Thread by @LeeDavidEvansUK

It was the shortest election campaign since the war.

And the first since we joined the European Community.

It's the February 1974 General Election, which took place #OnThisDay 49 years ago.

A thread, which I’ll be updating throughout the day with election highlights. 🧵

Before the votes are counted, the key question is how well the Liberals have done.

The campaign very much went their way and Robert McKenzie wonders whether they are on the brink of achieving 25% and making substantial gains.

His swing-o-meter begins rather more modestly.

There’s an early sign that election coverage in the past wasn’t always that serious.

Mike Yarwood is in the studio to do impressions and gags.

He opens with “It’s quite pointless winning a seat in the House because it’s quite difficult to find one that Cyril Smith isn’t in.”

Boundary changes had given the Conservatives a reasonable advantage on the 1970 election.

Smaller urban seats in London had made way for new seats in more Tory territory, especially the Home Counties.

Here’s the net effect. 👇🏻

David Dimbleby looks back on the campaign.

Former Minister Enoch Powell, who was not standing again, had stunningly urged a Labour vote.

During his speech a disgruntled audience member shouted “Judas!”

“Judas was paid!” retorted Powell with a menacing stare. “Judas was paid!”

Labour had been in touch with Powell throughout the campaign, not least to ensure his speech caused maximum damage to the government.

No Labour frontbencher give a keynote speech on 23 February, the day of Powell's remarks, to help him dominate the headlines.

He did.

McKenzie summarises what the pollsters have been saying throughout the February campaign.

Their final average forecast was a slightly increased majority for Heath and the Conservatives.

But the polls also showed the Liberals taking many more votes - but whose?

The first news from the counting centres is that it looks like a high poll.

Turnout would be up 6.8% overall in the election, the highest turnout since 1951.

But how did the people vote?

Here come some of the key results… (as Robin Day lights a cigar in the studio).

Guildford wins the race to be the first seat to declare.

A young David Howell, who remains in the House of Lords today, is returned.

Tory vote is down. Labour vote is down more. Liberals poll over 30%, the highest Liberal vote in the seat since 1929.

Eric Lubbock, whose sensational by-election win in Orpington in 1962 was a heavy blow for Macmillan, appears as a Liberal spokesperson.

Lubbock lost Orpington in 1970. A year later, he took his hereditary seat in the Lords as 4th Baron Avebury, following the death of his cousin.

McKenzie shows what a take off in support would mean for the Liberals' number of seats.

The tipping point is c. 25%.

Despite their impressive improvements in vote share, Liberal hopes soon start to fade.

Kingmakers in a hung Parliament looks their best bet for wielding power.

We have what I think is the first defeated-candidate-but-future-MP of the night.

Michael Jack loses in Newcastle-upon-Tyne Central. He would go on to be Tory MP for Fylde in Lancashire from 1987-2010.

The victor is Labour's Deputy leader Edward Short, sporting a green rosette.

Shadow Employment Secretary Reg Prentice speaks for the incoming government.

Three years later he became the most senior politician to defect from Labour to the Conservatives.

He would become a Conservative MP and peer - as well as a minister in Mrs Thatcher’s first government.

Accrington’s result is in.

It’s described by David Butler as one of the first seats the Conservatives could have hoped to gain.

And it’s bad news for Mr Heath. There’s a swing to Labour of over 5%.

The first seat from Wolverhampton is declared - Wolverhampton North East.

In the news studio, speculation begins that Enoch Powell’s endorsement of Labour has produced devastating swings against the government in the midlands.

There’s a huge 10.6% swing in the constituency.

Enoch Powell’s own seat, Wolverhampton South West, sees a staggering 16.7% swing to Labour.

The Conservatives hold it with a majority just shy of 7,000; Nicholas Budgen would go on to represent the seat until 1997.

Margaret Beckett (née Jackson) loses in Lincoln to Dick Taverne.

Taverne had been a Labour MP but left the party and resigned his seat in 1972.

