his fellow “warriors”), the lion’s share of this funding would be used to increase the substance abuse treatment federal block grant program. The terms “drug use” and “drug abuse” (which implied conscious choice on the part of the user) were replaced with the Kennedy brothers’ preferred phrase: “diseases of addiction”.

Other programs funded by the act included drug counseling and education programs, AIDS research, facilities for mental health treatment, social work and family counseling/planning, and international cooperation to limit drug production.

The act also included the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, which required public schools and colleges to establish education and prevention programs to combat diseases of addiction. Rejected from the final version of the bill were concepts such as mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes” policies for repeat offenders.

Though conservatives attempted to add a rider making membership in a gang explicitly illegal, liberals in both parties balked on constitutional grounds. They felt that such a law would threaten the First Amendment right to free association. Distinctions between sentencing for crack versus powdered cocaine, for instance, were also left out, as many felt that these provisions would disproportionately target black and brown communities.

Above: President Robert F. Kennedy delivers a speech, calling on all members of Congress to support the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1982, introduced on behalf of the administration.

The final version of the bill that made it through reconciliation was thus, an imperfect compromise between the two camps (“anti-drug warriors” and “harm reducers”). While the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1982 would not please everyone, it did seem to go a long way toward tackling the problems posed by crime and drug addiction in America. Though it initially faced stiff resistance from conservatives in both parties, Kennedy called the bill a “just” act, rather than a “vindictive” one.

In selling his bill to Congress and the American public, Kennedy praised the “noble intentions” of his predecessors’ efforts in the war on drugs, but pointed to high recidivism rates and continued drug addiction and still-rising crime as evidence of their “failure to address the roots of the problem”.

“The end of our justice system must not be purely punitive, but also restorative.” the president declared. “We must heal and reform, not simply punish and lock away.”

After months of discussion and debate, and with a majority of the public supportive of at least most of what the act contained, the bill was introduced to the House of Representatives by Jim Wright (D - TX) on August 9th, 1982. It would pass the House eleven days later (352 - 56) and the Senate on the 30th (77 - 22). After making its way through reconciliation, the bill crossed President Kennedy’s desk on September 3rd. He signed it, marking his second major legislative accomplishment since taking office.

Though virtually all Democrats and even most Republicans ultimately voted in favor of the “1982 Crime Bill” as it came to be known, some conservatives were especially vocal in their opposition to it.

“This is a pretty watered down bill.” Senator Jesse Helms (R - NC) loudly complained on C-SPAN during debate in the Senate. “If we want to show criminals that crime doesn’t pay, I think we can do a heck of a lot better than three-hundred and fifty pages of half-measures and political correctness”. This last phrase referred to the administration’s insistence on shifting “drug use” to “diseases of addiction”.

Above: Senator Jesse Helms (R - NC), one of the chief opponents of the 1982 Comprehensive Crime Control Act, and something of a nemesis to President Kennedy. Strengthening his conservative bonafides, he argued that the bill did not go far enough toward discouraging criminals.

The act would have numerous positive effects on American society: crime rates peaked in early 1983 before dropping precipitously, a trend that continues up to the present day; rates of drug addiction likewise fell to pre-1960s levels; and Americans’ feelings of safety increased, with more officers on the streets and efforts toward community policing bolstering a sense of shared security. Urban centers in particular began to recover, bringing back economic opportunity and a renewed hope for the future in the nation’s cities.

The act also had negative consequences.

For one thing, it failed to rectify racial and class-based inequalities in the justice system. On the front of police brutality, it did not issue a ban on chokeholds, strangleholds, and other potentially deadly maneuvers. Nor did it challenge or even reexamine the policy of “qualified immunity” - legal protection for the police for most actions undertaken in the name of enforcing the law. Though the Crime bill “deemphasized” the war on drugs, shifting the federal government’s focus toward combating diseases of addiction with healthcare and treatment instead, it did not end the war on drugs.

Despite his reservations about the “extent” to which some hardcore warriors, like Rangel, were willing to go in the name of fighting drugs on America’s streets, President Kennedy (and Congress) lacked the political will to fly in the face of public opinion, which overwhelmingly favored the war’s continuation.

The political headwinds of the country were finally beginning to shift. The president and his allies could feel it. Conservatism, long dormant and thought defeated by the forces of social liberalism, began the long, slow process of awakening from its torpor. It would take several more years for the right to truly regain its confidence after Ronald Reagan’s defeat in the 1980 election. But it was beginning to stir.

Politically, the bill was an overall win for the administration.

According to a Gallup poll conducted after President Kennedy signed it into law, just over 65% of those polled said that they “approved” or “strongly approved” of its passage. A slim majority - 56% - answered in the affirmative when asked if they considered the president to be adequately “tough on crime”. The hope of both the president and Chief of Staff (and primary political advisor) Ken O’Donnell was that that descriptor would rub off on congressional Democrats in what were sure to be contentious midterm elections.

Above: White House Chief of Staff Ken O’Donnell (left); Senator Joe Biden (D - DE), a key Kennedy ally and one of the chief authors of the “1982 Crime Bill” (right).

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Two Bald Men Fight Over a Comb​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 157 - Don’t You Want Me?: The Falklands Crisis of 1982

Above: Leopoldo Galtieri, President de facto of Argentina (left); map of the Falkland Islands (center); Denis Healey, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (right).

“Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I can't believe it when I hear that you won't see me
Don't. Don't you want me?
You know I don't believe you when you say that you don't need me
It's much too late to find
When you think you've changed your mind
You'd better change it back or we will both be sorry
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!
Don't you want me, baby?
Don't you want me? Oh!” - “Don’t You Want Me?” by the Human League

“The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.” - Jorge Luis Borges

In 1965, the United Nations called upon Argentina and the United Kingdom to reach a settlement of the sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands - an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf.

The principal islands are about 480 kilometers east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about 1,210 km from Cape Dubouzet at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of about 52°S. The archipelago, with an area of 12,000 square kilometers, comprises East Falkland, West Falkland, and 776 smaller islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, but the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defense and foreign affairs. The capital and largest settlement is Stanley on East Falkland.

In the mid 1960s, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) regarded the islands as a nuisance and barrier to UK trade with South America. Therefore, while confident of British sovereignty, the FCO was initially prepared to cede the islands to Argentina. When news of a proposed transfer broke in 1968 however, the British citizens living on the islands reacted with disbelief and fury. They, on the whole, did not want to be transferred.

Back in Westminster, elements sympathetic with the plight of the islanders were able to organize an effective parliamentary lobby to frustrate the FCO’s plans. Negotiations continued, but in general failed to make meaningful progress; the islanders steadfastly refused to consider Argentine sovereignty on one side, whilst Argentina would not compromise over sovereignty on the other. The FCO then sought to make the islands dependent on Argentina, hoping this would make the islanders more amenable to Argentine sovereignty. Despite these efforts, however, Islander resistance persisted.

In 1977, then-British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in response to heightened tensions in the region and the Argentine occupation of Southern Thule, secretly sent a force of two frigates and a nuclear-powered submarine, HMS Dreadnought, to the South Atlantic, codenamed Operation Apprentice. It is unclear whether the Argentine government was aware of their presence, but British sources state that they were advised of it through informal channels. Nevertheless, talks with Buenos Aires on Falklands sovereignty and economic cooperation opened in December of that year proved inconclusive.

The following year, with the Labour Party under Denis Healey swept back into power, the new PM made the decision to stop pressuring the islanders. “If they want to remain British,” Healey told his cabinet. “Then by all means, let them be British”.

Meanwhile, the other nation involved in the dispute - Argentina - had been in the midst of devastating economic stagnation and large-scale civil unrest against the National Reorganization Process, the military junta that had governed the country since 1976. Backed by the Bush Administration as part of Operation Condor, the Argentine junta held an abominable human rights record and was deeply unpopular with the populace of the country. A further shake up occurred at the tail end of 1981, when a new junta came to power, headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri as Acting President, supported by Air Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya. Of these men, Admiral Anaya was the most hawkish on the Falklands Issue. Indeed, he was supremely confident that, should the Argentines employ military force to seize the islands, “then the British will not intervene”.

Above: Second “March of Resistance” held on December 9th - 10th, 1982. The flag reads "Let the 30,000 who disappeared show up alive” (desaparecidos in Spanish); this event was organized by the “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”, a human rights organization dedicated to protesting the military junta.

Admiral Amaya began to bend Acting President Galtieri’s ear toward military intervention in the Falklands. Through a (largely performative and ceremonial) invasion, Argentina could seize new territory, and punch a “fading” Great Power in the nose without having to worry about any potential repercussions. This could, Amaya argued, distract public attention in Argentina away from the country’s chronic economic depression and the ongoing human rights violations of the “Dirty War”. If successful, defeating and humiliating Britain could only bolster Argentine prestige and raise the junta’s legitimacy. Galtieri began to formulate a plan.

On March 19th, 1982, a group of Argentine scrap metal merchants (which had been infiltrated by Argentine Marines) raised the Argentine flag at South Georgia Island, a provocative act that would later be seen as the first offensive action in the forthcoming “Falklands War.”

In response, the Royal Navy ice patrol vessel HMS Endurance was dispatched from Stanley to South Georgia on the 25th. The Argentine military junta, suspecting that the UK would reinforce its South Atlantic Forces, ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands to be brought forward to April 2nd.

Despite numerous warnings by Royal Navy captain Nicholas Barker - commanding officer of the Endurance - and others in the South Atlantic, the British government was initially shocked by Argentine attacks on the islands. Such bold action on the part of the Argentines had not been predicted, especially with new rounds of talks scheduled to take place at the UN later in the year. For his part, Barker believed that Defence Secretary John Silkin had “practically invited” the Argentines to invade. The year prior, Silkin had made comments in his 1981 review of British Defence policy that as a “cost saving measure”, the Royal Navy should withdraw Endurance - the last of its ships in the South Atlantic - from the region indefinitely. Barker believed that Buenos Aires took these comments as confirmation that the British would “not lift a finger” to protect the islands.

On April 2nd, 1982, Argentine forces launched Operation Rosario - a series of amphibious landings across the Falkland Islands. The invasion was met with a fierce but brief defense organized by the Falkland Islands' Governor Sir Rex Hunt, giving command to Major Mike Norman of the Royal Marines. The local garrison consisted of 68 marines and 11 naval hydrographers, assisted by 23 volunteers of the Falkland Islands Defence Force (FIDF), who had few weapons and were mostly used as lookouts. The Argentine forces began their attack by seizing an empty barracks at Moody Brook, then moving on Government House - the official residence of the Governor - in Stanley. When it became clear to Governor Hunt that further resistance was futile, and only likely to get his small detachment killed, he ordered a ceasefire and surrendered. The governor, his family and the British military personnel were flown to Argentina that afternoon and later repatriated to the United Kingdom.

Above: Argentine soldiers interact with Falkland Islanders during the opening stages of the invasion (left); Sir Rex Hunt, colonial Governor of the Falklands, who mounted a brave defense, then surrendered when it became clear that he could not hope to hold out without reinforcements from the Home Islands (right).

Prior to the April 2nd invasion, the British had already taken action of their own.

Responding to the attack on South Georgia on March 29th, the Royal Navy dispatched the nuclear submarines HMS Spartan from Gibraltar, and HMS Splendid from Scotland, both to support Endurance. Supply ships, such as the Fort Austin were also dispatched from the Mediterranean. Dispatching additional ships was considered, but initially rejected, as the Defence Ministry did not wish to endanger other operational commitments until they knew for certain the seriousness of the threat posed by the Argentine invasion.

On the 30th of March, an emergency cabinet meeting was called back at 10 Downing Street in London. Prime Minister Denis Healey chaired the meeting. He was said to be taking the entire situation “deathly seriously”, referring to it, even at this fairly early stage, as a “crisis in the making”. At this meeting, the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, advised that “Britain could and should send a fully outfitted task force if the islands are invaded”. The cabinet, led by Healey, agreed.

Well, mostly agreed.

