Adrian Lee is a solicitor-advocate in London, specialising in criminal defence, and was twice a Conservative parliamentary candidate.
Over the 1973 Christmas holiday period, whilst Slade fought Wizzard for the Christmas Number One, Edward Heath considered calling a snap General Election. It was not as if the Prime Minister could discuss the situation with his family and friends, as he didn’t have any. Enoch Powell once wryly observed that whilst other politicians could return home and talk their problems over with their spouses, “Ted just went home to his piano”. Heath’s decision was a tough one. Asking voters for a renewed mandate was a gamble, especially as the parliament had another 18 months to run.
The past three and half years had consisted of one policy failure after another. Heath began in 1970 by pursuing monetarism, but as unemployment rose, he panicked and reversed the policy. Anthony Barber, his Chancellor, attempted to kick-start the economy in his 1972 Budget. Barber announced that he aimed “…to achieve a rate of growth twice as fast as in the past decade.” That year, the Government switched to Keynesianism and pumped £2.5 billion into the economy through benefit and pension increases, as well as tax cuts. All was paid for by government borrowing, costing the taxpayer £3.4 billion.
Known as the “Barber Boom”, it led to higher inflation and increased wage demands (and therefore strikes) from public sector employees.
Conservative free-marketeers became disheartened, and to worsen matters, Heath adopted socialist policies regarding state subsidy of industry and nationalisation. In 1972, the government gave £34 billion to the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, and the year before, they had nationalised a private company, Rolls-Royce, after it had gone bust.
One aspect of non-economic controversy came in February 1971, when the Government proposed reorganising local authorities in England and Wales. At face value, the subject sounded as dry as straw, but passions were aroused in rural communities when they realised that traditional county boundaries dating from the Middle Ages were to be changed. People perceived that their sense of identity was being challenged.
The headline that came to dominate the debate was the proposed abolition of Rutland, England’s smallest county. Heath, and Peter Waker, his prodigy, soon found themselves embroiled in a dispute seemingly plucked from the script of an Ealing Comedy. Unfortunately for Heath, the people campaigning to “Save Our Counties”, were frequently Conservative Party members.
Edward Heath was not responsible for the outbreak of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was Harold Wilson, his Labour predecessor, who had put the British Army onto the streets of Ulster. However, violence escalated rapidly during Heath’s government. The first British soldier was murdered by the Provisional IRA in February 1971. Internment without trial was introduced in August, but by the end of 1971, 174 people had been killed by terrorists within the Province.
1972 saw the murder rate escalate to 467. There were few days of the year when a terrorist incident did not occur in Northern Ireland. 1972 was also the year of “Bloody Sunday” and marked the start of the I.R.A.’s British mainland bombing campaign. In despair, William Whitelaw, Heath’s Northern Ireland Secretary, invited the I.R.A. for talks in London. The negotiations failed, but the event made a mockery of the Government’s pledge not to talk to terrorists.
Heath went behind the backs of the Ulster Unionists, the Conservatives’ usual allies, and dissolved Stormont. Henceforth, Westminster imposed Direct Rule. Later, with the Sunningdale Agreement, Heath attempted power-sharing, but the new Northern Ireland Executive collapsed following the Loyalist Ulster Worker’s Council strike.
On 4th February 1974, a coach was travelling along the M62 motorway, between Manchester and North-East England. It contained soldiers and their families returning to barracks. It had been provided to replace trains that had been cancelled due to British Rail strikes. As the bus neared Hartshead in Yorkshire, a medium-size bomb exploded on the vehicle, blasting it into two fragments. Twelve people were killed, including nine soldiers and two children, aged five and two. Three days later, on Thursday 7th February, Edward Heath announced the General Election.
The traditional image of the PM’s car travelling up the Mall to ask the Monarch’s permission to “go to the country” did not happen in February 1974. The Queen was in New Zealand at the time. Consequently, this dissolution of Parliament was promulgated by The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, as Counsellors of State.
Later that night, Heath addressed the nation and explained his reasons for calling an early election. His speech went down in political history as asking the public to decide “Who governs Britain?”. Whilst that phrase neatly encapsulated Heath’s remarks, he never actually said it. A similar situation occurred five years later when one of his successors, James Callaghan, was meant to have asked journalists “Crisis? What Crisis?” in response to a question on the Winter of Discontent. However, in February 1974, Heath was only too pleased that the media had made his message memorable with one pithy catchphrase.
Heath’s Labour opponent, Harold Wilson, did not believe that Labour had much chance of winning when the campaign began. Many of the events that he was scheduled to address were in the back rooms of Labour Clubs. For a man of 57 years of age, Wilson looked a decade older. His heart wasn’t really in it. Labour’s manifesto, entitled Let Us Work Together, was only 10 pages long, but it was one of the most doctrinaire ever produced.
Tony Benn had seized control of its drafting. Consequently, it recommended direct state control of private business, the nationalisation of the country’s top 25 companies, and the creation of a National Enterprise Board. Anthony Crosland described the proposals in his diary as “half-baked” and “idiotic”.
Firm Action for a Fair Britain, the Conservative manifesto, has been described by historian Dominic Sandbrook as “very vague and woolly”, containing “no detailed policy or sense of direction”. Despite Heath launching the campaign around the theme “Who governs?”, he couldn’t stick to it. Far from condemning the Miner’s Union for their second strike in just over a year, he indicated his willingness to negotiate with them, which nullified the reason for calling the election in the first place.
The greatest beneficiary was Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader. His manifesto, You Can Change the Face of Britain, was insipid, but Thorpe made up for it in three ways. Firstly, unlike Wilson and Heath, he was not contaminated by being in government. Secondly, he was charismatic and, thirdly, he had a genius for personal publicity. He would arrive in one seaside resort after another in a hovercraft, or he would descend from the skies in a helicopter.
The campaign’s greatest shock came on 23rd February, when Enoch Powell made a speech urging voters to vote Labour, to re-open the issue of Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community. Labour had pledged re-negotiation and a referendum. Powell had already announced his retirement, but this speech was completely unexpected. Fifty years on, it is hard to recall its impact, but it is fair to say that Powell had widespread public support.
Whilst Heath won the larger vote share (37.9 per cent to Wilson’s 37.2 per cent), Wilson won the most constituencies (301 to Heath’s 297). The Liberals, with 14 MPs, held the balance. Heath spent the whole weekend squatting in Downing Street whilst Thorpe consulted with his Party on whether to join a coalition. Eventually, Thorpe told Heath that he would only agree to a coalition with electoral reform. The Conservatives would not agree, so the man they called “The Grocer”, left Downing Street for the last time on Monday 4th March 1974.