The campaign that brought Thatcherism to Britain.
'We never count our chickens before they are hatched, and we don't count No.10 Downing Street until it is thatched,' Margaret Thatcher quipped on the morning of 3 May 1979, a day that would change her own and Britain's future.
The General Election of 1979 was momentous for several reasons. It was the first time a woman was elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The elections also came after the 'Winter of Discontent,' the name given to a series of strikes from December 1978 to February 1979 which crippled not only the country, but the sitting Labour government. Furthermore, this election is seen by historians as marking the end of the period of post-war consensual government — where the main political parties had broadly the same ideas on big issues — and ushering in a decade of free market economics.
Thatcher's gender was certainly a talking point in the media coverage of the campaign and the aftermath when she was elected, but it was by no means the dominant feature. As 'The Guardian' pointed out after she won, 'The Tories did not fight and win this poll on a female liberation ticket … after the struggling Labour government they offered a policy sea change.'
Indeed Margaret Thatcher in her memoirs curtailed any discussion about the 'female factor', although it did on occasion come into play during the campaign.
A general election had been anticipated by all political parties since the summer of 1978. However, the sitting Prime Minister Jim Callaghan was hesitant to call an election. The reasons why he hesitated are endlessly argued over by political historians. The general opinion is that Callaghan hoped the economy would improve, allowing him to call an election in the spring of 1979. He anticipated that any improvement would provide his party with a winning momentum. The delay was a godsend for Thatcher as she was experiencing her own difficulties. Her credibility with her own party during 1978 was low after some poor performances against Callaghan during Prime Minister's questions. The Conservatives were suffering nationally in the polls due to confused messages over what the party stood for. These were the early days of 'Thatcherism'. Her ideas on the free market economy and promotion of privatisation were still not fully formed, and it led to many issues for the party's credibility with the media.
The 'Winter of Discontent' was the saving grace of the Conservative Party and the ruination of the Labour Party. The strikes were caused by Labour's attempts to reduce inflation by keeping public sector pay rises below 5 per cent, a move which angered the trade unions. The Transport and General Workers Union demanded a 25 per cent rise and called a strike. The crippling weather conditions and the lack of transport drivers caused chaos across the country. Mrs Thatcher's poll ratings soared after she made a party political broadcast on 17 January 1979 calling for government action on the unions and for Britain to 'learn to be one nation again'. Despite having ample opportunity to raise a motion of no confidence in the government, Thatcher waited until 28 March to table the motion once support from across the house was assured. In a tense ballot, the motion won by a single vote, 311 to 310. The government had fallen in the most dramatic fashion. A general election was called for 3 May 1979 and a six-week campaigning period began.
David Butler, the celebrated psephologist (a person who studies and analyses election data), noted that despite the events of 1978 and the Winter of Discontent, the election was devoid of any real drama. Labour had hoped a longer campaigning period would favour them and allow them the opportunity to discredit Mrs Thatcher and the Conservatives. They played the gender card to some extent by hoping that the strains of campaigning would affect Thatcher emotionally and expose this to the public. However, the Conservatives evaded this problem by waiting until Easter Monday to start campaigning, mainly as they were ahead in the polls and wanted to avoid making any mistakes.
Mrs Thatcher's gender was enough to inject a note of difference into the Conservative's deliberately dull campaign (to avoid scaring off any voters). She played on this when questioned about how she would handle the pressure of being Prime Minister, stating that any woman who dealt with children all night and could still function the next day would manage the strains of high office. Although she generally wished to downplay her gender and not make it a central issue, when needed, she used it to full effect.
One of the most notable events of the campaign was the refusal of Thatcher to take part in a television debate with the Prime Minister Jim Callaghan and the Liberal leader David Steel. They had both agreed but Thatcher, on advice from her closest advisors, refused to take part. Her response to the television company was 'we are not electing a president, we are choosing a government'.
The Conservative strategy was to keep as much attention as possible on the recent 'Winter of Discontent' and avoid the idea of a head-to-head debate from taking over the whole election campaign. Labour were very disappointed as Callaghan was widely held to be more personable and popular than Thatcher, and advantage which they were unable to capitalise on after the debate was shunned.
The intimate details of election campaigns are certainly not for the faint hearted, which can be heavy on statistics and light on exciting details. David Butler and Denis Kavanagh have compiled comprehensive studies of British elections from 1945-1992 which are held at the Library. They are the first calling point for anyone interested learning more about this subject area.
