Drift to Defeat? 1970–9

Abstract

With the exception of the short-lived experiment of 1924, loss of office had, in the past, been followed by long periods in opposition, and the same was to be true after 1979. By contrast, the party had to wait less than four years after its 1970 setback to resume control of government. Even so, the years between 1970 and 1974 proved a period of intense activity, as economic crisis intensified and the Labour movement sought to reinvigorate itself. Policies were reworked, positions were changed. But the cost of the resulting radicalization of party policy was increasing tension within the party, the sowing of some of the seeds of the split which led to the formation of the Social Democratic party (SDP) in 1981, and a general intensification of doubt both inside and outside the party as to the route it should now take. All these developments were then exacerbated by the five years of Labour government between 1974 and 1979. Shedding party policies left and centre — if not right — and reeling from a concatenation of economic crises and problems with which traditional Labourism found it peculiarly difficult to deal, the party ultimately succumbed to conclusive defeat at the general election of 1979. The roots of many of the problems which were to consign Labour to permanent opposition in the 1980s were to be found in this period.