General Election 1979

The lead up to the 1979 general election

Prime Minister James Callaghan initially postponed the 1979 general election, which meant he had to earn back the electorate’s trust after the Winter of Discontent.

Margaret Thatcher is elected Tory leader in 1975

Margaret Thatcher became Tory Party leader in 1975, replacing former Prime Minister Edward Heath, when he lost the third election – the October 1974 general election – during his time as Party leader. Thatcher’s triumph divided the Party’s One-Nation Conservatives, sceptical of Thatcher’s politics.

Thatcher had to work hard to earn the support of her Party, appointing Willie Whitelaw as her deputy leader. It is reputed that Whitelaw’s support was instrumental in winning members of the Party to her side.

Fig. 1 - Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990)

Prime Minister James Callaghan misses the opportunity to call a general election in 1978

Callaghan’s decision to defer the impending general election to the spring of 1979 surprised his cabinet ministers. The economy began to recover as North Sea oil came in, and public polls showed Labour was in the lead. Callaghan was, therefore, at his most popular in 1978, making this an advantageous time to call an election. However, the Labour Party’s private poll showed public support was not strong enough. This led Callaghan to put off the general election, hoping another year in government would boost public confidence in his ministry.

However, the decision to delay the election proved to be a disastrous political miscalculation, as the public lost faith in the Labour government during the Winter of Discontent.

Fig. 2 - James Callaghan

The Winter of Discontent

The Winter of Discontent turned the tide against the Labour government, leading the Conservatives to outperform Labour in the opinion polls consistently. According to a Gallup poll, the Conservatives reached a 20 per cent lead over Labour by the end of the Winter of Discontent on 12 February 1979.

The Winter of Discontent came at the end of a decade marked by industrial strife. In 1978, public sector workers joined in with the industrial stoppages of private-sector unions, aggravating the disruption. Uncollected rubbish piled up, and bodies went unburied as dustmen and gravediggers struck. Images of the disturbance dominated the media and outraged the public.

Callaghan had hoped delaying the election would allow his pay policies – which limited wage increases to 5% – to speak for themselves. So they did, but unfortunately, they did not tell the tale he intended. Instead of illustrating Callaghan’s positive impact on the British economy, his pay policies pushed the industrial conflict over the edge. As a result, trade unions (on whose support the Labour Party relied) and the general public lost faith in him, opening the door for the Conservatives to thrive in the general election.

Callaghan is out of touch with the crisis

The media made much of Callaghan’s apparent obliviousness to the Winter of Discontent, with The Sun newspaper publishing the famous headline ‘Crisis? What crisis?’. Though the Prime Minister had never said these exact words, the public nonetheless had reason to believe Callaghan was out of touch with the hardship his policies had wrought.

Labour’s weak majority

Labour won the second general election of 1974 with a majority of only three seats, reducing the government’s power in Parliament and leading Callaghan to become reliant on cross-party cooperation with minority parties.

The Lib-Lab Pact

The Labour government formed a pact with the Liberal Party in 1977, known as the Lib-Lab pact. When this fell through in 1978, Labour turned to the support of the Scottish Nationalist Party.

The Scottish Nationalist Party and the 1979 devolution referendum

On 1 March 1979, a referendum was held on the 1978 Scotland Act. The purpose was to gauge whether there was sufficient public support for the devolution of parliamentary powers to Scotland.

The referendum results were inconclusive, leading the government to repeal the Act. This fared badly with the Scottish Nationalist Party, whose support Callaghan’s government relied on.

1979 Vote of No Confidence in the Callaghan ministry

As a result of the government’s refusal to see the devolution through, the SNP put down a ‘No Confidence’ motion in the Callaghan government.

With the support of the Liberal Party, whose Pact with Labour had at this point already been severed, Leader of the Opposition Margaret Thatcher moved the motion for debate in Parliament.

The Vote of No Confidence in the Callaghan ministry took place on 28 March 1979. Previously on Callaghan’s side, both the Liberal Party and the SNP voted against him, and Callaghan lost the motion by one vote. He was thus forced to call a general election, setting the date for 3 May 1979.