Two ministers - Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council Michael Foot; and Secretary of State for Energy Tony Benn - both opposed the move as a matter of principle. Both men were staunch anti-war pacifists. They had built their reputation in the Labour Party during the 1960s and 70s as opponents of first American and Australian involvement in Southeast Asia and later, British involvement in Rhodesia. Though they sympathized with the plight of the Islanders, neither man supported going to war with Argentina over the islands. Instead, Benn and Foot voiced their preference that the matter be submitted to the International Court at the Hague for arbitration.

Above: Tony Benn (left) and Michael Foot (right); the two members of Healey’s Ministry who disagreed with the Prime Minister’s authorization of the use of force against Argentina during the Falklands Crisis.

The PM balked. Famously, Healey responded to the ministers’ complaints by declaring, “Arbitration? Gentlemen, they’re already shooting down there!” The time for arbitration has passed.”

Healey’s outlook on the crisis was determined by a number of factors. Chief among them was his view of geopolitics. Though certainly pragmatic and flexible, Healey was also an old school Cold Warrior. Despite his social democratic domestic politics, Healey strongly believed that furthering British interests meant containing communism in general, and Soviet influence around the globe in particular. It also meant being willing to fight, up to and including war, to protect the people of Britain and her outlying territories.

Another major factor contributing to Healey’s position was his experience as a decorated veteran of the Second World War.

After graduating from Oxford in 1940, Healey enlisted in the British army and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in April of 1941. Serving with the Royal Engineers, he saw action in the North African campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943) and the Italian campaign (1943 - 1945). He was the military landing officer (“beach master”) for the British assault brigade at Anzio in 1944. Healey later became an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire, a chivalric order) in 1945. He left the service with the rank of Major. He declined an offer to remain in the army, with the rank of Lieutenant colonel, as part of the team researching the history of the Italian campaign under Colonel David Hunt. He also decided against taking up a senior scholarship at Balliol, which might have led to an academic career. Instead, Healey joined the Labour Party, launching his political career.

Still in uniform, he gave a strongly left-wing speech to the Labour Party conference in 1945, declaring, “the upper classes in every country are selfish, depraved, dissolute and decadent”.

Needless to say, Healey made quite the impression.

Throughout the Wilson Ministry of the mid 1960s, Healey served as Secretary of State for Defence, a position which only solidified his “fighting” stance on foreign affairs. In that position, Healey helped plan and execute the early stages of the War in Rhodesia. As Shadow Defence Minister throughout the Randolph Churchill and Thatcher governments in the mid 1970s, Healey remained intimately interested in military affairs. When he became Labour leader on the eve of the ‘78 election, Healey promised not just to restore the British economy, but to protect Britain’s military strength and prestige.

Finally, there were, of course, political considerations.

While public opinion polling in the UK proper was not available to the Healey Ministry during these early days of the crisis, the PM correctly predicted that the British people would overwhelmingly favor a military response to Argentina’s aggression. Indeed, if Healey did not pursue a spirited defense of the Falklands, it was very possible that the Tories, now under their newly elected leader Geoffrey Howe, would bludgeon Labour with their inaction and ride the issue to victory in subsequent elections, presently scheduled for sometime in 1983. This was in addition to public opinion in the Islands themselves which, again, overwhelmingly favored continued union with Britain.

Though Healey respected Benn and Foot personally and professionally, he also felt that his wayward ministers were his chief rivals within the cabinet for leadership of the Labour Party. Indeed, both Benn and Foot had run against Healey in the last leadership election and finished third and second, respectively. The PM could not help but wonder to what degree the two men’s protests were calculated political decisions, to differentiate themselves in the eyes of their staunchly pacifist party base. A “principled stance” here could lead to possible victory for them in the party’s next leadership election.

Frankly, Healey was more than a little frustrated.

When all ministers except for Benn and Foot voted to go ahead with military intervention, Healey asked them to sign onto the order being given to Admiral Leach, as he wanted it to be unanimous. The two ministers refused. Healey then asked them both for their resignations; both were promptly submitted.

Two days later, on April 1st, Leach sent orders to a Royal Navy force carrying out exercises in the Mediterranean to prepare to sail south. Following the full-scale invasion on April 2nd, after an emergency meeting of the cabinet, approval was given to form a task force to retake the islands. This was backed up in an emergency sitting of the House of Commons the next day. Though Benn and Foot’s resignations caused a minor scandal for the PM, any hit the government took in the polls was almost immediately papered over by a “rally around the flag” effect, as patriotic Britons supported their leader in this time of crisis.

Above: Prime Minister Denis Healey, leader of the UK during the Falklands War (left); the cover of Newsweek on April 19th, 1982 (right); the title of the cover story is of course, a reference to the 1980 Star Wars sequel of the same name.

On April 6th, the British Government set up a War Cabinet to provide day-to-day political oversight of the campaign. This was the critical instrument of crisis management for the British with its sphere being to “keep under review political and military developments relating to the South Atlantic, and to report as necessary to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee”. The War Cabinet met at least daily until it was dissolved on August 12th. Although Denis Healey is described as “dominating the War Cabinet”, Lawrence Freedman notes in the Official History of the Falklands Campaign that he “did not ignore opposition or fail to consult others. However, once a decision was reached, he ‘did not look back’”

Upon learning that the British would, in fact, use military force to retake the islands, Argentina shifted its efforts toward trying to drum up support for a UN Resolution against British intervention. Argentina’s representatives at the UN pointed to earlier resolutions calling on both sides to settle the Falklands issue through “discussion” and “arbitration”. They tried to capitalize on Benn and Foot’s resignations as “signs of discontent” with armed conflict within Westminster. Unfortunately for them, this discontent did not materialize.

Meanwhile, on April 1st, London told the UK ambassador to the UN, Peter Shore, that an invasion was imminent and that he should call an urgent meeting of the Security Council in order to get a favorable resolution against Argentina. Shore had to get 9 affirmative votes from the 15 Council members, and to avoid a blocking vote from any of the other four permanent members (The US, France, USSR, and China). The meeting took place at 11:00 am on April 3rd, New York time (4:00 pm in London). United Nations Security Council Resolution 502 was then adopted by 10 to 1 (with Panama voting against) and 4 abstentions. Significantly, the Soviet Union and China both abstained.The resolution stated that the UN Security Council was:

“Deeply disturbed at reports of an invasion on April 2nd, 1982 by armed forces of Argentina;
Determining that there exists a breach of the peace in the region of the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas),
Demands an immediate cessation of hostilities;
Demands an immediate withdrawal of all Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)
Calls on the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom to seek a diplomatic solution to their differences and to respect fully the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”

The resolution was a significant diplomatic victory for the UK; it gave the British the upper hand diplomatically by not only allowing for British military intervention (which would be a legitimate case of self-defense), but also by placing the blame for the conflict squarely on Argentina. The British also received diplomatic support from its fellow Commonwealth nations. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand all withdrew their ambassadors from Buenos Aires following the Argentine invasion.

In a surprising turn of events, not only did French president Francois Mitterrand not order his UN ambassador to veto the resolution, he also went so far as to declare an arms embargo with Argentina, “until such time as peace shall be restored in the Falklands”. France allowed UK aircraft and warships use of its port and airfield facilities at Dakar in Senegal, and provided dissimilar aircraft training so that Harrier pilots could train against the French aircraft used by Argentina.

Above: Francois Mitterrand, President of France, who surprised many by not only not opposing Britain’s use of force against Argentina, but by actively supporting their efforts. Many saw this as an attempt by Mitterrand to “pivot” back toward his fellow NATO allies.

This is not to say that the British had universal international support. Far from it. Though Chile’s government opposed Argentina’s invasion (Chile was in negotiations with Argentina for control over the Beagle Channel at the time and feared that Argentina would use similar tactics to secure the channel), as did Brazil (who officially “remained neutral”), other nations, such as Cuba and Peru, supported it. Cuba, in particular, attempted to rally either the Soviet Union or the Non-Aligned Movement to support Argentina’s actions. In response, British diplomats complained that Castro’s regime seemed to be “attempting to cynically exploit this crisis” in order to pursue normalization and recognition of its regime. Despite Cuba’s efforts, however, Asian and African nations declined to back Argentina.

The Soviets described the Falklands as a “disputed territory”, recognizing Argentina's ambitions over the islands, and called for “restraint on all sides”. While Soviet media frequently criticized both London and Washington’s actions throughout the crisis, critically, the Soviets did not veto the UK’s security council resolution at the UN. This allowed the resolution to go through without incident, signaling that Buenos Aires could not expect Soviet diplomatic support, either. Some in the Kremlin did suggest vetoing the resolution, but First Secretary Romanov declined. He argued that to do so would “needlessly antagonize the west” for no noticeable gain on the part of Moscow. Unfortunately, this sense of restraint would not win out in October, when the Soviets created a crisis of their own with Sweden.

Meanwhile, some “shuttle diplomacy” took place between the two members of NATO’s “special relationship” - the UK and the United States. On April 8th, 1982, US Secretary of State Ed Muskie arrived in London on a mission from President Robert F. Kennedy. Muskie’s objective was to provide American diplomatic support for British operations by playing the role of prospective mediator. The US’s position on the entire episode could not have been clearer. America firmly supported her British ally.

Madeleine Albright, the US Ambassador to the UN, had been among the earliest and most vocal supporters of Shore’s resolution. Indeed, although some in the United States viewed Britain’s actions as being in opposition to the Monroe Doctrine (a European power intervening in the Western Hemisphere to protect its sphere of influence), most Americans (if they were even aware of the conflict at all) supported Britain, which they viewed as the US’s chief partner on the world stage.

For his part, President Kennedy considered the matter to be an “open and shut case”. The UK was America’s chief ally. His administration considered the junta in Buenos Aires to be an illegitimate, authoritarian regime at war with its own populace. He was never going to support Argentina against Britain, especially not when the Falkland Islanders (and this was the key point to Kennedy) wanted to remain part of the UK. Kennedy ordered the CIA to provide Britain with access to relevant information gathered by American spy planes and satellites, all of which would prove invaluable during the subsequent liberation of the islands. Both chambers of the US Congress later passed resolutions supporting both the UK’s use of force and the President’s support of their actions.

The US would also provide the UK with 200 sidewinder missiles for use by their Harrier jets; along with eight Stinger surface-to-air missile systems, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and mortar bombs. On Ascension Island, the underground fuel tanks were empty when the British Task Force arrived in mid-April 1982 and the leading assault ship, HMS Fearless, did not have enough fuel to dock when it arrived off the island. The United States diverted a supertanker to replenish both the fuel tanks of ships at anchor there and the storage tanks on the island with approximately 7,600,000 liters of fuel. The Pentagon - under Secretary of Defense Scoop Jackson - further committed to providing additional support in the event that the war dragged on into the Southern Hemisphere's winter. In that scenario, the US committed tanker aircraft to support Royal Air Force missions in Europe, releasing RAF aircraft to support operations over the Falklands.

Above: Secretary of Defense Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, who oversaw the delivery of US material aid to the British during the Falklands War.

Secretary of State Muskie attempted to arrange an emergency summit between Galtieri’s regime and the British government to avert war, but the Argentines proved elusive. Realizing that the world (even including much of Latin America) did not support their cause, they nevertheless felt confident that, having occupied the islands by force, they were “impervious” to British counter-attack.

Thus, it came to war.

The nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror set sail from Scotland on April 4th. The aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes and their escort vessels left Portsmouth, England only a day later. Hermes would serve as the flagship for the task force, around which all operations were planned. On its return to Southampton from a world cruise on April 7th, the ocean liner SS Canberra was requisitioned and set sail two days later with the Third Royal Marine Commando Brigade aboard. The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II was also requisitioned, and left Southampton on May 12th, with the 5th Infantry Brigade on board. The whole task force eventually comprised 127 ships: 43 Royal Navy vessels, 22 Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships, and 62 merchant ships; quite the fleet, indeed.

Despite this admittedly impressive display of naval might, the retaking of the islands was, nonetheless, considered to be extremely daunting. The chances of a British counter-invasion succeeding were assessed by the US Navy as “a military impossibility”. This was largely due to the geographic isolation and remoteness of the Falkland Islands themselves. The task force’s headquarters was established by mid-April at an airbase, co-located with Wideawake Airfield, on the mid-Atlantic British overseas territory of Ascension Island. Ascension is located nearly 6,000 km away from the Falklands. Another difficulty would be Britain’s lack of deployable air cover to the region. The British had just 42 aircraft available for air combat operations: 28 Sea Harriers and 14 Harrier GR.3s. Compared to the Argentine air force, which could deploy between 50 and 120 jet fighters, the British seemed hopelessly outnumbered. The British also lacked crucial airborne early warning and control aircraft, and had to contend with the Argentine surface fleet, which boasted the powerful, French-built Exocet anti-ship missiles.