Mrs Thatcher's plans for the unions were far tougher than Labour's proposals
However, the general themes of the campaign for both main parties were economic recovery — although approaching the subject in entirely different ways — and control of the unions. Mrs Thatcher's plans for the unions were far tougher than Labour's proposals of further talks. She was determined to push for trade union reform and an end to secondary picketing, which had caused so many issues in the winter of 1979. The Conservative manifesto was far shorter than Labour's and was thematically centred around five key points: the control of inflation and trade union power; the restoration of incentives; upholding parliament and the rule of law; supporting family life by a more efficient provision of welfare services; and strengthening defence.
The statements were deliberately vague as the Conservatives had a new economic strategy that they wanted to implement, but did not want to make too public. This was a direct contrast to Labour's manifesto which was far longer, contained more pledges, and was fairly staid and uncontentious. This was noted by the press who heavily criticised the party. The 'Sunday Mirror' ran a cartoon two days after the launch of the Labour campaign, suggesting their manifesto was seen as being far too centrist, weak and dull. The press focused heavily on the Conservative manifesto as it was both a shorter document and the five key points acted as useful 'sound bites', whereas Labour's was far longer and less quotable in terms of promises or policies.
Scottish votes were always important to Labour as they generally took more seats north of the border than any of the other political parties. However, Labour did not write a dedicated Scottish manifesto, and the party in Scotland essentially repackaged the main manifesto with few changes. By contrast, the Conservatives had a tougher line in their Scottish manifesto on law and order, but certainly did not propose many sweeping changes to the rest of their policies to suit Scottish differences.
1979 was a busy year in the polling booths of Scotland. The general election followed the devolution vote which was held on 1 March 1979. The relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Scotland was never easy from the beginning and she would later become famous for her Anglo-Centric opinions. However, when she was first elected Conservative leader in 1975, she had made favourable comments about Scotland receiving its own assembly which would allow Scots to make their own decisions. Her natural inclination towards unionism quickly re-established itself and soon Thatcher and the Conservative party were opposed to Labour's proposed Devolution Bill. As one of her biographers John Campbell suggests, Thatcher never instinctively understood the Scots, and her ideas on devolution were drawn into her wider ideas on rolling back the state. Her resistance to the devolution legislation was framed around it being a bad bill rather than the reality which was her own resistance to devolution altogether.
In the Conservative general election campaign there was little emphasis on devolution other than the establishment of a Scottish select committee to consider the next steps. The manifestos may not have placed much emphasis on Scottish differences, though the election literature certainly did. Many of the Conservative candidates did not mention Mrs Thatcher anywhere on their campaign leaflets and focused on the key messages of a better future. The emphasis on the idea of a 'better' future in both Conservative and Labour election material was certainly a key focal point of both campaigns although the repetition of 'hope' as the first promise point in the Conservative campaign was an effective tool to reinforce the message.
As the election drew nearer there was a growing concern in Thatcher's camp that she was not appealing to the public as well as they had hoped. In the final weeks of the election the Conservative lead in the polls narrowed from around 11 per cent to 3 per cent, and Prime Minister Callaghan's personal ratings were overtaking Thatcher's. Several of Thatcher's biographers attribute this to her keeping much of her infamous formidable personality hidden, and attempting to project a safe middle-class image but one that had an understanding of the issues that faced the working-classes.
Much of the Labour campaign focused on the avuncular Callaghan. However, this meant they lacked the novelty factor the Conservatives brought with their female candidate and their new approach to tackling the problems facing the country. Callaghan was considered a safer bet in terms of experience of the job, but the problems lay with his party and the wider issues that had faced the government during the 'Winter of Discontent'. The consensus in public opinion was increasingly that Labour had failed to tackle the issues of the unions, the economy, inflation and unemployment during the previous parliament. The question that hung over Labour was: what could possibly change in the next parliament that meant they could tackle those issues? It was, unfortunately for Labour, an argument that they were losing to the Conservatives. Thatcher's promises to tackle these problems was increasing her support amongst working class Labour voters. 'The Sun' newspaper, a long-standing supporter of Labour had come out in support of the Conservatives. This was a crucial advantage as the majority of their readership was made up of the kind of voters the Conservatives needed to attract in order to win.
