As the British people prepare to go to the polls on Thursday in the 2010 General Election, Lord Tebbit, the former Tory Secretary of State for Employment and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, tells us what he thinks are the ten greatest British General Elections in history.
Tebbit, whose wife was left permanently disabled and in a wheelchair when IRA terrorists bombed the 1984 Conservative Party conference in Brighton, includes in his list the 1831 General Election when Earl Grey (him of tea fame) led the Whigs to a landslide victory over the Tories; 1874, when the Tories' Benjamin Disraeli came to power, enabling the British Empire to expand, including into India; 1923 when Labour formed its first ever government, under Ramsay Macdonald; 1979, when Thatcher became Britain's first female MP in the aftermath of the Winter of Discontent caused by Jim Callaghan's Labour Government and, of course, 1997, when a certain Tony Blair who, at the age of 43, became the youngest person to become British Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812 after routing the Tories, who had ruled for 18 years, in a landslide.
The list is in chronological order.
Ten of the greatest General Elections, by LORD TEBBIT
By LORD TEBBIT
1st May 2010
The former Conservative MP and Cabinet Minister on the best election wins from the Whigs landslide win in 1831 led by Earl Grey to Margaret Thatcher's sweep to power in 1979
1. 1831
Two hundred years ago, the House of Lords was as powerful, if not more so, than the Commons; party allegiances were much more shifting and a General Election might change the party balance in the Commons but could not bring down a Government with a majority in the Lords. The Whigs, led by Earl Grey (who gave his name to the tea blend), won a landslide election in 1831 - producing a Parliament overwhelmingly in favour of change. Both the electoral system and the political landscape of the time were rotten to the core, and in desperate need of reform. Every county was represented by two MPs - despite the fact that Yorkshire (the largest), for instance, had 17,000 electors, while Rutland (the smallest) had just 600. The great Reform Act was finally pushed through the Lords only after a threat by King William IV to make enough new peers to give the Whigs a majority there too. The Election of 1831 - and the act that followed - breached a dam of narrow self-interest and fear and paved the way for gradual, British-style piecemeal reform.
2. 1874
The next pivotal election was in 1874, when at the age of 70 Benjamin Disraeli led the Conservatives to a clear majority for the first time in 33 years. He brought about a great expansion of the British Empire, especially in India, and the diplomatic triumph of the Congress Of Berlin, which united western Europe in limiting Russia's ambitions to expand into the Balkans. At home there was a flood of modernising legislation with the Public Health Act , Medicines Act, Factory Act and the Employers and Workmen Act, as well as the legalisation of peaceful picketing. Although the Liberals regained power in 1880, the election of 1874 had ensured the survival of the Conservatives as one of the great political parties.
3. 1906
After nearly 20 years of Tory rule, the Liberals finally got their act together and won a landslide election. The big issue was whether or not to embrace protectionism or stick with free trade, which had served the nation so well for so long. The Liberals wrapped themselves in the free-trade flag, and the electoral battle was symbolised by the issue of the free trade 'Big Loaf' vs the Tari Reform 'Small Loaf' (see cartoon, above), opponents of Tari Reform claiming that abandoning free trade would saddle the country with expensive food. The election was also notable for the arrival of the Labour Party in the Commons after being given a free ride in 29 seats by the Liberals.
4. 1910
The two elections in 1910 changed Britain. The Liberals' 'People's Budget' proposed to 'soak the rich' to pay for a bigger Navy and an extension of welfare. The Tories blocked it in the Lords, and two general elections followed. The first, in January, gave the Liberals a majority of two over the Tories (under Arthur Balfour, above). The second, in December, was a dead heat. But under the pressure of a deal with the Irish Nationalists in the Commons and another threat to flood the Lords with Liberal peers, the Tories capitulated and the 1911 Parliament Act was pushed through, and with it passed the power of the Lords. The Liberal/Labour pact, which brought 40 Labour MPs into the Commons, turned out to be a suicide note for the Liberals. That parliament lasted until the end of World War I.