Despite the challenges they faced, the Royal Navy got to work.

After establishing their headquarters on Ascension Island, the fleet sent a small force of Royal Marines to recapture South Georgia. Meanwhile, back at headquarters, a new wing of aircraft was assembled, including Avro Vulcan B Mk 2 bombers; refueling craft; and McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR Mk 2 fighters to protect them.

Engagements between the opposing sides began in April. The British Task Force was shadowed by Boeing 707 aircraft of the Argentine Air Force during their travel to the south. Several of these flights were intercepted by Sea Harriers outside the British-imposed Total Exclusion Zone; the unarmed 707s were not attacked because diplomatic moves were still in progress and the UK had not yet decided to commit itself to armed force. By the end of the month, however, the British established a no-fly zone over the islands to accompany their “Total Exclusion Zone”.

Above: Royal Navy FAA Sea Harrier FRS1 (left); and the Avro Vulcan B Mk 2 bomber (right); two of the primary aircraft employed by British forces in the Falklands War.

On April 21st, the first landings on South Georgia by the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) began. These commandos, highly trained for operations in extreme environments, were sent ahead to act as reconnaissance for the rest of the Royal Marines to follow. Despite initial setbacks, including poor weather and threats of an Argentine submarine in the vicinity, the commandos regrouped and launched a full-scale attack on the 24th. The day following, a naval and air battle broke out with the Argentine submarine Santa Fe, which was so severely damaged in the fighting that it could not submerge. The ship was later abandoned at a jetty in South Georgia. After a short forced march by the British troops and a naval bombardment demonstration by two Royal Navy vessels (Antrim and Plymouth), the Argentine forces, a total of 190 men, surrendered without resistance.

The message sent from the naval force at South Georgia to London was, “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen.” Prime Minister Healey broke the news to the media, telling them to “Toast to that news, and congratulate our forces and the Marines!” The war to retake the Falklands had begun in earnest with a British victory.

On May 1st, British operations on the Falklands proper opened with the first of five raids on the airfield at Stanley. A Vulcan bomber from Ascension Island flew a 15,000 km round trip, dropping conventional bombs across the airfield runway. The mission required repeated aerial refueling using several tanker aircraft operating in concert, including tanker-to-tanker refueling; the entire mission took its crew over 15 hours to complete.

Though the overall effect of these raids - codenamed “Operation Black Dog” - are difficult to determine, they did have a marked effect on Argentine and British morale. The Argentines realized that the British could and would strike, even from such a vast distance away. They also recognized that if the RAF could strike them at Stanley, they could also hit the Argentine mainland, if they so desired. The Argentine air force was forced to redeploy fighter aircraft from the Falklands toward the mainland further north. This served to severely undermine Argentine attempts to maintain air superiority.

Because the Falklands possessed only three airfields (one of them - at Stanley - paved), and none of these were long enough to launch fast jet aircraft, the Argentines were forced to launch their own fighters from the mainland. This delayed their reaction time and hampered their ability to respond to British attacks, to perform patrols, and to provide close air support to their soldiers on the ground. When Argentine planes did manage to reach the Exclusion Zone, jets launched from Hermes and Invincible were well-positioned to intercept them.

Above: A map showing Infantry deployment in the East Falklands after British landings in San Carlos.​

A blow-by-blow account of the War - which wound up lasting for 2 months, 1 week, and 4 days - is not necessary.

Suffice it to say, the opening moves around South Georgia were repeated, albeit at larger scale and at greater cost in both men and material on the Falklands themselves. Throughout May, the naval and air war led to continued British victories. This was followed in June by the counter-invasion and liberation of the islands themselves, first by commandos, then by additional numbers of Royal Marines. Stanley, the capital and thrust of Argentine defenses, surrendered on June 13th. The following day, Prime Minister Healey announced a ceasefire and the commencement of negotiations for the Argentines’ surrender. A week later, on the 19th, the British retook the South Sandwich Islands as well.

In total, 901 people were killed in the 73 days of fighting - 645 from Argentina; 253 from the United Kingdom. The British also suffered 770 injured or wounded compared to 1,168 Argentines injured or wounded.

Though brief, the war was far bloodier than either side expected. For such a relatively “small” and ultimately, undeclared war, the conflict produced considerable casualties. The material loss was also far greater than expected - especially of shipping and aircraft. For a couple of “bald men fighting over a comb”, the results turned out to be pretty gruesome.

Back in the United Kingdom, Denis Healey’s popularity soared. The success of the Falklands campaign was widely regarded as a factor in the turnaround in fortunes for the Labour government, who had been slipping in opinion polls for months before the conflict began. Healey’s rival, Conservative leader Geoffrey Howe was forced to admit, “In Healey, Labour has finally found a war leader we can all rally behind.” Following the British victory in the Falklands, Labour returned to the top of the opinion polls by a wide margin and went on to win the following year's general election in a landslide. Subsequently, any planned cuts for the budget of the Royal Navy were quietly abandoned.

Above: Prime Minister Denis Healey (left); Labour Party logo, circa 1982 (right).​

The full-British citizenship of the Islanders themselves was swiftly restored. Investments in their quality of life - including political devolution and economic liberalization - were swiftly enacted as a kind of recompense for what they’d been through. London also moved to provide the Islanders with a viable garrison of British troops and naval vessels to patrol nearby waters. Hermes, the aircraft carrier flagship of the fleet, remained in the Falklands until the airstrip at Stanley could be lengthened and upgraded to accommodate RAF jet fighters permanently. This new arrangement - informally called “Fortress Falklands” - showed the world a reinvigorated Britain, committed to a confident, powerful defense policy, even under Labour. Many in popular culture would call the war “a last hurrah for the British Empire”.

In Argentina, the war led to the collapse of the military junta. Having humiliated the nation on the international stage, any remaining confidence or good will that the military might enjoy amongst the Argentine people evaporated. Following the general election held in October of the following year, democracy returned to Buenos Aires. Raúl Alfonsín, leader of the resurgent Radical Civic Union’s progressive/social democratic wing, was elected President of Argentina in a landslide. Ironically, Alfonsín was the son of a Falkland Islander mother. He spent his first year in office undoing many of the authoritarian excesses of the junta and seeking justice for their crimes.

Above: Raúl Alfonsín, the “father of modern democracy in Argentina” (left); the logo for the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), Alfonsín’s political party (right).

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: Personal Computing Takes Off! ​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 158 - Shake it Up: The PC & Video Game Revolutions

Above: The IBM Personal Computer (left); the X-128 Computer along with Xerox executive Steve Jobs (right); in 1982 both would become early icons of the personal computing revolution.

“Shake it up, make a scene
Let them know what you really mean
And dance all night, keep the beat
And don't you worry 'bout two left feet
Just shake it up, oo, oo
Shake it up, oo oo, yeah
Shake it up, oo, oo
Shake it up, oh, yeah” - “Shake it Up” by the Cars

“I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.” - Bill Gates

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” - Steve Jobs

The personal computing revolution, which had its origins in the microchip developments of the mid to late 1970s, exploded into life in the early 1980s.

The 1977 release of what came to be called the “Trinity” - the Commodore PET 2001, the Xerox X-2, and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 - marked a turning point. Indeed, in the run up to the release of the “Trinity”, several firms were in fierce competition to develop and release the first truly successful commercial PC.

Chuck Peddle - an American electrical engineer at Motorola - designed the Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) around the MOS 6502 processor, which he had designed. The PET was, in essence, a single-board computer with a simple TTL-based CRT driver circuit driving a small, built-in monochrome monitor with 40×25 character graphics. The processor card, keyboard, monitor and cassette drive were all mounted in a single metal case. In 1982, Byte Magazine referred to the PET design as “the world's first personal computer”.

The PET shipped in two models; the 2001–4 with 4 KB of RAM, and the 2001–8 with 8 KB. The machine also included a built-in Datassette for data storage located on the front of the case, which left little room for the keyboard. The 2001 was announced in June 1977 and the first 100 units were shipped in mid October of that year.

Although the machine was fairly successful, there were frequent complaints about the tiny calculator-like keyboard, often referred to as a "chiclet keyboard" due to the keys' resemblance to the popular gum candy. This was addressed in the upgraded "dash N" and "dash B" versions of the 2001, which put the cassette outside the case, and included a much larger keyboard with a full stroke non-click motion. Internally a newer and simpler motherboard was used, along with an upgrade in memory to 8, 16, or 32 KB, known as the 2001-N-8, 2001-N-16 or 2001-N-32, respectively.

The PET was the least successful of the 1977 Trinity machines, with under 1 million sales.

Above: The “Trinity” of early PC units: the Commodore PET 2001 (left), the Xerox X-2 (center), and the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 (right).​

Steve Wozniak (AKA “Woz”) developed the X-1 and subsequent X-2 designs based on the earlier “Alto” design, which was in turn developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the early 1970s. The X-2 had color graphics, a full QWERTY keyboard, and internal slots for expansion, which were mounted in a high quality streamlined plastic case. The monitor and I/O devices were sold separately. The high price of the X-2, along with limited retail distribution, caused it to initially lag in sales behind the other Trinity machines. However, in 1979 it surpassed the Commodore PET, receiving a sales boost attributed to the release of the extremely popular VisiCalc spreadsheet which was initially exclusive to the platform. Though it fell back to 4th place after the release of Atari’s popular 8-bit systems, the X-2 maintained “steady” sales growth. This was largely credited to its durability and longevity; it boasted a lifetime that was up to eight years longer than other machines. By 1985, the X-2 had sold more than 2.1 million units. By the time production ceased in 1993, that number had risen to 4 million. Clearly, Wozniak had designed one Hell of a computer.

Above: Steve Wozniak, lead designer of the “X-2” computer.​

Finally, the Tandy Corporation (better known as Radio Shack) introduced the TRS-80, which would be retroactively known as the Model I as the company expanded the line with more powerful models. The Model I combined the motherboard and keyboard into one unit with a separate black-and-white monitor and power supply. Tandy's more than 3,000 Radio Shack storefronts ensured the computer would have widespread distribution and support (repair, upgrade, training services) that neither Commodore nor Xerox could.

Despite this huge capacity for sales, however, the Model I suffered from myriad technical difficulties. For one thing, it could not meet FCC regulations on radio interference due to its plastic case and exterior cable-design. There were also internal problems. Keystrokes would randomly repeat at times. The earliest versions of the hardware produced bizarre glitches. Though these were promptly patched, by that time the damage was done. Amongst enthusiasts, the Model I developed a reputation as a “glitchy”, unreliable machine. Radio Shack managed to sell about 1.5 million of them before discontinuing production in favor of their Model II and later, Model III.

A few years later, in January of 1980, as the nation reeled from news that Mo Udall would not seek a second term and prepared for truly contested primaries from both parties, Byte magazine announced in an editorial that, “the era of off-the-shelf personal computers has arrived”.

Whereas before, PCs were seldom, if ever, found in individuals’ homes, they were fast becoming a consumer product, an appliance that more and more everyday Americans would have access to. Though the author of that article admitted that his own PC had cost him $6,000 cash from his local store, he claimed that those costs were “bound to drop as the technology becomes more widely available”. He couldn’t have known how true that prediction would prove to be.

At the time of that article’s publication, aforementioned pioneers like Radio Shack, Commodore, and Xerox manufactured the vast majority of the one half-million microcomputers that existed. As component prices continued to fall, however, many companies entered the computer business. This led to an explosion of low-cost machines known as “home computers” that sold millions of units before the market imploded in a price war in the early 1980s. Below are just a few of the many companies that got in on the “home computer” market.

…

In the late-1970s, Atari was already a household name in the United States. This was due to both their hit arcade games (Pong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, etc.), as well as the hugely successful Atari VCS game console (and its iconic cartridges). Realizing that the VCS (AKA the “Atari 2600”) would have a limited lifetime in the market before a technically advanced competitor came along, Atari decided they would become that competitor, and started work on a new console design that was much more advanced.