He was re-elected handsomely at the by-election and marginally in Feb 74 as a Democratic Labour candidate.

Taverne would lose to Jackson in the October rematch.

She would then herself lose in 1979, to the Conservatives, before becoming MP for Derby South in 1983.

Jackson, now known as Margaret Beckett, remains in the House of Commons; Taverne remains in the House of Lords.

The first seat to change hands is Keighley in Yorkshire.

The victor was Bob Cryer on a 1.7% swing.

Cryer held the seat until 1983, losing to the Conservatives. In 1987 he returned to Parliament for Bradford South, a seat he held until his death in a car accident in 1994.

“Barbara Castle back in Blackburn. It wouldn’t really be the Labour Party if she weren’t back, but of course she was in some trouble on the 1970 result…”

Castle, MP since 1945, increased her majority from 2,736 to 6,300.

Here she is campaigning with a tin of spam, or similar.

Conservative Party Chairman Lord Carrington begins to concede the obvious, describing the results as “disappointing”.

Carrington would be replaced as Party Chairman by Willie Whitelaw, who would lead the party organisation through the forthcoming October election.

Doug Hoyle, father of the current Speaker, is defeated in Nelson & Colne at his second time of trying.

He would take the seat in October, lose it in 1979, before becoming MP for Warrington (then Warrington North) from a 1981 by-election until 1997.

He remains a peer.

Jeremy Thorpe increases his majority in North Devon from 369 to over 11,000 (on new boundaries).

The next few years would spell disaster for Thorpe as his years of personal misconduct caught up with him.

He would eventually be defeated by the Conservatives in 1979.

A stony-faced Heath is returned in the new constituency of Sidcup.

“The look of a man who does not expect to be Prime Minister,” says Alastair Burnet.

Heath is interviewed by David Dimbleby and refuses to comment on the national result.

The Liberals had hoped for a breakthrough in Liverpool. They have failed.

Labour are on the up in the city.

The Conservatives lose Liverpool Garston marginally.

How Liverpool politics has changed: a successor seat, Garston and Halewood, now has a Labour majority of 31,624.

Labour are doing well - but not well enough.

Wilson speaks of how he has pinned his hopes on gains in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and London.

“But you’re not doing as well in the South are you?”

“Quite true,” Wilson says bluntly, obscured by his own pipe smoke.

Two titans of politics speak to Robin Day from Leeds.

Sir Keith Joseph and Denis Healey have both held their seats in the great Yorkshire city.

But colour television doesn’t seem to have made it to the BBC in Yorkshire yet!

Wilson addresses Party workers in Huyton in front of a *very* 1970s background.

He celebrates local results and hears for the first time of victory in Bebington and Ellesmere Port.

“I went to school in Bebington,” he adds. He had been a Sixth Former at @WGSB (as I was).

Whilst on stage, Wilson is offered what looks like a pint of ale from one of the party workers.

You can see it being offered as he walks to the microphones (in this image, he's behind Mary Wilson).

Wilson declines - surely he knows the cameras are rolling.

On a strong night for nationalist parties, the SNP gain Banffshire in Scotland.

The successor seat, Banff and Buchan, would go on to typify SNP success in NE Scotland, with Alex Salmond as its MP from 1987-2010.

It now has a Conservative MP once again, @david_duguid.

The computer (much hyped, discussed and argued over throughout the night) speaks:

There is almost no way for either major party to gain a majority.

The late, great David Butler refers to Enoch Powell as “the man whose influence in the West Midlands has produced eleven Conservative losses there. There is no other region of the country where anything like that has happened.”

He calls the West Midlands “Powell country.”

A rare event in this election: a Tory gain!

The Earl of Ancram takes Berwick & East Lothian. He would be defeated in October before becoming MP for Edinburgh South from 1979-1987 and Devizes from 1992-2010.

He is today the The Marquess of Lothian and has a life peerage.

It's the early hours and first editions are being published.

The Daily Express says "it's one big see-saw".

The rest of the year would show they were right.