What if the Tories won the 1964 General Election?

What if the Tories won the 1964 General Election?

The Labour Party led by Harold Wilson ended the 13-year reign of the Tories by clinching a narrow 4 seat majority by winning 317 seats (out of a total of 630). The Conservatives led by outgoing Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home won 304 seats, leaving the remaining 9 seats to the Liberals.

 

Background

In October 1963, the Conservative Government then led by Harold Macmillan was in dire straits following the Profumo scandal as well as the party seeming out-of-touch and patrician in an age where the technology boom was in the ascendency. The election of Harold Wilson as the new Labour Leader and Leader of the Opposition found tremendous traction among the public with the party leading by around 15-20% points.

The hospitalization of Macmillan paved the way for a dignified exit. However, the succession for the Tory leadership was extremely corrosive. Macmillan not only opposed the candidature of his deputy, Rab Butler, but also vetoed the other prominent contenders such as Viscount Hailsham and Regnald Maudling. Eventually, the “magic circle” of Etonians circled upon Lord Home as the successor to Macmillan. It was made possible only due to the passage of the Peerage Act 1963 (ironically due to Tony Benn), enabling Douglas-Home to renounce his peerage and stand in a by-election to enter the Commons.

Douglas-Home was able to restore credibility and respectability for the Tories, leading to a significant narrowing in the polls by October 1964. In the election, Labour won a hairline majority of 4 seats and by 0.7% of the voteshare. The defeat was attributed to the 13-year long rule of the Tories, the Profumo scandal, the opposition of Enoch Powell and Ian Macleod to Douglas-Home’s Premiership, Douglas-Home’s aristocracy and the contrast with Harold Wilson. In particular, Douglas-Home attributed the defeat to an article published by Macleod in the Spectator. Harold Wilson’s shrewd strategy of ensuring that the Steptoe and Son programme was not held on polling date ensured that Labour supporters turned out and voted.

An extremely important point to note that the Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed on polling day. Had it occurred one or two days before, Douglas-Home could have used his experience in Foreign Affairs (being a former Foreign Secretary) to generate the need for an experienced hand at the helm.

A close examination of the polls indicates that Labour saw only a bare increase in its voteshare when compared to the heavy defeat it suffered in 1959. The Liberals caused the main damage to the Tories, being a beneficiary of a 5% swing towards it.

 

Constituencies which saw narrow victories for Labour over the Tories

Category A

1.       Brighton Kempton- 7 votes

2.       Ealing Noth- 27 votes

3.       Wellingborough- 47 votes

4.       Norfolk North- 53 votes

5.       Kings Lynn- 104 votes

If approximately 130 Labour votes went to the Tories, then the result would be a Hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party.

Lab- 312 seats, Con- 309 seats, Lib- 9 seats

 

Category B

6.       Birmingham Yardley- 169 votes

7.       Colne Valley- 187 votes

If approximately another 170 Labour votes went to the Tories, then the result would be a Hung Parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party.

Lab- 310 seats, Con- 311 seats, Lib- 9 seats

 

Category C

8.       Glasgow- 296 votes

9.       Preston South- 348 votes

10.   Meriden- 363 votes

11.   Dover- 418 votes

12.   Birmingham All Saints- 470 votes

13.   Clapham- 556 Votes

14.   Norwich South- 611 votes

An additional swing of around 1500 votes would ensure a narrow 4-seat majority for the Tories (the mirror inverse of the actual result).

Con- 317 seats, Lab- 304 seats, Lib- 9 seats

 

Category D

15.   Luton- 723 votes

16.   Gravesend- 748 votes

17.   Heywood- 816 votes

18.   Derby South East- 873 votes

19.   Oldbury- 917 votes

20.   Brighouse- 922 votes

A swing of an additional 2500 votes would ensure a 17-seat majority for the Conservatives. The 1951 general election produced the same numerical majority for the Tories under Churchill. The government comfortably retained the same majority until the 1955 election.

Con- 323 seats, Lab- 296 seats, Lib- 9 seats

 

Hypotheticals

Scenario A

Hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party

The most probable outcome in this scenario is that Labour would have formed a minority government as Wilson did later on in 1974 (by spurning Liberal support) and called an early general election presumably in 1965.

Whether Labour would have won in 1965 in difficult to estimate as the incumbent Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon-Walker did lose a by-election in Leyton in addition to the poor performance of the party in the local elections.

Scenario B

Hung Parliament with Conservatives as the largest party

It is not clear whether the Liberals would have provided outside support to the Tories, considering their long tenure in office as well as the fact that Liberals were the main beneficiary of disenchanted Tory voters.

Whether the Tories would have formed a minority government as Wilson did later on in 1974 or whether Labour would have formed a minority government with outside Liberal support would have done so (similar to Ramsay Macdonald’s government in 1924) is anybody’s guess.

Scenario C

Conservatives with a single digit majority (1-10)

An early election would have to be called as in reality when Wilson held an election in 1966. Barring a sudden economic boom, the Tories would have been consigned to defeat. Their only other hope would be infighting within Labour over a fourth consecutive defeat as well as the suspicion in which Wilson was regarded by many Labour MPs.

Scenario D

Conservatives with a double-digit majority (>10)

It would have led to the formation of a government with a relatively comfortable majority as in 1951.

However, following devaluation of the pound, the government would have suffered a heavy backlash from the public. The Wilson government did go on to suffer the ignominy of losing a record 15 by-elections to the Tories (which even Johnson and Sunak could not achieve) in the 1966-70 Parliament which originally had a 100 seat Labour majority.

The Major government, elected in 1992 with a majority of 21 lost its majority by December 1996 following the government’s record levels of unpopularity after Black Wednesday and subsequent infighting.

With the public having a tradition of punishing economic failures, a narrow Tory majority would have well been wiped out leading to a minority government similar to the Callaghan government in 1976-79; perhaps leading to a long reign of Labour rule akin to Thatcher. Afterall, the Tories would have been in power for nearly 18 years by then and in danger of suffering a similar plight as John Major did in 1997.

Whether Wilson would have been the victor in such a question is difficult to foresee though.

 

Impact

The 1964 general election brought Labour back from the wilderness under the ‘modern’ and meritocratic Wilson who was perceived to be in tune with the evolving British society of the 1960s.

In July 1965, Edward Heath succeeded Douglas-Home as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition; the first Tory Leader to be formally elected by the MPs and not selected by the elites as well as the first to come from the working class. The Wilson-Heath rivalry would dominate British politics for the next decade, spanning across 4 general elections, leading to the joining of the European Community. The collapse of the post-war consensus under Wilson and Heath later led to the emergence of neo-liberalism under Thatcher.

The narrow majority meant that Wilson called a snap general election in March 1966 which the Labour government won by a 100-seat majority. However, the deteriorating economy which the Douglas-Home government had handed over to Wilson forced his hand to carry devaluation, thus damaging Labour’s credibility.

In June 1970, Heath led the Tories to a surprise victory. However, despite the integration of the UK into the European Community, Heath also presided over a declining economy and the subsequent miner strikes which turfed him out of Downing Street in March 1974, handing the reigns back to Wilson.

Following a subsequent defeat of the Tories in October 1974, Thatcher would go on dethrone Heath from the Tory leadership and the rest is history.