Whilst these designs were under development, the “Trinity” machines hit the home PC market, amidst considerable fanfare. Atari thus faced an important decision: should they continue to focus their attention on video game consoles; or should they shift their efforts toward a home computer system instead? In the end, the company decided that the possible reward was worth the risk. They decided to try their hand at designing a PC. Atari did have some advantages over potential competitors in this market.

For one thing, thanks to the rabid success of the 2600, the company had a sound understanding of the home electronics market. Consumers generally wanted high-quality products that would last a long time and were simple and easy to use. The average American had little understanding of how electronics worked, but if the interface was made intuitive enough, then that wouldn’t matter. As a result of these insights, Atari’s first commercial PCs - the Atari 400 and 800, released in 1978 and mass-marketed the following year - were virtually indestructible and just as easy as their consoles to use. The design concept was the same as the 2600 - just plug in a cartridge and go. With a trio of custom graphics and sound co-processors and a 6502 CPU clocked at about 80% faster than most competitors, the Atari machines had capabilities that no other microcomputer could match.

Despite these advantages, however, Atari’s initially strong sales (~600,000 by 1981) slowed once faced with competition from the Commodore 64, which saw release in 1982. Eventually, Atari would retrieve the proverbial toe that it had dipped in the home computer market to redouble its efforts on the video game front. By that time, they were facing increased competition from other firms with other consoles.

1982 would thus prove a pivotal year for Atari.

As soon as the 2600 shipped, work began on its successor. This next-generation console would, in time, come to be labeled the “5200”. Management’s hope was that the company’s recent (if modest) success in the PC market would provide a solid platform for launching their next console. The team responsible for designing the 5200 faced a number of challenges, however.

Above: An early prototype of the Atari 5200, its “next-generation” console, after the 2600.​

First, the team had to determine, at a conceptual level, what the 5200 would be. The primary appeal of the console was supposed to be that it would be technically superior to the 2600, boasting better graphics and better performance. However, with how saturated the 2600 market already was, an obvious concern was whether the new 5200 would be backwards compatible. The question provoked fierce debate among the designers.

Proponents argued that consumers would feel “betrayed” and “angry” if their expansive library of 2600 cartridges were suddenly rendered “obsolete and useless” by the next-generation console. Backwards compatibility would also mean that until the 5200 gradually replaced the 2600, Atari could continue to design and release games for the older console.

Those who opposed backward compatibility argued that these supposed strengths were actually weaknesses. Making the 5200 able to play 2600 games would require that hardware components be added to make compatibility with the outdated software possible. This would increase costs that would, in turn, have to be passed along to consumers. Further, management feared that backwards compatibility would discourage coders and third-party game developers from utilizing the new technical capabilities of the next generation console.

In the end, management decided that higher costs (but longer shelf life and happy customers) was a trade-off worth making. The 5200 would be backwards compatible.

Another major challenge came with the limitations imposed by the hardware available in home consoles at the time. For all their bulk, arcade cabinets had the physical space necessary to house enough memory units to facilitate more complex (and engaging) games. Porting these games over to the home consoles often removed features by necessity.

In 1982, Atari received what should have been a golden opportunity. They obtained the rights to develop and publish the console port of Pac-Man, arguably the most popular arcade game of all time. Unfortunately, they were forced to produce two versions (issued on two differently colored cartridges) - one for the 2600 and one for the 5200. The former was far inferior to the latter. To compensate for the lack of ROM space, many visuals were removed, much to the chagrin of fans. The hardware also struggled when multiple ghosts appeared on the screen creating a flickering effect. This version of the game was panned and did not sell well.

The 5200 version was better received and for good reason. Indeed, when the 5200 was officially released in November 1982, Pac-Man 5200 as it was known to critics, was one of the cartridges included with the console. A wise move. Sales of the 5200 increased dramatically.

Under Warner (their parent company) and Atari's chairman and CEO, Raymond Kassar, the company achieved its greatest success, selling millions of 2600s, 5200s, and personal computers. At its peak, Atari accounted for a third of Warner's annual income and was the fastest-growing company in US history at the time. It would, however, have to face an increasingly competitive market and a price-collapse. More on that later.

…

Above: The Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Britain’s best-selling computer of the 1980s.​

Sinclair Research Ltd was a British electronics company founded by Sir Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. Sinclair had originally founded Sinclair Radionics, but by 1976 was beginning to lose control over the company and started a new independent venture to pursue projects under his own direction.

Following the commercial success of a kit computer in 1977 aimed at electronics enthusiasts called the MK14, Sinclair Research (then trading as Science of Cambridge) entered the home computer market in 1980 with the ZX80 at £99.95. At the time the ZX80 was the cheapest personal computer for sale in the UK. This was succeeded by the more well-known ZX81 in the following year (sold as the Timex Sinclair 1000 in the United States). The ZX81 was one of the first computers in the UK to be aimed at the general public and was offered for sale via major high street retail channels. It would become a significant success, selling 1.5 million units.
In 1982 the ZX Spectrum was released, later becoming Britain's best selling computer, competing aggressively against Commodore and other brands. Enhanced models in the form of the ZX Spectrum+ and 128 followed; again, to much fanfare. The ZX Spectrum series would sell more than 5 million units. The machine was also widely used as a home gaming platform with more than 3,500 games titles eventually released for it.

…

Above: The Commodore 64, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, still the highest-selling desktop personal computer model of all time (left); The TI-99/4A, Texas Instruments’ home computer, and the first 16-bit computer to be commercially available (right). Commodore and Texas Instruments engaged in a fierce rivalry and price war throughout the early to mid 1980s.

…

After moving its corporate headquarters to Bellevue, Washington in January 1979, Microsoft, led by founders and childhood friends Paul Allen and Bill Gates, entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix called Xenix. The company really came into its own (and came to dominate the OS market), however, when IBM licensed MS-DOS from them in early 1981. Other innovations pioneered by the company at the time included the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division - Microsoft Press - founded the same year.

Unfortunately, just as the company was really beginning to take off, tragedy struck one of the two men at the heart of the operation. In 1983, Paul Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma - a type of cancer that affects white blood cells. Allen would later claim, in a memoir he wrote about his time at Microsoft, that his old friend Gates attempted to dilute Allen’s share of the company following his diagnosis. According to Allen, Gates told him that this was because he [Allen] was “not working hard enough for the company”. Allen later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private space flight, and other ventures unrelated to Microsoft.

Meanwhile, Gates, who was already serving as CEO and Chairman of the Board of the burgeoning enterprise, began to take on an almost exclusively executive/management role, leaving the actual programming and design to others. Gates and Allen’s relationship had been strained for months prior to Allen’s diagnosis, primarily over disagreements about equity in the company and so forth. Gates later admitted that he “regretted” his and Allen’s falling out. The two later reconciled at the end of the decade and resumed their friendship, which lasted until the end of Allen’s life in 2018.

…

Meanwhile, in Kyoto, Japan, key events in the late 1970s and early 80s were shaping the destiny of another iconic video game company - Nintendo. Two of these events occurred in 1979: its American subsidiary - Nintendo America - was opened in New York City; and a new department focused on arcade game development was created. In 1980, one of the first handheld video game systems, the Game & Watch, was created by Gunpei Yokoi from the technology used in portable calculators. It became one of Nintendo's most successful products, with over 43.5 million units sold worldwide during its production period, and for which 59 games were made in total.

Around this time, Nintendo also entered the arcade market with titles like Sheriff, Radar Scope, and most iconically, Popeye. The last of these, helmed by lead-designer Shigeru Miyamoto, would become one of the most popular of the decade.

Starring the iconic “sailor man” from the cartoons, the game made history as one of the first of a new genre - “platformers”. Players control Popeye as he climbs a series of ladders and avoids rolling barrels, with his ultimate objective being to reach Olive Oyl and rescue her from that brute Bluto. Players can also destroy the barrels and make Popeye nigh-invincible for a short time by grabbing a can of spinach, which is placed at a different location in each level. Over 15 million units of the Popeye game would be sold in America; when combined with the home console port - produced for the ColecoVision - that number rises exponentially. Indeed, after the flop of Radar Scope in the US, Popeye can largely be credited with saving the fledgling Nintendo America from ruin.

Above: Promotional poster for Popeye - the first arcade game that would make Nintendo a household name in America (left). The game’s lead-designer was rising star Shigeru Miyamoto. A prototype of the Nintendo Advanced Video System (AVS), built in late 1982 and released in 1983, distributed by Atari in North America (right).

The only downside to Popeye was that it featured licensed characters, rather than originals that would belong to Nintendo exclusively. If the company wanted to continue producing games starring Popeye and his supporting cast, then they would need to keep renegotiating contracts with King Features over the rights. Thus, company management tasked Miyamoto with creating a cast of original characters who could star in Nintendo’s next games. This he would take up with gusto, creating a series of games that would serve as the foundation of Nintendo’s roster moving forward: Donkey Kong in 1982; Mario Brothers in 1983, starring Mario and Luigi Mario, a pair of Italian-American plumbers; and later, The Legend of Zelda in 1986.

All of these and more would eventually be released on Nintendo’s “Advanced Video System”, a redesign of the company’s earlier “Famicom” console, set to be released on the North American market, distributed by Atari, Inc. Though originally plans were made for an advanced 16-bit console that was really more of a home computer-hybrid, these were later scrapped. Nintendo management feared that the keyboard and other accessories would “overwhelm” non-technophiles and “frighten off” the emerging market of “casual” video game fans.

Though Atari and Nintendo would both be severely shaken by the so-called “Video Game Crash” that occurred the following year (caused largely by the glut of low-quality games and an overly saturated market), both companies would, thanks to high-quality control and a loyal customer base at the heart of their operations, emerge on the other side intact. Both would continue to dominate the video game industry until more Japanese companies - Konami & SEGA - and later, tech companies - Microsoft, Sony - entered the game.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: More US News & Politics from 1982​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 159 - Vacation: More Domestic News & Politics from 1982

Above: The largest nuclear disarmament rally in American History was held on June 12th, 1982, featuring a stunningly large crowd of over 1 million people and a free concert in New York City’s Central Park (left); the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee (right).

“Can't seem to get my mind off of you
Back here at home, there's nothin' to do
Now that I'm away, I wish I'd stayed
Tomorrow's a day of mine that you won't be in
When you looked at me, I should have run
But I thought it was just for fun
I see I was wrong, and I'm not so strong
I should have known all along that time would tell
A week without you
Thought I'd forget
Two weeks without you and I
Still haven't gotten over you yet” - “Vacation” by the Go-Gos

“The future of energy? We are there!” - Slogan for the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee

“The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.” - John F. Kennedy

New York City was under occupation. Or at least, it felt that way. Nowhere in the United States had ever seen anything like it. A tsunami of bodies marched in lockstop toward Central Park. They crowded every avenue and into the cross streets. By the time they reached their destination on the balmy afternoon of June 12th, 1982, they numbered over one million. They called for an end to nuclear weapons. They demanded an end to the Cold War.

In the Park, a grand bandstand had been erected. A number of high-profile musical acts were scheduled to perform a concert - entitled “No Nukes Now”. None of the acts had been announced ahead of time; even many of the organizers didn’t know who would be there. But that did little to stem the tide of human bodies. The people came to the park because they wanted peace, disarmament, and for the administration to put its money where its mouth was when it came to making the world a safer place, more dedicated to human rights. By the time that the acts revealed themselves, the crowd was already red-hot. They would sing, dance, chant, hoot, and holler. They would have themselves an incognito Woodstock, only two-and-a-half times the size and with an overly political aim. They would make their voices heard.

Jackson Browne and Joan Baez were first on the list. The latter performed the iconic anti-war hymn of the early 60s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and dedicated her performance to its author, her one-time boyfriend, Bob Dylan, who was tragically taken far too early in a motorcycle crash near his home in Upstate New York, 16 years earlier, in 1966. He’d only been 25. Next up came Gary U.S. Bonds, whose upbeat, rock n roll sound brought the energy back up just in time for his successor onstage, James Taylor, to turn in a more thoughtful mood. His big hit - “Fire and Rain” - took on a new tenor in the context of preventing nuclear war. Linda Rondstadt was the penultimate act. Her sweet, dramatic love songs cried out in pain, calling for an end to the pain of mother Earth.

