February 1974 United Kingdom general election

On Thursday 7 February, it was announced that Prime Minister Edward Heath had asked Queen Elizabeth II, who was then in New Zealand for the 1974 British Commonwealth Games, to dissolve Parliament for a general election to take place on 28 February. Because of the Queen's being abroad, the dissolution of parliament was required to be promulgated by Counsellors of State, in this case Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, on her express instructions.^[3] The severe economic circumstances in which the election was held prompted both The Sun and the Daily Mirror to characterise it as a "crisis election".^[4]

On 10 February, the National Union of Mineworkers, as expected, went on strike, but it was more of a low-key affair than the high-profile clashes of 1972, with no violence and only six men on each picket line. Jim Prior later wrote that the miners had been "as quiet and well-behaved as mice".^[4] The Three-Day Week continued throughout the election, although Heath allowed the late-night television curfew to be lifted to allow more coverage of the campaign. The low profile of the miners' strike allowed worries over inflation to dominate the election. On 15 February, it was announced that the Retail Price Index showed a 20% increase in prices over the previous year.^[4]

On 21 February, the Pay Board released a report on miners' pay, which unexpectedly revealed that they were paid less than other manufacturing workers, contrary to the claims of the National Coal Board. That came as a severe blow to the Conservative position, and led to accusations that the National Coal Board did not understand its own pay system and that the strike was unnecessary.^[5] Further bad news for Heath and his party came four days later, with the latest trade figures showing that the current account deficit for the previous month had been £383,000,000, the worst in recorded history. Heath claimed the figures confirmed "the gravity of the situation" and the need for a new mandate, which prompted Roy Jenkins to quip: "He [Heath] presumably thinks a still worse result would have given him a still stronger claim".^[4]

One of the most unexpected and explosive events of the campaign was when the outspoken Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who had already announced that he could not stand for re-election on the Conservative manifesto, urged people to vote against Heath for bringing about UK membership of the European Communities. In a speech in Birmingham on 23 February 1974, Powell claimed the main issue in the campaign was whether Britain was to "remain a democratic nation ... or whether it will become one province in a new Europe super-state"; he said it was people's "national duty" to oppose those who had deprived Parliament of "its sole right to make the laws and impose the taxes of the country".^[4] The speech prompted The Sun to run the headline "Enoch puts the boot in". A few days later, he said he hoped for victory by "the party which is committed to a fundamental renegotiation of the Treaty of Brussels and to submitting to the British People ... the outcome of that renegotiation". Those were the explicit manifesto promises of the Labour Party.^[4]

A further unforeseen blow to the Conservative campaign came on 26 February when Campbell Adamson, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), was reported to have called for the repeal of the Heath Government's Industrial Relations Act and to have said that the Act had "sullied every relationship between employers and unions at national level". Adamson had been closely involved with the Downing Street talks over the mining dispute. Although Heath emphasised that Adamson was voicing a personal opinion and that his views did not express the official position of the CBI, he after the election acknowledged that the intervention had a negative impact on the Conservative campaign.^[6] Labour, meanwhile, cited Adamson's comments as proving the need "for everything they (had)... been urging on the Government".^[7]

Heath addressed the country on television on the evening of 7 February, and asked:

Do you want a strong Government which has clear authority for the future to take decisions which will be needed? Do you want Parliament and the elected Government to continue to fight strenuously against inflation? Or do you want them to abandon the struggle against rising prices under pressure from one particularly powerful group of workers ... This time of strife has got to stop. Only you can stop it. It's time for you to speak—with your vote. It's time for your voice to be heard—the voice of the moderate and reasonable people of Britain: the voice of the majority. It's time for you to say to the extremists, the militants, and the plain and simply misguided: we've had enough. There's a lot to be done. For heaven's sake, let's get on with it.^[4]

The Conservative campaign was, thus, encapsulated by the now-famous phrase "Who governs Britain?"

The party's manifesto, which was largely written by the future Chancellor Nigel Lawson, was entitled Firm Action for a Fair Britain and characterised by the historian Dominic Sandbrook as "strident rhetoric".^[4] It claimed the Labour opposition had been taken over by "a small group of power-hungry trade union leaders", who were "committed to a left-wing programme more dangerous and more extreme than ever before in its history". It went on to assert that a Labour victory would be a "major national disaster". Sandbrook criticised the Conservative manifesto as "very vague and woolly" and lacking in "detailed policies or [a] sense of direction."^[4]

Edward Heath played a dominant and crucial role in the campaign. In public, he appeared calm and in control. David Watt, in the Financial Times, called him "statesmanlike" and "relaxed". In his party's final broadcast of the campaign he said: "I'll do all that I can for this country ... We've started a job together. With your will, we shall go on and finish the job".^[4]

