The Den Uyl cabinet (11 May 1973 - 19 December 1977) was a Dutch left-wing cabinet under prime minister Joop den Uyl with ministers from PvdA, PPR, D66, KVP and ARP. The last two parties were actually moderately right-wing, but left-wing elements within these parties supported cabinet den Uyl to create a left-wing majority. During the coalition formation, negotiations between the parties were hard because of collisions between uncompromising left-wing radicals and the moderate factions of the left-wing parties and the left-wing Christians.
It was the most progressive Dutch cabinet and seen as very humanist, thinking with the heart instead of the wallet. But this led to an increase of the debts due to an increase in government spending. The aim of the cabinet was to spread income, knowledge and power among the population.
The cabinet was confronted with many problems: the oil crisis, the terrorist attacks by Moluccans seeking independence from Indonesia, the Lockheed affair (bribes accepted by the queen's husband) and the closing of the abortion clinic Bloemenhove. Many plans could not be implemented because of these problems.
The cabinet fell because of a conflict about the development plans of the Dutch surface. A deeper cause was the left-wing mistrust for the Christian ministers, especially in the case of war criminal Menten, where deputy Prime Minister Dries van Agt was ridiculed (so believed Van Agt) by some party members of Prime Minister Den Uyl.
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