Finally, there was “the Boss”.

Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band took the stage to raucous applause just as the sun was setting over the Big Apple. Probably the biggest name on the show that day, Springsteen not only brought mainstream media attention and star power to the event, but also a deep musical catalog of both his own original material and songs from the annals of American folklore. Though the Boss was famous for including tracks like “Down by the Riverside” and “This Land is Your Land” for years, the former of these - with its refrain of “I ain’t gonna study war no more” - seemed especially appropriate for the occasion. He debuted another song that he’d - “Born in the USA”, an anti-war protest song that explored the fates of veterans of America’s “forgotten wars” - Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Rhodesia. This song would later serve as the title track for one of Springsteen’s most acclaimed albums when it was released in 1984. The Boss performed for over three hours, edging the entire event just up to the 10 PM curfew laid out by the NYPD. By the time he finally concluded the last song of his encore - “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” - the cops were just about ready to pull the plug.

In the end, however, the police had nothing to worry about.

The crowd, their throats hoarse from shouting all day, headed home in a largely peaceful, orderly manner. No crimes were associated with the concert at all, save a few incidences of littering and minor vandalism. All in all, the concert was a tremendous success, and proved an iconic and memorable moment in the counterculture of the 1980s. It showed that the Baby Boomers were remaining true to their activist selves and pushing the Kennedy Administration to adhere to its self-reported progressive ideals.

Above: Bruce Springsteen performs at the 1982 “No Nukes Now” rally in Central Park, NYC.​

Though the concert, and the activist movement that it helped activate, were indeed critical of the status quo, they also represented a beacon of hope for many in the United States. While the majority of Americans favored “toughness” and “strength” against the Soviets in foreign policy at the moment, according to Gallup polling, a slim majority also supported some kind of effort toward nuclear disarmament, or at the very least, non-proliferation.

One policy proposal for this would be the so-called “nuclear freeze” - a treaty between the US and USSR to halt the testing, production, and deployment of further nuclear weapons. The movement became so popular throughout 1982 that by the time summer gave way to autumn and the campaign for midterm elections was underway, the “nuclear freeze” became a frequently asked question for candidates up and down the ticket. Generally speaking, the Republican Party was against the idea. They did not want to yield any ground whatsoever to the Soviet Union. The Democrats, however, were split. While most supported the idea, in theory, politically, they feared coming out too strongly for peace in such a tense atmosphere. Similar to the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis tensions of the early 1960s, there was a great deal of fear and paranoia that the Soviets were “coming right for us”. The last thing that even liberals wanted to do was been seen as “hobbling” the national defense.

Placating the hawks in his cabinet (especially Defense Secretary Scoop Jackson), President Kennedy took the line of opposing any kind of nuclear freeze “at this time”, while still being “open” to the idea in the future. “Without any tangible display of good faith,” Kennedy explained to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw in an interview. “We cannot trust the Soviet Union to adhere to any agreement we might propose.”

“Does that represent a shift, or a change, from your previous views on the issue?” Brokaw asked.

“No.” Kennedy replied, with a decisive head-shake. “Our hope has always been and must always be for peace. But as George Washington once said, ‘There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.’” In other words, Cold War tensions would continue to climb.

The announcement “frustrated” the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, which constituted a significant portion of the president’s own base. At the same time, however, it did win Kennedy praise from his usual critics - hawks both within his own party and among the GOP. Many pundits viewed Kennedy’s defense policy as a calculated shift to the center, in light of the ongoing geopolitical crises throughout the world. In any event, they remained popular with the majority of the American public.

Above: President Robert F. Kennedy (left) and NBC News Anchor Tom Brokaw (right) sat down for an interview in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in July 1982. During this interview, Kennedy explained why his administration “would not pursue a nuclear freeze at this time”.

…

Above: Promotional poster for the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.​

The 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, marked a significant moment in the history of both the city of Knoxville, and international expositions as a whole. Themed “American Energy Turns the World,” the fair aimed to showcase advancements in technology, culture, and innovation, particularly in the realm of energy production and consumption. Held from May 1st to October 31st, 1982, the fair attracted millions of visitors from around the globe, leaving a lasting impact on the city of Knoxville and the world at large.

The idea of hosting a World's Fair in Knoxville emerged as early as the Romney era. City leaders recognized the potential economic and cultural benefits such an event could bring to the region, which held ambitions of becoming a major regional transportation and networking hub - on the scale of Atlanta, Georgia or Charlotte, North Carolina. After securing the bid to host the fair in 1976, Knoxville underwent extensive preparations, including infrastructure improvements and the construction of fairgrounds along the banks of the Tennessee River. Nearly $85 Million in fundraising was collected by the committee in charge of organizing the event; most of that came from grants from local, state, and the federal government. Wealthy individuals, including banker (and 1978 Democratic nominee for governor) Jake Butcher, donated a great deal as well. An additional $224 million in federal and state funding was utilized by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to improve the transportation infrastructure system surrounding Knoxville in preparation for the fair. These improvements included completion of the Interstate 640 semi-beltway, and improvements to the infamous “Malfunction Junction” of then I-75 (now I-275) and I-40 north of the fair site.

What did all that money buy?

Above: Another promotional poster for the Fair.​

At the heart of the fair, the Energy Pavilion stood as a symbol of progress and innovation in energy technology. Visitors explored exhibits highlighting various energy sources, from traditional fossil fuels (hosted by the now thoroughly broken up energy companies) to emerging renewable technologies like solar and wind power. Interactive displays and demonstrations engaged attendees of all ages, promoting energy conservation and environmental awareness. It was here, at the Pavilion, that the Fair officially kicked off on May 1st, 1982, with an address delivered by President Robert Kennedy.

Perhaps the most iconic structure of the fair, the Sun sphere, soared 266 feet into the sky, offering panoramic views of Knoxville and the surrounding countryside. Originally intended as a symbol of the fair's energy theme, the golden globe became a beloved landmark and remains a prominent feature of Knoxville's skyline to this day.

Over 20 countries participated in the fair, each showcasing their unique culture, heritage, and technological achievements. From Japan's futuristic technology displays to Germany's traditional beer gardens, these international pavilions provided visitors with a global perspective on energy and innovation. Housed within a massive geodesic dome, the Expo Center served as the hub for educational programs, seminars, and corporate exhibits. Industry leaders and experts from around the world convened to discuss pressing issues in energy and technology, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.

And of course, there was entertainment.

Some of the performers at the fair included: Bob Hope; Dolly Parton; Tennessee Ernie Ford; Johnny Cash and June Carter; Chet Atkins; Hal Holbrook; Glen Campbell; and Ricky Skaggs. Though already aided by the prior release of Urban Cowboy, “classic” country music underwent a small bump in popularity following the fair.

On August 14th, 1982, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots played each other in a preseason game at a stadium on the fairgrounds. The Patriots won the game in overtime, 24 - 21, in front of a crowd of more than 93,000, making it the fourth-best-attended game in NFL history. Later, on October 23rd, the NBA followed the NFL’s lead, hosting an exhibition game at the fair between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers. The Celtics narrowly won, giving New England two sports victories at the World’s Fair.

Though at first the people of Knoxville were somewhat unsure about what the Fair would mean for their community, the event’s legacy has largely been positive. For one thing, the Fair injected millions of dollars into the local economy, stimulating growth in the tourism, hospitality, and retail sectors. Hotels, restaurants, and businesses across Knoxville benefited from increased foot traffic and visitor spending during the six-month-long event. The fairgrounds themselves, situated in Knoxville's downtown waterfront area, underwent extensive redevelopment prior to the event. After the fair's conclusion, these revitalized spaces continued to attract visitors and investment, contributing to the ongoing revitalization of the city center. In the years that followed, Knoxville would become a more popular and prosperous city, though never on the dreamed scale of Atlanta.

… ​

In general, the World’s Fair also helped to project an image of the “New South”.

Ten years after Lyndon Johnson won the Democratic nomination for president (and nine years after his death), Dixie had undergone monumental changes to its character and culture. While of course, discrimination, prejudice, and racism were by no means eradicated, the region had made great strides forward. As the South attempted to leave its problematic past behind in favor of a more hopeful, inclusive future, its influence and wealth relative to other regions in the United States grew. The development of cheap, widely-available air-conditioning caused a population boom across much of the Old Confederacy and Southwest - the so-called “Sun Belt” - and made the region much more livable.

Above: A map showing the “Sun Belt” of the Southern US, with major cities marked.​

This trend toward the Sun Belt could be felt in myriad fields. In some ways, the presidencies of George Bush - a Texan by choice if not by birth - and Mo Udall - a native Arizonan - were emblematic of this shift of economic and political capital southward throughout the 1970s. So too were the rise of evangelical Christianity in general and televangelism in particular.

By the late 1960s, scholars of American History - most notably economic historian Robert Fogel - claimed that the nation was undergoing a “Fourth Great Awakening”. Like the first, second, and third Great Awakenings, this movement was a Christian religious crusade, bringing with it seismic spiritual shifts across the nation. Though many other scholars took issue with the term, whether or not they constituted an awakening, many changes did take place.

The “mainline” Protestant churches weakened sharply in both membership and influence, while the most conservative religious denominations (such as the Southern Baptists) grew rapidly in numbers, spread across the United States, had grave internal theological battles and schisms, and became politically powerful. This was seen, in many ways, as a reaction to the “darkness” and “absurdity” of the Great Depression and the Second World War. Other evangelical and fundamentalist denominations also expanded rapidly. At the same time, secularism also grew dramatically, and the more conservative churches saw themselves battling secularism in terms of issues such as LGBT+ rights, abortion, and creationism vs. evolution in schools. Many new religious movements also emerged such as the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate, and the corresponding rise of the anti-cult movement.

In some ways, this movement was presaged by events throughout the 1960s.

The baby-boomers, as a generation, distrusted institutions and favored a highly individualistic approach to religion and spirituality, as they did in many other fields. Most churches at this time began to adopt a more “charismatic” approach to their preaching, with even the famously institutional Catholic church adopting some of these changes during this time. The Second Vatican Council - held from 1962 to 1965 - famously allowed for the celebration of mass in native languages, rather than the traditional Latin, among other changes. There was also a shift across the board toward greater emphasis on lay spirituality, with everyday people, rather than ordained or highly-educated church officials, taking on a greater and greater role in church life. These new Christians emphasized a “personal relationship with God” and embraced “the church’s central role in the American community”. Mormonism - the church of the highly devout President George Romney and former faith of Mo Udall - gained tremendous respectability in the wake of two of their own occupying the Oval Office. By the early 1980s, Mormonism was largely seen as “just another denomination” across the United States. Joseph Smith would have been pleased.

Above: Reverend Billy Graham (left); Pope Stanislaus (center); and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (right); arguably, these three men served as figureheads in the Fourth Great Awakening.

Of course, Christianity wasn’t the only faith or spiritual movement making waves in the United States at the time.

Interest in Eastern philosophies and ways of thinking grew steadily throughout the 1960s and 70s, especially among the intelligentsia and college-educated boomers. Western-born advocates for these schools, such as Alan Watts and Ram Dass, brought religions such as Buddhism and Taoism to college campuses and radio shows across Britain and the United States. Over time, words like “zen” and “mindfulness” would begin to enter the popular lexicon. Unlike the “prosperity Gospel” preached by many of the Fourth Great Awakening’s preachers, Dass, Watts, and their acolytes spoke of a slow-lived life of simplicity and purpose. Many found these ideas comforting, especially in the hard economic times of the “Seesaw Seventies”. But as the economy rebounded in 1982 (more on that in a moment), “prosperity Gospel” spread far and wide, especially across the Bible Belt, but infiltrating other regions of the country as well.

Politically, the swelling ranks of evangelical Christians remained an active part of both the Democratic and Republican coalitions across the country, largely along the old, regional lines. In the Midwest, evangelical protestants were mostly Republican. In the South, they stayed “true blue Democrats”. As Billy Graham, one of the most influential leaders of the movement (and a lifelong Democrat, who occasionally voted Republican) put it, “Jesus doesn’t have a political party”.