[Thatcher] declared that her policies were the only way forward for the country
Thatcher herself remarked in her memoirs that she did not take any opinion polls too seriously and it allowed her the opportunity to encourage Conservative voters to turn out on polling day. As John Campbell, her biographer commented, it was traditional for the Conservatives to panic about the impending results in the final week of campaigning. 1979 was no exception and several opinion polls in the final week indicated that Labour were closing the gap.
On the eve of the election Mrs Thatcher made her final appeal to the nation pushing home her message that 'Labour Isn't Working', the theme of a now iconic Conservative election poster. She declared that her policies were the only way forward for the country to succeed. There was even a last-minute rhyme penned by producers of the poster, Saatchi and Saatchi — the hotshot advertisers brought in to run the Conservative campaign — to warn voters against voting Liberal: 'Voting for anyone else to win, Could mean letting Labour in, Remember it has happened before, Twice in 1974'.
This was the Conservatives attempt to prevent the Liberals stealing precious seats which may have prevented them winning an overall majority. Thatcher had ruled out making any coalition agreements with the Liberals and generally wanted to avoid the hung parliament situation of 1974.
In the Labour camp there was a sense of inevitably about the final result. Callaghan was very pragmatic and stated: 'There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change and it is for Mrs Thatcher'.
History accords that Callaghan fought an excellent campaign, arguably giving a better individual performance than Thatcher. However, he was hampered by his party, and the fact that it was his government in charge during the 'Winter of Discontent', which tarnished his overall reputation.
As polling day dawned all the political polls pointed towards a Conservative victory, but Thatcher remained tight-lipped as she went to cast her vote, offering the quip at the start of this essay about not counting her chickens. The rest of the day was a fairly low-key affair with Thatcher spending time touring her constituency of Finchley, north-west London, returning to her home to rest before heading to her count in Barnet Town Hall around midnight. As the first results started to come in, it was soon apparent that the Conservatives would win; it was simply a matter of how large a majority they would gain. One exit poll estimated around 60 seats. There were few major shocks apart from Thatcher's trusted Shadow Scottish Secretary of State, Teddy Taylor, losing his Glasgow Cathcart seat to Labour, which was a shocking moment for Thatcher and their only loss north of the border.
The final results were not finally confirmed until the following day, but it was a big win for the Conservative Party: 339 seats to Labour's 269, Liberals 11 and Others 16, giving Mrs Thatcher a majority of 43 seats. The overall swing from Labour to the Conservatives was 5.2 per cent nationally, one of the largest since 1945. Callaghan was gracious in defeat, wishing Thatcher well, and she in return offered warm words to the outgoing Prime Minister.
Margaret Thatcher recalls in her memoirs the moment she drove into Downing Street as Prime Minister for the first time, greeted by cheering crowds (in the days before additional security barriers) as they awaited her first speech as Prime Minister. She neatly sidestepped a reporter's question on what Mrs Pankhurst may think of the moment to talk about her father instead. However, her most famous statement of the morning was quoting her own version of the prayer of Francis of Assisi: 'Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error may we bring truth. Where there is doubt may we bring faith. And where there is despair may we bring hope'. Later her legacy as Prime Minister would be judged as to how far she kept to that promise or how far she strayed from it.
In an early speech to the House of Commons, Mrs Thatcher declared it a watershed election, but was that the case? The general election of 1979 as was noted throughout was not especially exciting; it did not feature major gaffes by any party leader. Indeed, it was kept deliberately dull by the Conservative Party to ensure they were victorious. Much of the argument and debate surrounding the 1979 election focuses on the 'Winter of Discontent'. It was generally accepted that any government in charge at that point — regardless of party — would have failed due to the extreme nature of the crisis. Thatcher noted in her memoirs that had the general election been in the summer or autumn of 1978 and she had won, that winter would likely have toppled her government too. Yet there was a noticeable trend in British politics since 1959 that sitting governments were almost guaranteed to lose at the end of a full term.
The 1979 election was curious as before the 'Winter of Discontent' there was little difference in the polls between the Conservatives and Labour. Perhaps without it Labour may have won a narrow victory, but the events of that winter overtook everything. People who had never voted Conservative before, or indeed since, changed their allegiance listening to Mrs Thatcher's appeal to consider an alternative style of governance. Her message of bringing hope and prosperity to the country resonated during a period of time where both concepts were in short supply.
