Thread by @labour_history

#OTD 1983. The Labour Party fall to its heaviest defeat since the 1930s.

Micheal Foot says it is a "tragedy for the nation" but "what I have said in this election will prove to be true".

🧵 Forty years on – a thread on the 1983 election campaign

After the 1979 election, the Labour Party descended into a ‘civil war’ as the SDP formed and Tony Benn fought Denis Healey for the Deputy

Michael Foot was elected as leader and initially framed a unity candidate to hold the left and right together.

Polling showed that 50% of voters thought Mrs Thatcher was “the best Prime Minister available” in contrast to Foot who scored 22%.

Foot refused to step down in advance of the election and after the Bermondsey by-election

“If I thought I could assist the Labour Party by clearing out, of course I would do so"

Neil Kinnock was one MP who defended Foot.

“I am proud to stand by such a man. I want him to be leader of our country for I trust him with my children’s lives, with the future of our people, with world responsibility”.

By May 1983 – with a month to go election – the party still needed to find 150 candidates.

The safe Labour seat of Sedgefield was created by changes to constituency boundaries – where Tony Blair ended up as the surprise candidate @JohnRentoul

independent.co.uk/life-style/red…

A 15,000 word document ‘New hope for Britain’ was published.

“We are embarking on a moral crusade. We are determined to create a society which is wholly different and infinitely superior to the set of values for which Mrs Thatcher and the Tories stand”.

The manifesto included a programme of unilateral disarmament, withdrawal from the common market and a programme of increased spending to cut unemployment to under 1m.

bbc.co.uk/news/election-…

The Guardian reported that the manifesto had been pushed through with little debate.

“The longest period was about the policy on angling” and how the party could help “3.5 million anglers, possible through grants to clubs that want to buy fishing waters”

Roy Hattersley later said that there had been little resistance to the manifesto after John Golding pushed for it with “little argument or little dispute”.

“This election is going to be fought on Tony Benn’s terms so we might as well thoroughly incriminate him”.

It was briefed to the media by Gerald Kaufman that the document was “the longest suicide note in history”

Shirley Williams of the SDP argued that it was “an abuse of the common-sense of the British voter”

“It promises billions to everyone: housing, health, educations, pensions, child benefit...whatever your special interest, Labour has a free gift for you”.

Peter Walker said Britain would cease to have any influence in the world within 100 days

Withdrawal from the common market, scrapping nuclear weapons and banning American cruise missiles “taken together would amount to a catastrophe from which this country would never recover”

Central to the debate was Labour’s plan to leave the EEC without a referendum,

Tony Benn argued “we need more democracy and more freedom than we have now in a Britain which is riddled with privilege, governed by common market regulations”

Roy Hattesrley admitted that he would prefer Britain stay in the EEC

“Some companies undoubtedly will say they will not be in Britain if we are outside the Common Market”

The policy put Denis Healey in a difficult position, as Chancellor he had argued

“The claim that joining Europe has been the cause of unemployment in our manufacturing industry is clearly bunk…Anyone who believes that will believe anything”.

Even the Daily Mirror could not support the party full heartedly.

The paper used an editorial to warn that leaving the EEC would be a “reckless” move.

The Daily Mail painted Healey as a liar who did not believe in Foot's policies.

As the debate over the EEC raged, a report from Nissan warned that a new car plant in Sunderland would be pulled if Labour won.

The Industry Secretary Patrick Jenkin warned that the £500m factory might not be built.

Foot responded at an event at the Glasgow Apollo by holding up the Mail and joking that “there are some people in London who still believe what the Daily Mail says”

Foot said that it was “absolute nonsense for people to suggest that our clearing out of the common market is going to mean that we are not going to have any trade”.

Jenkin said that all Nissan’s plans centred around “free access” to the community.

The public supported the Conservative policy towards the Common Market. A mid-campaign poll which asked which party had the best policy:

Conservative 49%
Labour 23%
Alliance 11%

Yet 65% of Labour voters supported withdrawal compared to 13% of Tories.

At the launch of the Conservative manifesto, Mrs Thatcher said:

“A continuous part of the policy will carry on with a robust policy towards the EEC, we are part of it, we fight our corner on those things we need to fight on and we fully co-operate with the policies of the EEC”

Thatcher argued that: “It brings new investment to Britain, new job opportunities in the Common Market. And as you know, so many of our industries are geared and equipped to sell into that Market”

It came as a poll for Panorama showed that Denis Healey would be much more likely to lead Labour to victory.