Ronald Reagan, the GOP candidate in 1980, came the closest to unifying evangelicals as a voting bloc. But even he failed to effectively do so. Robert Kennedy, despite being Catholic, was the most devoutly religious president the US had seen since Romney. Graham, after having opposed JFK in 1960 due to his Catholicism, eventually came around. He endorsed RFK for president in 1980, though he later felt “uncomfortable” supporting Kennedy when the president came out so strongly as an advocate for the acceptance of LGBT+ Americans, and for taking such a pro-choice stance on abortion. Across the country, both communitarian Southern Democrats and conservative Midwestern Republicans were taking notes.

Above: President Robert F. Kennedy kneeling, his hands folded in prayer. The president’s religiosity seemed very much in line with many Americans’ throughout the “Fourth Great Awakening”.

…

Above: Political cartoon showing President Robert F. Kennedy - “the choice of the baby-boomers” (left); the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street (right). The “Kennedy Boom” of the 1980s would go on to be the best economy (in terms of longest, sustained growth) in US History up to that time.

When Bob Kennedy entered the White House on January 20th, 1981, he inherited what his predecessor - Mo Udall - had called “a mild recession”. Indeed, despite inflation finally being whipped, unemployment remained high - nearly 8% - nationwide.

To combat this, to restore Americans’ faith, and to put money in their pocketbooks (as well as eliminating the federal budget deficit), Kennedy made the Long-Ullman Tax Act of 1981 his top priority. This law, combined with the president’s order to the federal reserve in the fall of 1981 to finally lower interest rates after nearly seven years of keeping them at record highs, led to an absolute explosion in aggregate demand by the first quarter of 1982. Americans, with more money in their pockets and easier access to cheap credit, did what Americans do best: they spent. Throughout 1982, the economy ramped up, then roared back to life. The growth-rate for the nation’s GDP that year was 5.02%, a significant improvement from the doldrums of the last decade.

As industries (whether expanding service sectors or more traditional, manufacturing fields and trades) grew, they sought more workers to meet rising demand. Unemployment plummeted. Every month, hundreds of thousands of new jobs were created, many of which were high-paying union jobs with good benefits, hard-earned during the strikes and labor action of the decade prior. The tech and green energy fields (computer chips, solar panels, wind turbines, etc.) were still in their infancy, but experienced rapid growth throughout the decade. Meanwhile, across the “rust belt”, small to mid-sized cities began to restructure themselves into transportation and logistical hubs between the major factory towns and ports.

While investments in infrastructure and combating inflation the decade prior were necessary steps to lay the foundation for this unprecedented prosperity (which would only continue to grow - 1983 saw GDP growth of nearly 8%), and the aforementioned “oil glut” helped keep prices across the board low, President Kennedy and his Democratic allies in Congress (whether fairly or not) received the lion’s share of the credit from the public.

Heading into the 1982 midterms, President Kennedy coined a new slogan for the Democrats to run on - “Peace and Prosperity”. It was short, to the point, catchy, and really captured what RFK wanted the American people to think of when they pulled the lever for his party. The GOP, he argued, had stumbled through the Seesaw Seventies because they prioritized the interests of the rich and powerful over those of everyday Americans.

“When we invest in the people,” Kennedy would often claim in stump speeches across the nation. “The nation prospers.”

This brand of bottom-up, populist economic policies, “Kennedy-nomics” the press took to calling them, were not only effective at producing growth across the socioeconomic spectrum, but were widely popular as well. Even middle and upper-middle class suburbanites, long the backbone of the GOP coalition, largely approved of Kennedy’s economic policies. These voters - mostly white, college-educated, married, with families - also appreciated Kennedy’s foreign policy, as well as his religiosity, and the socially conservative tone he projected, even as he supported steady social progress on a number of issues. This demographic, which would come to be called “Kennedy Republicans” by pollsters and pundits alike, were key to Democratic strategy in the 1982 midterms and would eventually prove instrumental in the president’s bid for reelection in 1984.

But while RFK was building a successful case for reelection at home, overseas, a major crisis was brewing.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: The Start of the Hårsfjärden War​

 

[President_Lincoln]

Chapter 160 - Heat of the Moment: The Hårsfjärden War of 1982

Above: A confrontation between a Soviet helicopter and a Swedish patrol boat on September 30th, 1982 (left); a political cartoon in the Chicago Sun-Times about the Soviet submarine reconnaissance that led to the war (right).

“I never meant to be so bad to you
One thing I said that I would never do
A look from you and I would fall from grace
And that would wipe the smile right from my face
Do you remember when we used to dance
And incidents arose from circumstance
One thing led to another, we were young
And we would scream together songs unsung
It was the heat of the moment
Telling me what my heart meant
The heat of the moment showed in your eyes” - “Heat of the Moment” by Asia

“Under Lenin, the Soviet Union was like a religious revival, under Stalin like a prison, under Khrushchev like a circus, and under Andropov like the US Post Office. Under Romanov… I’d say it's beginning to look like the inmates running the asylum.” - National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski at a cabinet meeting, as recorded by President Robert F. Kennedy’s tape recording system, October 1st, 1982.

“Anfall är bästa försvar.” - Swedish proverb, translation: “Attack is the best defense”.

Following the onset of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the government of Sweden adopted a stance of armed neutrality, seeking to avoid being pulled into the direct influence of either superpower. The thinking in Stockholm was that neutrality of this sort had secured Swedish sovereignty through both of the World Wars. It had prevented the country from suffering invasion, bombing, or any other serious damage as a result.

Despite this adherence to neutrality, however, the vast majority of Sweden's military efforts were focused on defending against the potential for armed aggression by the Soviet Union. Without the backing of NATO afforded to its neighbors Norway and Denmark, Sweden would, if ever threatened, not be able to count on other countries coming to its aid. Hence, Sweden maintained a sizable navy, and was concerned with interdicting any foreign forces that violated Swedish territorial waters in the Baltic Sea.

From 1974 to 1981, a series of incidents occurred in which the Swedish Navy claimed to have detected foreign submarines near or inside Swedish territorial waters. Most notably, in 1981 an incident occurred in which the Soviet submarine S-363 became grounded 10 kilometers off the coast of Karlskrona naval base; further inflaming tensions was the fact that the grounded submarine was well within Swedish territorial waters and possibly armed with nuclear weapons. The Swedish Navy, enraged by these violations of their nation’s sovereignty, began to patrol its territorial waters more regularly and more equipped with deadly force. In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that if they caught Soviet submarines in their waters again, some sort of armed confrontation would follow.

Sure enough, they would.

…

Above: Grigory Romanov, First Secretary of the Soviet Union (left); the Soviet Naval flag (right).​

On the Soviet side of things, in late September 1982, First Secretary Grigory Romanov was nearing the end of his ninth month in power. For the most part, his administration had seemed fairly “steady as she goes”, especially in the eyes of western observers.

While domestically, Romanov ramped up his crackdowns on corruption, “laziness”, and other “bourgeois behavior” in an effort to combat stagnation, abroad, the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan continued, as did the USSR’s buildup of arms, both for their own military and for those of their satellite states. Part of that military buildup, of course, involved expanding the Soviet Navy.

Due to the Soviet Union's geographic position, submarines were considered the capital ships of the Navy. Submarines could penetrate attempts at blockade, either in the constrained waters of the Baltic and Black Seas or in the remote reaches of the USSR's western Arctic, while surface ships were clearly much easier to find and attack. Because of its opinion that “quantity had a quality of its own” and at the insistence of Admiral of the Fleet Sergey Gorshkov, the Soviet Navy continued to operate many of its first-generation missile submarines, built in the early 1960s in 1982.

In some respects, including speed and reactor technology, Soviet submarines achieved unique successes, but for most of the era lagged their Western counterparts in overall capability. In addition to their relatively high speeds and great operating depths, they were difficult targets to destroy because of their multiple compartments, their large reserve buoyancy, and especially their double-hulled design. Their principal shortcomings were insufficient noise-damping (American boats were quieter) and primitive sonar technology. Acoustics was a particularly interesting type of information that the Soviets sought about the West's submarine-production methods, and the long-active John Anthony Walker spy ring may have made a major contribution to their knowledge of such.

Throughout Andropov’s tenure and into the New Troika/Suslov and Romanov eras, the Soviets extensively probed the Baltic Sea with their submarines. The goal of this was to map routes that could, in the event of conflict with the West, be best suited to deploying the subs to deliver their payloads of ballistic missiles (both nuclear and conventional). Unfortunately, these patrols often entered the territorial waters of neutral Finland and Sweden. The Navy assured Comrade Romanov, as they had Andropov and Suslov before him, that the Scandinavian nations would “not retaliate” over these minor incidents, for fear of provoking a war.

How wrong they would turn out to be.

…​

In 1982, the Swedish government planned to conduct an anti-submarine warfare exercise to test the nation's ability to detect and destroy foreign submarines. This exercise was planned for September, coinciding with NATO military exercises in the Baltic. The complete purpose of the Swedish exercise (termed, in English, “Operation Safeguard”) remains a matter of debate; some sources speculate that the operation was a standard military exercise which had been modified to respond to a false alarm, while others claim that the operation was either a pre-planned attempt to entrap a foreign submarine (using unknowing American warships calling in Stockholm as bait) or an opportunistic attempt to engage a trespassing sub.

Simultaneously, the Swedish parliament (having been reshuffled amidst a series of elections) was in a state of flux, effectively leaving the nation without a government from late September to early October.

Above: Map of the Baltic Sea region. (Note: International boundaries are not accurate to TTL).​

Just before dawn on the morning of September 30th, Swedish naval units detected an “unknown foreign submarine” entering Hårsfjärden Bay near the coastal town of Nynäshamn, where the Swedish Navy had established a hydrophone network and placed naval mines to interdict an intruding submarine. The detection of the sub caused the Swedish Navy to scramble its forces. Though there were some dissenting voices within the navy who feared that an armed response might cause “an escalation”, high command felt that the time had come to “get serious” with “whomever might be violating our sovereignty”. These officers knew full well what they were implying. They gave the go-ahead for their ships to pursue the intruding vessel, to lay depth charges, and to take “any and all defensive actions that the captain and crew deem necessary, up to and including deadly force.”

The Soviet sub was K-123, an Alfa-class, nuclear-powered attack-sub first put into service back in 1971. Among the fastest submarines (and indeed ships in general) in the world at the time, the sub was also heavily-automated and technologically advanced for its era, especially as far as the Soviet Navy was concerned. It required a relatively small crew of only 30, and could reach speeds of up to 41.2 knots (76.3 km/hr). Perhaps its best feature was its specially designed, titanium-alloy hull, which allowed for its high speeds and ability to dive quite deep. Unfortunately for the crew aboard K-123 that day, the Swedish Navy had, by scrambling immediately, effectively trapped them. About three hours after Swedish detectors first picked up the sub’s presence, Hälsingland, a Swedish destroyer, managed to chase it into a particularly narrow stretch of water. The destroyer lay depth charges. One of these struck K-123 head on, severely damaging that advanced hull, and catching the crew off-guard. Panicked, the sub’s captain saw no choice but to surface and beg the Swedes to tow them to the nearest port, lest they lose the sub.

Above: K-123 and Hälsingland, the two ships that arguably started the Soviet-Swedish War of 1982.​

After radioing back to Stockholm about what had occurred, the Hälsingland and its escort ships received permission to surround the sub, move in, apprehend the Soviet sailors, and recover the damaged sub. The Swedes did so. The units involved thought surprisingly little of the incident.

Despite the damage to K-123, no one was killed or even severely injured in the skirmish. The Swedes provided food, blankets, and medical care to the few Soviet sailors who were hurt. Tentative plans were made to house them in Stockholm until their return to the USSR could be arranged. All in all, most expected this to blow over. It was really a political question, not a military one. After all, this was typical Cold War espionage, was it not?

Meanwhile, the Swedish high command, who had orchestrated the navy’s response in hopes of just this outcome, were ecstatic. They had, in their mind, restored Swedish national honor, and stood up to the “lumbering brutes” (the Soviets), embarrassing them on the international stage. The Soviets would issue some kind of awkward apology for the whole thing and the world would move on. The only thing this incident would change, they thought, was that perhaps the Soviets might think twice about violating Swedish neutrality again.