One Conservative political broadcast attracted controversy for its ferocity. In the film the narrator warned that Labour would confiscate "your bank account, your mortgage and your wage packet" while pictures of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan dissolved into those of Michael Foot and Tony Benn. It went on to allege that Labour would not have to move much further to the left before "you could find yourself not even owning your own home".^[4] Wilson was reportedly furious, and Lord Carrington, the Secretary of State for Energy, made a formal apology.^[4]

The Labour manifesto, Let us work together, consisted of only ten pages only, the shortest since 1955. It had been greatly influenced by the economist Stuart Holland and Shadow Industry Secretary Tony Benn. In it, Labour promised "a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families". It advocated planning agreements with industry and the creation of a National Enterprise Board. That section attracted criticism from some figures within the party. For example, Anthony Crosland privately called the programme "half-baked" and "idiotic".The manifesto also committed the party to renegotiating the terms of Britain's entry into the European Economic Community and to holding a national referendum on the issue.^[4]

The Labour campaign presented the party's leadership as competent negotiators, who would restore peace with the unions. Unlike in previous elections, Wilson took something of a back seat and allowed James Callaghan, Denis Healey and Shirley Williams to play equal, if not greater, roles in the campaign. In the final broadcast of the campaign, a series of leading figures claimed Labour could put Britain "on the road to recovery". In the film, Wilson asserted: "Trades unionists are people. Employers are people. We can't go on setting one against the other except at the cost of damage to the nation itself".^[4]

The Liberal Party had undergone a revival under the leadership of Jeremy Thorpe by winning a string of by-elections in 1972 and 1973. It had begun to appeal to disaffected Conservative voters and continued to do so throughout the campaign. Thorpe came across as young and charismatic, often attempting to appear above the two-party fray. The manifesto, You can Change the Face of Britain, promised voting reform and devolution, but Sandbrook described its economic policy as "impossibly vague".^[4] The Liberals began to contest more seats, standing in 517 constituencies across the country.^[8]

During the election, the Scottish National Party campaigned widely on the political slogan "It's Scotland's oil". It was argued that the discovery of North Sea oil off the coast of Scotland and the revenue that it created would not benefit Scotland to any significant degree while it remained part of the United Kingdom.^[9][10]

The historian Dominic Sandbrook describes the "level of partisanship" amongst the national newspapers during the election as "unprecedented" in post-war Britain, with most of the media prejudiced in favour of Heath and the Conservatives. The Daily Mirror was one of the few national newspapers to support Labour, with many others urging their readers to re-elect Heath. In the right-wing media, there was fierce condemnation of Wilson and his party. The Sun, which had supported Labour in 1970, claimed a Labour victory would result in "galloping inflation", and an editorial in The Daily Telegraph said a Labour government would be "complete ruin public and private" and condemned what it saw as Wilson's "craven subservience to trade union power". The Evening Standard published a piece by Kingsley Amis calling the Labour politician Tony Benn, who was to be appointed Secretary of State for Industry after the election, "the most dangerous man in Britain", and in the Daily Express, the cartoonist Cummings depicted the miners' leader Joe Gormley, Wilson and other Labour figures as French revolutionaries guillotining Heath. The Guardian, in contrast, chose to support no party openly. Its columnist Peter Jenkins claimed the last ten years had proved that "neither party" had the ability to deal with the country's problems.^[4]

It was the first general election in the United Kingdom to be held during an economic crisis since the 1931 general election, which had been held in the depths of the Great Depression.^[11]

Throughout the campaign 25 of the 26 opinion polls had a Conservative lead and one even by 9%. Of the six polls on election day (28 February), two had a 2% lead, two a 4% lead, one a 3% lead and one a 5% lead.^[12]

As the Queen was in New Zealand on 7 February, the Prime Minister notified her of his intentions via telegram, rather than by the usual protocol of visiting Buckingham Palace. The key dates were as follows:

The election was fought on new constituency boundaries with five more seats added to the 630 used in 1970. This led to many seats changing hands on the new notional boundaries. Notional election results from the 1970 general election were calculated on behalf of the BBC by Michael Steed to of compare constituency results with those of February 1974.

For the first time since 1929, the two largest political parties had received less than a combined share of 80% of the vote, and the Liberals had also won more than 10% of the vote.

 

• List of MPs elected in the February 1974 United Kingdom general election
• February 1974 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland

• Butler, David E.; et al. (1975), The British General Election of February 1974, the standard scholarly study.
• Craig, F.W.S. (1989), British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302

• United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979 Archived 30 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine

• Firm action for a fair Britain Archived 9 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine, February 1974 Conservative Party manifesto
• http://politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lab74feb.htm Archived 6 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine, February 1974 Labour Party manifesto
• Change the face of Britain Archived 9 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine, February 1974 Liberal Party manifesto