In response, Labour complained to the BBC’s director general Alasdair Milne.

In a speech in Perth, Tony Benn compared Thatcher to Hitler and Mussolini and “pure fascism” of the 1930s.

He referred to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and said “His attack on the union movement is identical to what is being said now by Mrs Thatcher”

Benn said that “when the PM spoke as if the spilling of blood at Goose Green in the Falklands had given the nation back its pride, that is pure fascism”.

Lord Hailsham warned that Foot would “deprive of us of any right to continue to call ourselves a free country” with Labour becoming “a hideous grinning mask of elective dictatorship”.

Foot attacked Hailsham over who was more patriotic about Britain, accusing him of “licking Hitler’s jackboots”

“We don’t need any instructions from Tory leaders about why Hitler was able to do what he did before the war…we are not having any lessons about patriotism from them”

In the Daily Mail, Harold Wilson gave an exclusive interview where he argued that the party had been infiltrated by Trotskyites

“The make a mockery of parliamentary democracy and I really think they should be slung out on their necks”.

The aftermath of the Falklands War remained a controversial topic for Labour

Denis Healey accused Thatcher of “glorying in the slaughter” of deaths at the Falklands. He was then forced to apologise. “I should have said the word ‘conflict’.

Neil Kinnock then got into an altercation with a heckler who shouted that Thatcher had ‘guts’: ‘It is a pity that people had to leave theirs on the ground of Goose Green in order to prove it”.

Heseltine called Kinnock “the gutter king of politics”: “He had spent so much of his time in the vicious back-biting world of the left-wing that he has forgotten the basic standards of human decency”

Kinnock said “If I was in the gutter, and I aint, he’d still be looking up at me from the sewer”.

The campaign then became dominated by questions about whether Foot would resign.

“I’m not dreaming of resigning, If I were to take that advice…I would be doing infinite damage to the party”

Labour was then accused of changing its policy towards Polaris as the campaign wore on

Denis Healey admitted that they could not phase it out within one parliament.

“I believe we can move towards a no first-use of nuclear weapons”

Bob Worcester, Labour’s pollster, said that every time Foot spoke about defence the party went down in the polls.

“It was clearly an unpopular policy supported by few people and yet Michael kept banging on about it”.

Towards the end of the campaign, Tony Benn admitted that Labour was struggling to cut through

“People are frightened for their jobs, frightened the Russians will come tomorrow and frightened of being shot by the chief constable, if you survive a nuclear war”

With ten days to go the Tories opened up a 17 point lead and commentators spoke about the battle for 2nd place.

With one week to go, Mrs Thatcher turned her attacks onto the Alliance arguing that Labour would remain the main opposition.

Thatcher said: “The Labour Party won’t die. The Labour Party will never die. If you want a good opposition you have got to reform the Labour Party, as Gaitskell was trying to”.

A heavy defeat might save them. “I think it would lead to a change in the Labour Party from within”.

Celebrities also appeared to be coming out for Mrs Thatcher

From Switzerland, Roger Moore warned that a Foot Government would impact him greatly

“You won’t be able to leave your kids so much as a kidney…I think the death tax is the most appalling thing”.

Even the cast of Coronation Street endorsed Mrs Thatcher.

Jean Alexander, who played Hilda Ogden admitted that she had been Labour all her life but would now be voting Tory

Pat Phoenix, by contrast, argued that Michael Foot was a “smashing man” and helped her step-daughter and son-in-law out on the campaign trail.

thecritic.co.uk/the-nations-fa…

On the final weekend of campaigning Foot addressed a people’s march for jobs rally in London while the Tories held a rally with Kenny Everett and Steve Davis...

When the votes were counted Mrs Thatcher had lost 1.5% of the vote share from 1979.

But she had increased her majority to 144 - the biggest Tory parliamentary majority of the post-war era

The Labour vote fell by over 3m to the lowest number of seats since 1931

The Alliance finished in third place but came within 700,000 votes of out-polling Labour. Yet they won just 23 seats on 25% of the vote.

On BBC election coverage Anthony King concluded that this was evidence of Labour's long-term decline since 1966

"The Labour vote has gone down like a tennis ball down a flight of stairs"

Despite the loss of seats, three future leaders entered the Commons….

And to read MORE about the wider consequences of the election, you can pre-order my sporting social history of the decade:

🏉Hope and Glory: Rugby League in Thatcher’s Britain (for publication this summer)

END

amazon.co.uk/Hope-Glory-Lea…