They were wrong.

First Secretary Romanov was in the middle of his morning meetings when his military advisors interrupted to inform him of what had transpired in Hårsfjärden Bay. By the time the First Secretary was informed, however, Defense Minister Ustinov and Foreign Minister Gromyko, who had more friends and informants in Moscow than the Union’s new leader, were already well-aware of the day’s events. They’d taken the liberty of advancing to the opening stages of crafting the USSR’s response. As usual for them, they favored a “strong” response.

Above: Dmitry Ustinov, Minister of Defense (left); Andrei Gromyko, Foreign Minister (right).​

Without worrying about the minor inconvenience of checking with the First Secretary first, Gromyko called a press conference in Moscow, where he coolly refused to apologize. According to the Foreign Minister, the sub’s mission had been “a routine patrol of international waters, to support the defense of the USSR’s allies in the Warsaw Pact”. He condemned Sweden’s “attack”, which he decried as, “an outrageous and unwarranted assault upon a vessel of a friendly nation in peacetime”. Claiming to speak on behalf of the Kremlin, he demanded the “immediate and unconditional” release of the Soviet sailors, as well as reparations be paid by the Swedish government, not just to repair damage done to the submarine, but also as a punitive measure. He also called upon Stockholm to “carefully consider the situation in which it [Sweden] has now found itself”, and to “rein in the ambitions of its naval officers before the nation suffers for them.”

As if that thinly-veiled threat were not direct enough, Ustinov almost simultaneously gave the order for the Soviet Navy and Air Force to move to “heightened” combat readiness, the middle of three statuses (between “routine” and “full” readiness). The US/NATO equivalent would be somewhere around DEFCON 3. Across Europe, as word of Gromyko’s statement and Ustinov’s order hit the morning television shows and evening newspapers, a wave of tension, even fear, erupted. This was the first serious threat of military action between one of the superpowers and a “neutral” country in Europe in nearly thirty-five years.

Across the Pond in Washington, President Kennedy was informed of the events off the coast of Sweden in his first morning security briefing at around 6 AM local time. It was the top item on the agenda. The Soviets’ aggressive moves worried the president. Not only did he fear that innocent people would get hurt, even killed over what essentially amounted to posturing by the Kremlin, but especially concerning was the nearby presence of Denmark and Norway - NATO allies since the alliance’s formation in 1949. If this incident escalated, as it looked like it was about to, and fighting spilled into one of the Nordic NATO countries, Article 5 of the NATO Treaty would be activated. All of Western Europe, Canada, and indeed, the United States would be called to war with the Soviet Union.

Hoping to contain the situation, some on EXCOMM recommended that the president use the “hotline” to speak directly with First Secretary Romanov. Kennedy held off for the time being, however. He believed that if he stepped in too soon, he could be seen as politicizing the situation, or turning it into an opportunity to grandstand. That would open Romanov to further criticism and humiliation back home, and might harden his stance, which, at present, Kennedy was not certain could be ascertained. He also did not want to preempt Swedish sovereignty over their own affairs.

Above: President Robert F. Kennedy (left); Soviet Ambassador to the US Anatoly Dobrynin (right).​

Instead, Kennedy called the Soviet embassy and asked to speak to Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States since early 1962. Kennedy knew Dobrynin well. He’d been one of the Kennedys’ chief nemeses during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In their meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room just after lunch on September 30th, Kennedy asked Dobrynin point blank if “[his] country meant to go to war with Sweden”. Dobrynin stated, “that he hoped for a peaceful resolution”. And was “joined in this view by the highest officials of the Soviet government”. Kennedy asked that Dobrynin maintain communication with his office, and that he keep the US infomed. Dobrynin agreed. The meeting concluded after about an hour. Kennedy, however, was not satisfied. He called Thomas J. Watson, Washington's Ambassador in Moscow, and ordered him to “keep a damn good eye on things”. He also ordered the CIA to monitor the situation closely, and to share intelligence with their Western European and NATO counterparts.

Unfortunately, this is where the uncertainty surrounding Sweden’s government at the time begins to play a role in our story.

…

Above: Thorbjörn Fälldin (left) and Olof Palme (right), political rivals whose premierships bookended the Soviet-Swedish War.​

Eleven days before the showdown between K-123 and Hälsingland, on September 19th, the Swedish people went to the polls to vote in that year’s general elections. At the time, foreign affairs were just about the last thing on voters’ minds.

Thorbjörn Fälldin, leader of the center-right coalition which led the country since 1976, had already suffered a political setback the year before, when the rightist Moderate Party chose to withdraw from his government, protesting against Fälldin’s centrist tax policies. Fälldin, the first prime minister from any party but the Social Democrats in over forty years, had been the hope for many in Sweden for change, for an end to the mid-seventies malaise seemingly being felt across Europe and the world. He failed to deliver on those hopes.

On the 19th, Fälldin and his coalition took a shellacking, being roundly defeated by former prime minister Olof Palme and the social democrats, who won another majority with over 2,500,000 votes cast for them, still a record for a single party in Swedish politics.

A longtime protégé of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Palme first became Prime Minister of Sweden in 1969, heading a Privy Council Government. He left office after failing to form a government after the 1976 general election, which, as previously stated, ended 40 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democratic Party. While Leader of the Opposition, he served as special mediator of the United Nations in the Iran–UAR War, and was President of the Nordic Council in 1979. He faced a second electoral defeat that year, but returned, triumphantly, as prime minister following the September 19th, 1982 general election.

Palme is often considered both a pivotal and polarizing figure in Swedish history, both within his own country and around the world. He was, for his entire career up to 1982, steadfast in his non-alignment policy towards the superpowers. He believed that neutrality had “saved” Sweden in the past, carrying it through the 19th and early 20th centuries relatively unscathed. He believed further that neutrality would “save” Sweden again. Accompanied by Palme’s support for numerous liberation movements following decolonization including, most controversially, economic and vocal support for a number of Third World governments. He was the first Western head of government to visit Cuba after its revolution, giving a speech in Santiago praising contemporary Cuban revolutionaries.

Though these stances earned Palme few friends in Washington (where he was viewed as - at best, naïve, and at worst, a puppet-friend of Moscow), he was equally as critical of the USSR as he was the USA. Expressing his “equivalent revulsion” to Erich Honecker and Francisco Franco, for example, he accused both superpowers of “waging ideological war that threatened to engulf the world in fire, while the rest of us simply want to get on with the business of living”. News of his reelection was greeted with equal groans in both Washington and Moscow.

But although Palme emerged victorious, he was not immediately sworn in as Prime Minister of Sweden. The new session of the parliament was not scheduled to begin until October 12th. In the meantime, Fälldin continued to serve as PM.

For his part, Fälldin was not overly surprised when he heard the news of the events of September 30th. Just a year prior, Soviet submarine S-363 accidentally hit an underwater rock about 10 kilometers from the South Coast Naval Base at Karlskrona and surfaced within Swedish waters. Though an investigation performed at the time by Swedish naval vessels in the area for an exercise “could not determine” the true nature of the Soviet ship’s mission, Fälldin suspected (as did many in the West) that the surfacing was proof of Soviet infiltration of the Swedish coastline.

US commentators had advised Fälldin to deploy incident weapons to deter future infiltration. On the basis of an investigation carried out after the incident, the Swedish government concluded that the submarine had “entered Swedish waters knowingly to conduct illegal activities”. Fälldin had afterward given his tacit, if not explicit consent to the navy to pursue “whatever measures they deemed necessary to protect Sweden’s territorial waters from foreign encroachment”.

Now, on September 30th, with his political future all but evaporating before his eyes, Fälldin had one final role to play on the stage of world history.

Upon receiving the official version of Gromyko’s requests from the Soviet ambassador, Fälldin balked. He explained to the ambassador that both he and the Swedish Navy believed that the navy’s actions were justified under international law. He refused to grant the release of the prisoners, or to draft up a bill in parliament to fund any kind of reparations, until Moscow issued a formal apology for K-123’s presence, accepted responsibility for the entire situation, and made some kind of pledge not to violate Sweden’s waters in the future, or to infiltrate their coastline. The ambassador agreed to pass this message along, leaving Fälldin to wonder, constitutionally, what his next move ought to be.

Under the 1975 Instrument of Government, the responsibility of dismissing or appointing a prime minister fell to the Speaker of the Riksdag (parliament). At the moment, that was Ingemund Bengtsson, a Social Democrat and ally of Palme. Though the constitutional mechanism for how this might work (with all the newly elected MPs not yet sworn in) was a bit murky, Bengtsson could, in theory, dismiss Fälldin, appoint Palme prime minister, and call upon the Riksdag, in session, though not for long with the weekend approaching, to vote to confirm Palme early. Given the weight and urgency of the crisis facing the country, this seemed the most likely scenario. But it also had its issues. Under the current configuration of the parties, the social democrats lacked an outright majority. Fälldin could ask his coalition to go ahead with the vote. But would they agree? The elections had been personal and tough at times. Would they really back Palme getting into power, and themselves out of it, early?

It was also possible, Fälldin supposed, for Bengtsson to call the Riksdag into an “Extraordinary Session”. This would allow for the formation of an Interim Government, presumably with Fälldin at its head, to remain in power until October 12th. This struck Fälldin as unlikely, however. His coalition had just been handed one of the biggest electoral defeats in the history of Swedish politics. If Fälldin suggested such a move to Bengtsson, then it might be seen as his hoping to assume “extraordinary powers”, or to remain in power for longer than he was “supposed” to. This was not Fälldin’s intention. But Sweden had a long, proud history of respect for its constitutional ideals and mechanisms. Democracy was wonderful; but it was also slow.

Then there was the issue of Palme himself. The man famously supported “bilateral” relations with both the US and Soviet Union. Would he jeopardize his beloved neutrality in the name of standing up to Soviet aggression? Could Fälldin trust him to handle the crisis effectively? Fälldin hoped so.

After hours of deliberation, Fälldin ultimately decided not to make a decision. At least, not yet. He would allow the Riksdag to do as it would about constitutional matters. In the meantime, he convened his cabinet and worked closely with them (in particular Defense Minister Torsten Gustafsson) on preparing the nation’s (admittedly outnumbered) armed forces for, in Fälldin’s words, “whatever the Russians might try and pull”.

This lack of decisive action had consequences of its own, however.

Above: War Flag and Naval Ensign of Sweden, not used since 1814.

… ​

As the morning of Friday, October 1st, arrived, First Secretary Grigory Romanov had been brought on board with Gromyko and Ustinov’s plans. Though at first Romanov privately favored diplomacy, he understood his advisors’ points about not being made to appear “weak” on the international stage. With America finally flexing its muscles again, so to speak, the USSR could not bear any humiliation, especially from such a small, “insignificant” country as Sweden. Romanov gave Gromyko the go-ahead to turn the previous day’s “requests” into “demands”. Though no specific threat needed to be made, the unspoken threat should be underlined. Gromyko did as he was bid.

Diplomatic cables were exchanged throughout the day on the 1st. Little headway was made.

In Stockholm, the Riksdag met to consider whether or not an “Extraordinary Session” need be called. As the Swedish sailors and high command had, most members of Parliament dismissed the situation as “little more than Russian sabre rattling”. They expected the “posturing” to end “any minute now” and for cooler heads to prevail. In Moscow, however, the mood turned decidedly grim.

On the 2nd, the previous day’s demands became an “ultimatum”. Either Stockholm turned over the captured sailors and K-123 to the Soviets by midnight on the 3rd, no questions asked, with plans for reparations drawn up, or else. Or else what exactly was still left unclear.

Outraged at the tenor of the demands, Fälldin declared that, “The Kremlin is intent on provoking a war in Europe.” Gromyko denied this, but the question on everyone’s mind was: what exactly were Moscow’s intentions? This was getting serious.

Fälldin and the cabinet, which were also trying to simultaneously perform an inquiry into the true nature of the submarine’s mission in Swedish waters, offered to return the sailors, but not the sub, on a promise from Moscow that they would be returned to Stockholm if needed for questioning. They also denied that any reparations would be paid. Moscow refused to accept this.

