The 1970sIn the
1970 general election,
Edward Heath's
Conservatives narrowly defeated Harold Wilson's government reflecting
some disillusionment amongst many who had voted Labour in 1966. The
Conservatives quickly ran into difficulties, alienating
Ulster Unionists and many Unionists in their own party by imposing direct rule on Ulster.
Enoch Powell resigned the Conservative whip and joined the
Ulster Unionist Party, switching from his
Wolverhampton South West seat to
South Down,
and advising those on the British mainland to vote Labour because of
the issues of EEC entry and immigration (Edward Heath had decided to
admit entry to
Ugandan Asians expelled by
Idi Amin).
Labour returned to power again a few weeks after the
February 1974 general electionforming a minority government with Ulster Unionist support. The
Conservatives were unable to form a government as they had fewer seats,
even though they had received more votes. It was the first General
Election since 1924 in which both main parties received less than 40%
of the popular vote, and was the first of six successive General
Elections in which Labour failed to reach 40% of the popular vote. In a
bid for Labour to gain a majority, a second election was soon called
for
October 1974in which Labour, still with Harold Wilson as leader, scraped a majority
of 5, gaining just 18 seats and taking their total to 319.
The 1970s proved to be a very difficult time for the Heath, Wilson
and Callaghan administrations. Faced with a mishandled oil crisis, a
consequent world-wide economic downturn, and a badly suffering British
economy, governments took an
interventionist approach, and companies such as
British Leyland were
nationalised. Pressure on
sterlingcompounded these problems, and by the middle of the decade 1½ million
people were unemployed in the United Kingdom — a previously unthinkable
figure.
Britain had entered the
EECin 1973 while Edward Heath was Prime Minister. Although Harold Wilson
and the Labour party had opposed this, in government Wilson switched to
backing membership, but was defeated in a special one day Labour
conference on the issue
[2]leading to a national referendum on which the yes and no campaigns were
both cross-party - the referendum voted in 1975 to continue Britain's
membership by two thirds to one third. This issue later caused
catastrophic splits in the Labour Party in the 1980's, leading to the
formation of the
SDP.
In the initial legislation during the Heath Government, the Bill
affirming Britain's entry was only passed because of a rebellion of 72
Labour MP's led by
Roy Jenkins and including future leader
John Smith,
who voted against the Labour whip and along with Liberal MP's more than
countered the effects of Conservative rebels who had voted against the
Conservative Whip.
[3]The Labour Party itself had adopted a left-wing agenda, 'Labour's
Programme 1973', a document which pledged to bring about a 'fundamental
and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of
working people and their families.' This programme referred to a 'far
reaching
Social Contractbetween workers and the Government.' Wilson publicly accepted many of
the policies of the Programme but the condition of the economy allowed
little room for manoeuvre. However, the Government did succeed in
replacing the
Family Allowance with the more generous
child benefit, and introduced
redundancy pay.
In 1976, faced with declining health and citing his desire to retire
on his sixtieth birthday, Wilson surprisingly stood down as Labour
Party leader and Prime Minister, and was replaced by
James Callaghan. The latter immediately removed a number of left-wingers (such as
Barbara Castle) from the cabinet. The autumn of 1976 saw the Labour Government being forced ask the
International Monetary Fund(IMF) for a loan to ease the economy through its financial troubles.
Conditions attached to the loan required the adoption of a more
free-market economic programme and a move away from the party's
traditional policies. In the end, the Labour Government did not take
out the IMF loan, causing some to question if it was actually needed in
the first place.
In the same year as Callaghan became leader, the party in
Scotland suffered the breakaway of two MPs into the
Scottish Labour Party(SLP). Whilst ultimately the SLP proved no real threat to the Labour
Party's strong Scottish electoral base it did show that the issue of
Scottish
devolution was becoming increasingly contentious, especially after the discovery of
North Sea Oil.
Ultimately the Labour government of 1974-79 fell victim to a small
majority eroded by by-election losses, economic problems, industrial
unrest and the political difficulties of Scottish and Welsh devolution,
although an arrangement negotiated in 1977 with the Liberals known as
the
Lib-Lab pact and a succession of deals with nationalist parties did help to prolong the government's life.
In 1979, the country faced the disastrous "
Winter of Discontent" that reflected badly upon public opinion of the government's ability to run the country, and in the
1979 general election, Labour suffered electoral defeat to the
Conservatives led by
Margaret Thatcher.