5. 1923
Labour formed its first ever government under Ramsay Macdonald
The years immediately after World War I were politically confused following a split in Liberal ranks - but the 1923 election paved the way for modern two-party politics as we know it. The big issue was, as in 1906, free trade vs protectionism, but this time it did not prove as decisive. The outcome was messy: the Conservatives won the most votes and seats (258 ), followed by Labour (with 191 MPs) and the reunited Liberals (159 MPs). However, the Conservatives could not command a parliamentary majority so Labour formed its first-ever Government under Ramsay MacDonald, albeit one dependent on Liberal support. His administration collapsed within a year but it signalled Labour's eclipse of the Liberals as one of the two main parties (until, maybe, this year).
Stanley Baldwin with whom Ramsay Macdonald joined forces in 1931
6. 1931
The Wall Street Crash triggered the onset of the Great Depression - a decade-long world economic crisis that left millions unemployed at home and abroad. It struck just months after Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald had taken office in another minority Labour Government, again dependent on Liberal support. The repercussions of the economic crisis on Britain were severe and the Cabinet split over how best to deal with the situation.
However, rather than resign, MacDonald joined forces with Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives and a handful of Liberals to form a National Government to cope with the crisis. In October 1931, the National Government, largely Conservative-led, triumphed at the polls, winning 554 MPs to Labour's 52. The National Government remained in power - thanks to a second electoral victory in 1935 under Baldwin - for the rest of the Thirties, and took the tough decisions necessary to help ensure that much of the country at least prospered during the rest of the decade.
7. 1945
Labour's victory in the 1945 election was a shattering blow to Winston Churchill.
Trying to comfort him, his wife said that 'perhaps it was a blessing in disguise', provoking the riposte, 'If so, it is indeed well disguised.'
And perhaps it was. Clement Attlee's 1945 government refashioned much of Britain. But it was not just the programme of nationalisation of industry nor the botched implementation of the Beveridge Report on the Welfare State, nor the creation of the NHS that mattered. Coming in 1945, Labour's victory put men like Attlee and Ernest Bevin, who had served in Churchill's War Cabinet, into office.
They formed the Nato alliance with America against the Soviet Union, commissioned the British nuclear deterrent and re-armed for the Cold War. Had Labour not come to power for another ten years, the fellow travellers of the left would have been far more powerful, probably strong enough to have forced the renunciation of Nato and our nuclear weapons.
Edward Heath was toppled from power by the rise of the trade unions
8. 1951
By the time of the 1951 election, the post-war consensus ran two ways. Labour was committed to Nato and the West, but the Conservatives broadly accepted Labour's domestic settlement. So when the Tories won a hard-fought election in 1951, polling fewer votes but winning more seats, almost nothing of Labour's economic or social reforms was undone. There was a 'bonfire of controls' and rationing of food and clothing ended but the NHS, welfare state and nationalised industries were left untouched. The Conservatives settled for a quiet time in office rather than a role in setting the political agenda, ameliorating or improving their inheritance from the previous government, but never reversing its policies. That set the scene for the rise of trade union power, the decline of industry and the rise in inflation, which increased until the unions toppled not only Edward Heath but James Callaghan.
9. 1979
Margaret Thatcher was probably Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister
Battered by the Winter Of Discontent, Jim Callaghan's Labour Government lost a confidence motion in spring 1979 and Margaret Thatcher swept to power. The post-war consensus was ended. She discarded controls on wages and prices, deregulated, decontrolled, denationalised, reformed trade union law, sold council houses to their tenants, liberated the Falklands, reduced taxation, cut the costs of EU membership and, alongside President Reagan, ended the Cold War in victory.
The reaction of the left was determination to simply reverse the Thatcherite reforms. It was not until Tony Blair that Labour accepted Thatcher had not only ended the post-war consensus but established a new one.