Whether genuinely frustrated by Sweden’s refusal to comply with the ultimatum, or carrying out the plan that Gromyko and Ustinov had orchestrated from the start, Romanov decided to retaliate against Swedish naval vessels near the edge of Sweden’s territorial waters. He ordered additional Soviet ships - submarines, surface combatants, and support vessels - into the area. He then ordered them to strike, targeting Swedish ships with missile attacks and torpedoes. This order was carried out immediately.

Above: Artist’s rendition of the task force from the Baltic Fleet sent to “deal with” Sweden.​

In the early morning hours of the 3rd, several Swedish warships, caught off-guard by the Soviets’ sudden escalation, were attacked and damaged. More than a dozen Swedish sailors were killed and many of the ships were damaged. Though none sunk, one would eventually be scuttled due to its damage being so severe. The hope, back in Moscow, had been to show Stockholm the gravity of their threats. They thought that if their words were backed up with sufficient force, the Swedes would surrender to their demands.

They thought wrong.

Alarmed and outraged, the international community swiftly condemned the attack. In the US, President Kennedy appeared on national television in a special news bulletin to condemn the attacks, to demand a peaceful resolution to the crisis, and to express his “steadfast support” for the people of Sweden to “defend their liberty and their sovereignty against Soviet aggression”. The president’s words were widely echoed across the Western world, particularly in Europe.

The response was, understandably, most vitriolic in Sweden itself. The Swedish people were aghast that the Soviets had been so brazen as to actually attack them. Sweden, who had not been at war since the dying days of Napoleon Bonaparte’s empire, Sweden, who had remained steadfast in their neutrality for decades, Sweden, whom even the Nazis had known better than to attack, had just been “consciously and deliberately” attacked. In the complex game of geopolitics, Romanov and his backers had just committed a fatal error. They’d not only made a mistake, they’d made an enemy.

The bickering in the Riksdag swiftly faded in the name of national unity. Palme, who until that point had been gesturing that he might favor a negotiated solution to the crisis (perhaps dropping the request for a Soviet apology and allowing only a truncated investigation of the sub’s mission), suddenly sang a different tune. His deeply-held patriotism activated, Palme decried the Soviet leadership as “murderers and warmongers”. He personally visited the families of the fourteen Swedish sailors who’d been killed, and called Fälldin, still prime minister, to offer his rival his “full support”.

This was much appreciated by Fälldin, who ordered the mobilization of Sweden’s armed forces and implemented defensive measures to protect the country’s territory from further incursions. His government then issued a stern warning to the Soviets, emphasizing its commitment to defending Sweden’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We do not want war.” Fälldin’s statement concluded. “But neither do we fear it.” This was a bold statement for the PM to make. On paper, at the time, the Soviets’ military outclassed Sweden’s in virtually every possible metric.

Whereas the entire Swedish army numbered just under 200,000 active-duty personnel, with perhaps another 100,000 in reserve, the Soviet army had several divisions, numbering nearly one and a half-times that number already posted at the Swedish border, far to the north. The USSR also had hundreds of thousands of more active-duty soldiers ready to be redeployed, not to mention the millions of men it held in reserve. Sweden’s entire population in 1982 was only 8.3 million. The USSR’s was nearly 270 million.

While a land war between the two seemed unlikely given the geography involved, Sweden’s chances at sea and in the air did not seem much better.

While Sweden’s navy was professionally trained and widely held to be eminently competent, its entire navy numbered about the same number of vessels as just the Soviets’ Baltic Fleet. If the USSR so desired, it could reinforce the fleet with other vessels from the Arctic or even the Black Sea via the Mediterranean. Because Sweden was not a NATO member, the Soviets did not need to fear Turkey closing the straits near Istanbul to their warships. Sweden could boast maybe 200 aircraft that were “combat ready”. The Soviets possessed hundreds of fighters, bombers, and interceptors in the region, ready to fly at a moment’s notice. The Soviets also possessed strategic air forces (bombers, missiles, etc.) that could decimate Sweden’s infrastructure and domestic cities, sending them, as Curtis LeMay might have put it, “back to the stone age”. Then, there were nuclear weapons. The USSR had the largest stockpile in the world. Sweden had not a single one. Of course, it was also unlikely that the Soviets would be so insane as to annihilate a neutral country over a single incident involving what essentially amounted to a dispute over territorial waters. But at that time, with Cold War paranoia at its highest peak since twenty years prior, anything seemed possible.

Above: The air force roundels of the USSR (left) and Sweden (right).​

At this point, war between the two nations, though as of yet undeclared, seemed inevitable. With Sweden mobilizing and the Soviets refusing to stand down, further firefights between Soviet and Swedish forces were bound to break out, and they did.

Though Swedish vessels were under strict orders not to fire at the Soviets unless fired upon, over the next several days (Oct. 4th - Oct. 8th), a series of skirmishes and brief exchanges of fire were recorded throughout the Baltic Sea, along the border of Sweden’s territorial waters. Several hundred sailors and pilots were killed, several thousand more injured, and a number of ships sunk. Surprisingly, however, the Swedish, at least initially, appeared to be holding their own. They managed to give the Soviets a pretty nasty black eye.

A pattern emerged in these early engagements: the Swedish fought like Hell; the Soviets fought like… well, a bunch of conscripts who were underpaid, overworked, and undersupplied. Soviet commanders, more interested in looking good, currying favor with the Kremlin, and advancing their careers, made short-sighted decisions and generally displayed an incompetence that would later be described by CIA analysts as “mortifying”. Even up against numerically superior forces that were better armed and equipped, the Swedes still seemed capable of providing stiff resistance. They performed daring evasive maneuvers and lay traps for the bigger, cockier Soviet vessels. Though most of the tonnage they managed to sink were unarmed supply ships, this too disrupted Soviet plans.

Ustinov and his high command had worked carefully with Gromyko on a very specific war plan that would allow for multiple “exit ramps” for Sweden to “gracefully” bow out without looking like it had immediately capitulated. First, the Soviet Navy was to eviscerate Sweden’s in these initial combats. Seeing that resistance was futile, Sweden would then surely surrender. If they somehow still refused, then war would be officially declared, and the air force would launch a series of strikes on Sweden’s few air and naval bases. If then the Swedes still did not surrender, well… Not even the Swedes were that foolhardy.

Unfortunately, this plan blew up in Gromyko and Ustinov’s faces. With “tiny” Sweden managing to hold back the Soviet Navy as effectively as they were, all the undeclared war appeared to be doing was exposing the extent of the Soviets’ weakness to the world, the very thing that not backing down from their demands was supposed to have prevented.

The mood in Moscow went from celebratory to panicked rather quickly. Romanov, who by now was furious with his underlings for dragging both him and the Union into this mess, decided that he had had enough. He promptly secured the backing of the rest of the Secretariat and the Politburo. Once he was sure he had this support, he sacked both Gromyko and Ustinov, his former patrons who had brought him to power in the first place. Both men accepted their fate, realizing that they lacked the political capital to oppose it.

Though some, including KGB head Viktor Chebrikov, encouraged Romanov to have the former Ministers “taken care of”, Romanov declined. Finally gaining the confidence in himself he needed to develop his own ideological bent, Romanov decided to pivot toward moderation. He arranged for Gromyko and Ustinov to spend the rest of their lives under close surveillance near their respective hometowns. He appointed Mikhail Gorbachev foreign minister and Sergei Sokolov defense minister in their steads. The First Secretary then turned his attention toward getting himself and his country out of this mess. His chief priority became finding a way to do so without the USSR and its military facing further humiliation. Thankfully, he was about to be offered an olive branch and an exit.

President Kennedy heeded the advice of EXCOMM and reached out to Romanov directly via the “Hotline”. For the very first time, the two leaders communicated with only a translator to aid them, no other intermediaries. Though the conversation was short, blunt, and to the point, it achieved its purpose. Kennedy informed Romanov that he intended to continue to publicly back Sweden.

“If you’d like a way out of this thing,” the president said. “Then I believe I have one.”

Romanov said something. Kennedy waited for the translation. “I’m listening.”

Kennedy, looking across the command center at Ken O’Donnell, breathed a sigh of relief. Listening, the president firmly believed, was truly the first step toward understanding.

… ​

The ultimate agreement that ended the short-lived, undeclared Soviet-Swedish War of 1982 (heavily influenced by President Kennedy’s suggestions, but publicly proposed by US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright), was as follows:

1. Both Sweden and the Soviet Union agree to an immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of military forces from contested areas.
2. Soviet forces will withdraw to pre-conflict positions along the border with Sweden, while Swedish forces will return to their bases. Both sides agree to refrain from any further military action or provocation.
3. Neutral observers, possibly from the United Nations or a neutral country agreed upon by both parties, will be deployed to monitor the ceasefire and ensure compliance with the terms of the agreement. (This role would eventually be played by Finland).
4. A joint verification mechanism, composed of representatives from both Sweden and the Soviet Union, will be established to verify the withdrawal of military forces and monitor the situation along the border.
5. Sweden and the Soviet Union commit to engaging in diplomatic dialogue to address the underlying issues that led to the conflict. This may include discussions on territorial disputes, military maneuvers, and bilateral relations.
6. President Kennedy, or a designated mediator approved by both parties, will facilitate diplomatic negotiations between Sweden and the Soviet Union to resolve any outstanding grievances and prevent future conflicts. (This role would eventually be fulfilled by Kalevi Sorsa, PM of Finland)
7. Both parties agree to explore opportunities for cultural and economic exchange to foster mutual understanding and build trust between the Swedish and Soviet populations.
8. Both Sweden and the Soviet Union express a commitment to reconciliation and cooperation, pledging to work towards a stable and peaceful relationship based on mutual respect and cooperation.
9. A joint statement, issued by the leaders of Sweden and the Soviet Union, reaffirms their commitment to peace, stability, and the principles of international law. The statement acknowledges the challenges faced during the conflict and expresses a shared desire to move forward in a spirit of cooperation.

Because of the manner in which this final point was written, both sides could claim a moral victory. The Swedish could claim that they had stood firm, protected their territorial waters, and enforced international law. The Soviets meanwhile, did not have to admit that they were at fault for the war. They quietly dropped their demands for reparations. In the end, the damaged (but still afloat) K-123 was delivered to Leningrad by Swedish tug boats. The thirty Soviet sailors whose capture had initiated the entire war were also returned. This occurred on October 13th, 1982, the day after Olof Palme began his next term as Prime Minister of Sweden.

The legacy of the Soviet-Swedish War is a complex one.

Despite being undeclared and lasting only about two weeks, it represented the start of a major turning point in the Cold War. An obvious instance of Soviet aggression had backfired spectacularly. The United States once again appeared reasonable, an arbiter of world peace, in comparison. President Kennedy won international praise for his role in negotiating a ceasefire. First Secretary Romanov meanwhile, was criticized for his “indecision” and “deference” that made the war possible in the first place, even if Gromyko and Ustinov were largely blamed for instigating it. Overall, it made the Soviet Union appear very, very weak.

Romanov’s moderate position became increasingly untenable in the Kremlin. Battle lines were being drawn between reactionary hardliners (who believed that Romanov should not have backed down, but should have given the military time to get its act together) and liberal reformers (who believed that he’d been too accommodating to the conservatives in the first place). With Gromyko out as foreign minister and Gorbachev, now one of the most influential voices on the Politburo in, the USSR’s foreign policy began to take a decisive step toward making peace and detente, at least for the foreseeable future. Romanov brought the increasingly popular Gorbachev into the fold, even naming him Deputy First Secretary of the Communist Party. For his part, Gorbachev used the experience of negotiating an end to the conflict to build relationships with President Kennedy and the American diplomats. He would need them to be friendly in order for his long-term plans to work out.

In Sweden, the families of the dead mourned, while the wounded did their best to carry on. Though relatively limited in scope, the war did cause the country’s vaunted policy of neutrality to undergo its first serious reexamination since 1945. Initially, Palme remained aloof to US overtures toward the possibility of Sweden joining NATO. But there was a growing movement within the country to abandon neutrality and to join the alliance. This movement would eventually grow to be too popular for Palme to ignore. In the lead up to the 1986 general elections, he vowed that, if reelected, he would not prevent Sweden’s joining NATO.

Only time would tell if that sentiment would hold.

Next Time on Blue Skies in Camelot: The 1982 Midterm Elections in the US​