The numbers voting Labour hardly changed between February 1974 and
1979, but in 1979 the Conservative Party achieved big increases in
support in the Midlands and South of England, mainly from the ailing
Liberals, and benefited from a surge in turnout.
The Thatcher yearsThe aftermath of the 1979 election defeat saw a period of bitter
internal rivalry in the Labour Party which had become increasingly
divided between the ever more dominant left wingers under
Michael Foot and
Tony Benn (whose supporters dominated the party organisation at the grassroots level), and the right under
Denis Healey.
The Thatcher government was determined not to be deflected from its agenda as the Heath government had been. A
deflationarybudget in 1980 led to substantial cuts in welfare spending and an
initial short-term sharp rise in unemployment. The Conservatives
reduced or eliminated state assistance for struggling private
industries, leading to large redundancies in many regions of the
country, notably in Labour's heartlands. However, Conservative
legislation extending the right for residents to buy council houses
from the state proved very attractive to many Labour voters. (Labour
had previously suggested this idea in their 1970 election manifesto,
but had never acted on it.)
The election of
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament(CND) veteran Michael Foot to the leadership disturbed many
Atlanticists in the Party. Other changes increased their concern; the
constituencies were given the ability to easily deselect sitting MPs,
and a new voting system in leadership elections was introduced that
gave party activists and affiliated trade unions a vote in different
parts of an electoral college. It led to the decision by the
Gang of Four (former Labour cabinet ministers) on
January 26,
1981, to issue the 'Limehouse Declaration', and to form the
Social Democratic Party.
The departure of even more members from the centre and right further
swung the party to the left, but not quite enough to allow Tony Benn to
be elected as Deputy Leader when he challenged for the job at the
September 1981 party conference.
Logo introduced in 1983 after Labour's disastrous election campaign
Led by an increasingly unpopular Michael Foot, the party went into the
1983 general election with a manifesto dominated by the politics of the party's far-left wing. The manifesto contained pledges for abolition of the
House of Lords, unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the
European Community, withdrawal from
NATO and the most radical and extensive
nationalisationagenda that Labour had ever stood on including nationalisation of
industry and banks. The Bennites were in the ascendency and there was
very little that moderates could do to resist or moderate the
manifesto, many also hoped that a landslide defeat would discredit
Michael Foot and the hard left of the party. Labour MP and former
minister
Gerald Kaufmanfamously described the 1983 election manifesto as "the longest suicide
note in history". The Conservatives considered the 1983 Labour
manifesto as being so unpopular that they actually printed a number of
copies of it to distribute it for free and indeed Labour was possibly
only saved from far more substantial collapse by tactical voting by
Alliance supporters and Conservative supporters worried by the effects
of the possible scale of the Conservative majority in removing checks
on the Government, notably Conservative cabinet minister
Francis Pym's statements during the campaign that big majorities caused bad government.
Much of the press attacked both the Labour party's manifesto and its
style of campaigning, which tended to rely upon public meetings and
canvassing rather than media (although given that Michael Foot was so
unpopular a low profile probably lessened Labour's collapse). By
contrast, the Conservatives ran a professional campaign which played on
the voters' fears of a repeat of the Winter of Discontent. To add to
this, the Thatcher government's popularity rose sharply on a wave of
patriotic feeling following victory in the
Falklands War.
After a landslide defeat at the 1983 election, Michael Foot immediately resigned and was replaced by
Neil Kinnock,
initially considered a firebrand left-winger, he proved to be more
pragmatic than Foot and progressively moved the party to the centre;
banning left-wing groups such as the
Militant Tendency and reversing party policy on EEC membership and withdrawal from NATO, bringing in
Peter Mandelson as Director of Communications to modernise the party's image, and embarking on a policy review which reported back in 1985.
At the
1987 general election,
the party was again defeated in a landslide, but had at least
re-established itself as the clear challengers to the Conservatives and
gained 20 seats reducing the Conservative majority to 102 from 143 in
1983, despite a sharp rise in turnout. Challenged for the leadership by
Tony Bennin 1988, Neil Kinnock easily retained the leadership claiming a mandate
for his reforms of the party. Re-organisation resulted in the
dissolution of the
Labour Party Young Socialists, which was thought to be harbouring
entryist Militantgroups. It also resulted in a more centralised communication structure,
enabling a greater degree of flexibility for the leadership to
determine policy, react to events, and direct resources.
During this time the Labour Party emphasised the abandonment of its
links to high taxation and old-style nationalisation, which aimed to
show that the party was moving away from the left of the political
spectrum and towards the centre. It also became actively pro-European,
supporting further moves to
European integration.