10. 1997
John Major staggered to defeat at the hands of the Labour Party in 1997 at what may yet prove to have been the most significant election since 1945. To win, Tony Blair had to drop the old Left's commitments to renationalisation, the repeal of the Thatcher/Tebbit union reforms and unilateral disarmament.
Blair's promise to stand by Chancellor Ken Clarke's tax and spending programmes for the first three years of his Government and the well-planned 'prawn cocktail offensive' reassured business leaders and convinced Rupert Murdoch not only that Blair would win, but that he could be trusted.
Even so, the Labour vote at 13.5 million was less than Thatcher's 13.7 million in 1979 and 13.8 million in 1987, John Major's 14.2 million in 1992 and most notably Labour's 13.9 million in 1951.
LORD TEBBIT PICTURE BYLINE: CAMERA PRESS / Mark Harrison
dailymail.co.uk
Tebbit, whose wife was left permanently disabled and in a wheelchair when IRA terrorists bombed the 1984 Conservative Party conference in Brighton, includes in his list the 1831 General Election when Earl Grey (him of tea fame) led the Whigs to a landslide victory over the Tories; 1874, when the Tories' Benjamin Disraeli came to power, enabling the British Empire to expand, including into India; 1923 when Labour formed its first ever government, under Ramsay Macdonald; 1979, when Thatcher became Britain's first female MP in the aftermath of the Winter of Discontent caused by Jim Callaghan's Labour Government and, of course, 1997, when a certain Tony Blair who, at the age of 43, became the youngest person to become British Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812 after routing the Tories, who had ruled for 18 years, in a landslide.
The list is in chronological order.
Ten of the greatest General Elections, by LORD TEBBIT
By LORD TEBBIT
1st May 2010
The former Conservative MP and Cabinet Minister on the best election wins from the Whigs landslide win in 1831 led by Earl Grey to Margaret Thatcher's sweep to power in 1979
1. 1831
Two hundred years ago, the House of Lords was as powerful, if not more so, than the Commons; party allegiances were much more shifting and a General Election might change the party balance in the Commons but could not bring down a Government with a majority in the Lords. The Whigs, led by Earl Grey (who gave his name to the tea blend), won a landslide election in 1831 - producing a Parliament overwhelmingly in favour of change. Both the electoral system and the political landscape of the time were rotten to the core, and in desperate need of reform. Every county was represented by two MPs - despite the fact that Yorkshire (the largest), for instance, had 17,000 electors, while Rutland (the smallest) had just 600. The great Reform Act was finally pushed through the Lords only after a threat by King William IV to make enough new peers to give the Whigs a majority there too. The Election of 1831 - and the act that followed - breached a dam of narrow self-interest and fear and paved the way for gradual, British-style piecemeal reform.
2. 1874
The next pivotal election was in 1874, when at the age of 70 Benjamin Disraeli led the Conservatives to a clear majority for the first time in 33 years. He brought about a great expansion of the British Empire, especially in India, and the diplomatic triumph of the Congress Of Berlin, which united western Europe in limiting Russia's ambitions to expand into the Balkans. At home there was a flood of modernising legislation with the Public Health Act , Medicines Act, Factory Act and the Employers and Workmen Act, as well as the legalisation of peaceful picketing. Although the Liberals regained power in 1880, the election of 1874 had ensured the survival of the Conservatives as one of the great political parties.
3. 1906
After nearly 20 years of Tory rule, the Liberals finally got their act together and won a landslide election. The big issue was whether or not to embrace protectionism or stick with free trade, which had served the nation so well for so long. The Liberals wrapped themselves in the free-trade flag, and the electoral battle was symbolised by the issue of the free trade 'Big Loaf' vs the Tari Reform 'Small Loaf' (see cartoon, above), opponents of Tari Reform claiming that abandoning free trade would saddle the country with expensive food. The election was also notable for the arrival of the Labour Party in the Commons after being given a free ride in 29 seats by the Liberals.
