18 June 1970 February 1974 → 253 seats, 41.9% 364 seats, 48% 330 288 Start date June 18, 1970 Location United Kingdom | Turnout 72.0% (3.8%) 364 seats, 48% 12 seats, 8.5% 288 6 End date 1970 | |
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The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lost half their seats. The Conservatives, including the Ulster Unionists, were given a majority of 31. The election was the first in which people could vote from the age of 18, after the Representation of the People Act 1969.
Contents
- Election date
- Overview
- Timeline
- Opinion poll summary
- Results
- Televised declarations
- Labour
- Conservative
- Liberal
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Scottish National Party
- Democratic Party
- Manifestos
- References
As of 2017 it is currently the earliest General Election from which there are still MPs in the House of Commons who have continuous service, with Kenneth Clarke and Dennis Skinner both entering parliament for the first time.
Most opinion polls prior to the election had indicated a comfortable Labour victory and had put Labour up to 12.4% ahead of the Conservatives. On election day, however, a late swing gave the Conservatives a 3.4% lead and ended almost six years of Labour government, although Wilson remained leader of the Labour Party in opposition.
The result would provide the mandate for Edward Heath as Prime Minister to begin formal negotiations for the United Kingdom to become a member of the European Economic Community or the "Common Market" as it was more widely known at the time and officially joined the EEC on 1 January 1973.
Election date
The date of 18 June was supposedly chosen because Harold Wilson wanted to go to the polls before the introduction of decimal coinage in early 1971, for which his government had been responsible and which he thought was hugely unpopular and because Wilson sought to gain some momentum by surprising the Conservatives, who were expecting an October election.
Overview
Commentators believed that an unexpectedly bad set of balance of payments figures (a £31 million trade deficit) released on election day and loss of national prestige after the England football team's defeat by West Germany on the 15th of June in the World Cup, contributed to the Labour defeat.
Other factors that were cited as reasons for the Conservative victory included union indiscipline, rising prices, the risk of devaluation, the government’s imposition of Selective Employment Tax (SET) and a set of jobless figures released on polling day showing unemployment at its highest level since 1940. Interviewed by Robin Day, the outgoing Prime Minister Harold Wilson highlighted the possibility that "complacency engendered by the opinion polls" may have resulted in a poor turnout of Labour supporters. As defending world champions, England's venture in the World Cup attracted a much keener public interest than the general election did.
American pollster Douglas Schoen and Oxford University academic R. W. Johnson asserted that Enoch Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, although the Conservative vote only increased by 1.7 million. Johnson later stated "It became clear that Powell had won the 1970 election for the Tories... of all those who had switched their vote from one party to another, 50 per cent were working class Powellites". The Professor of Political Science Randall Hansen assessed a range of studies, including some which contended that Powell had made little or no difference to the result, but concluded that "At the very least, Powell's effect was likely to have fired up the Conservative vote in constituencies which would have voted Tory in any event". Election night commentators Michael Barratt and Jeffrey Preece dismissed any special ‘Powell factor’, as did Conservative MPs Reginald Maudling, Timothy Raison and Hugh Dykes.
The 1970-74 Parliament has to date been the only time since the 1924-29 Parliament in which the Conservative Party were only in government for one term before returning to opposition.
The most notable casualty of the election was George Brown, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, who lost to the Conservative candidate in the Belper constituency. Brown had held the seat since 1945.
Unusually for the Liberals the by-elections between 1966-1970 had proved almost fruitless, with many Liberal candidates losing deposits. The one exception was their by-election gain of Birmingham Ladywood in June 1969, promptly lost in the General Election the following year. The Liberals found themselves struggling to introduce their new leader Jeremy Thorpe to the public due to the extensive coverage and attention paid to Enoch Powell. The election result was poor for the Liberals, with Thorpe only narrowly winning his own seat in North Devon.
On the BBC, the election coverage was led by Cliff Michelmore along with Robin Day, David Butler and Robert McKenzie. There were various cutaways to the BBC regions. The coverage has been rerun on BBC Parliament on several occasions, including on 18 July 2005 as a tribute to Edward Heath upon his death the previous day. Its most recent screening was on 9 October 2010. BBC coverage of the 1970 general election was parodied by Monty Python's Flying Circus in its famous Election Night Special sketch.
Both BBC and ITN carried their 1970 election night broadcasts in colour, although segments broadcast from some remote locations and some BBC and ITN regional bureaus were transmitted in black-and-white. Some ITV regions were not yet broadcasting in colour at the time of the 1970 elections.
Timeline
The Prime Minister Harold Wilson visited Buckingham Palace on 18 May and asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament on 29 May, announcing that the election would be held on 18 June. The key dates were as follows:
Opinion poll summary
Summary of the final polling results before the general election.
Results
This was the first general election where 18-year-olds had the right to vote. Therefore, despite 1.1 million more people voting in 1970 compared to 1966, turnout actually fell by 3%. Labour's number of votes, 12.2 million, was ironically the same amount they had needed to win in 1964. The Tory vote surge cost Labour in many marginal seats. As for the Liberals a small 1% drop in their vote share saw them lose 6 seats, 3 of which were held by the narrowest of margins.
In the end the Conservatives achieved a swing of 4.7%, enough to give them a comfortable working majority. As for the smaller parties, they increased their number in the commons from 2 to 6 seats.
All parties are listed. The Conservative figure includes eight Ulster Unionists