UK general election 1979

Television and media coverage played a key role in the campaign, with all three major parties holding morning press conferences.

The Conservative campaign

The Conservative campaign focused on earning the votes of traditional Labour voters, first-time voters, and voters in marginal seat constituencies. Margaret Thatcher’s campaign for the 1979 general election campaign revolved around cultivating a pristine image and highlighting the failures of the Labour Party under Callaghan’s leadership.

Publicity director and advertising firm tasked with softening Thatcher’s image

Margaret Thatcher’s campaign was managed by her publicity director and former TV producer, Gordon Reece, who employed the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Together, they polished Thatcher’s public image, counterbalancing Thatcher’s hard convictions with a more softened image to broaden her appeal to the public. It was important to get her public image right, as Thatcher was a woman in a man’s world, which meant they had to work twice as hard to convince the public she was the right candidate for the job.

Thatcher was proud of her title as the Iron Lady. Still, it was difficult to ‘sell’ this image to the public, which led Thatcher’s publicity instructors to soften the prospective Prime Minister’s image. They also went about softening her voice, employing a voice coach to soften her speech. She was to appear friendly, the image of a good housewife – ‘the housewife’s friend’ – which increased her chances with the electoral demographic of working and middle-class housewives.

Traditionally, working-class housewives voted Labour, but Thatcher wanted to convince them she was one of them. This appeal to the working classes is known as populism.

An election campaign marked by this kind of image control was unprecedented in British politics, marking a turning point in modern campaigning.

Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Labour isn’t working’ campaign

Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Labour isn’t working’ advertising campaign launched in 1978. The campaign poster depicted a snaking unemployment-benefits queue, with ‘Labour isn’t working’ in large capitals front and centre. The campaign aimed to highlight the weaknesses of the Labour government and its negative impact on the economy.

The Conservative Manifesto 1979

Another key aspect of the Conservative campaign was its ‘broad-strokes’ approach. Thatcher focused mostly on general issues of the economy and reducing the power of trade unions. The main points of the manifesto were:

Under the ‘helping the family’ section of the Conservative manifesto, Thatcher made specific promises pertaining to housing. Plans to implement the Right to Buy were outlined, which gave council house tenants the legal right to purchase their homes at discounted prices.

The Labour campaign

Its poor track record coming out of the Winter of Discontent hampered the Labour campaign.

In Labour’s manifesto, The Labour Way is the Better Way. The Labour manifesto outlined the following five priorities:

The manifesto also criticised Thatcher’s economic approach:

However, despite Labour’s promises to return to full employment, curb inflation and prices and improve industrial relations were less credible in the face of the economic and industrial crises that characterised the Wilson and Callaghan years. The Conservatives appeared more likely to deliver their promises of recovering the economy than Labour.

1979 general election results

The Conservatives won the election with 43.9 per cent of the vote, with 70 seats over Labour and an overall majority of 43 seats.

Labour earned 36.9 per cent of the popular vote, which was close to its 1974 election percentage of 39.2 per cent. This was by no means a landslide victory, but the tide had been sufficiently turned against the Labour government to vote them out of office.

Fig. 3 - Margaret Thatcher in 1981

Thus, on 4 May 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

The most remarkable of the results was the 5.2 per cent swing in voter support from Labour to the Conservatives, the largest swing since the 1945 general election, won by Labour’s Clement Attlee.

The SNP and the Liberal Party perform poorly

The minority parties who had previously backed Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Party, also saw disappointing results in the election.

The Liberals lost a net 2 seats, losing 4.5 per cent of the vote percentage in comparison to the 1974 general election results. The SNP lost 9 of its seats in the general election being left with only 2 MPs in Parliament. Callaghan had warned of the consequences of the minority parties’ support of the Vote of No Confidence vote:

The results of the 1979 general election ushered in a period of UK history defined by Thatcherism and 18 years of a Conservative government.

1. R. J. Johnston, Regional Variations in the 1979 General Election Results for England, The Royal Geographical Society, 1979