4. 1910
The two elections in 1910 changed Britain. The Liberals' 'People's Budget' proposed to 'soak the rich' to pay for a bigger Navy and an extension of welfare. The Tories blocked it in the Lords, and two general elections followed. The first, in January, gave the Liberals a majority of two over the Tories (under Arthur Balfour, above). The second, in December, was a dead heat. But under the pressure of a deal with the Irish Nationalists in the Commons and another threat to flood the Lords with Liberal peers, the Tories capitulated and the 1911 Parliament Act was pushed through, and with it passed the power of the Lords. The Liberal/Labour pact, which brought 40 Labour MPs into the Commons, turned out to be a suicide note for the Liberals. That parliament lasted until the end of World War I.
5. 1923
Labour formed its first ever government under Ramsay Macdonald
The years immediately after World War I were politically confused following a split in Liberal ranks - but the 1923 election paved the way for modern two-party politics as we know it. The big issue was, as in 1906, free trade vs protectionism, but this time it did not prove as decisive. The outcome was messy: the Conservatives won the most votes and seats (258 ), followed by Labour (with 191 MPs) and the reunited Liberals (159 MPs). However, the Conservatives could not command a parliamentary majority so Labour formed its first-ever Government under Ramsay MacDonald, albeit one dependent on Liberal support. His administration collapsed within a year but it signalled Labour's eclipse of the Liberals as one of the two main parties (until, maybe, this year).
Stanley Baldwin with whom Ramsay Macdonald joined forces in 1931
6. 1931
The Wall Street Crash triggered the onset of the Great Depression - a decade-long world economic crisis that left millions unemployed at home and abroad. It struck just months after Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald had taken office in another minority Labour Government, again dependent on Liberal support. The repercussions of the economic crisis on Britain were severe and the Cabinet split over how best to deal with the situation.
However, rather than resign, MacDonald joined forces with Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives and a handful of Liberals to form a National Government to cope with the crisis. In October 1931, the National Government, largely Conservative-led, triumphed at the polls, winning 554 MPs to Labour's 52. The National Government remained in power - thanks to a second electoral victory in 1935 under Baldwin - for the rest of the Thirties, and took the tough decisions necessary to help ensure that much of the country at least prospered during the rest of the decade.
7. 1945
Labour's victory in the 1945 election was a shattering blow to Winston Churchill.
Trying to comfort him, his wife said that 'perhaps it was a blessing in disguise', provoking the riposte, 'If so, it is indeed well disguised.'
And perhaps it was. Clement Attlee's 1945 government refashioned much of Britain. But it was not just the programme of nationalisation of industry nor the botched implementation of the Beveridge Report on the Welfare State, nor the creation of the NHS that mattered. Coming in 1945, Labour's victory put men like Attlee and Ernest Bevin, who had served in Churchill's War Cabinet, into office.
They formed the Nato alliance with America against the Soviet Union, commissioned the British nuclear deterrent and re-armed for the Cold War. Had Labour not come to power for another ten years, the fellow travellers of the left would have been far more powerful, probably strong enough to have forced the renunciation of Nato and our nuclear weapons.
Edward Heath was toppled from power by the rise of the trade unions
8. 1951
By the time of the 1951 election, the post-war consensus ran two ways. Labour was committed to Nato and the West, but the Conservatives broadly accepted Labour's domestic settlement. So when the Tories won a hard-fought election in 1951, polling fewer votes but winning more seats, almost nothing of Labour's economic or social reforms was undone. There was a 'bonfire of controls' and rationing of food and clothing ended but the NHS, welfare state and nationalised industries were left untouched. The Conservatives settled for a quiet time in office rather than a role in setting the political agenda, ameliorating or improving their inheritance from the previous government, but never reversing its policies. That set the scene for the rise of trade union power, the decline of industry and the rise in inflation, which increased until the unions toppled not only Edward Heath but James Callaghan.
9. 1979
Margaret Thatcher was probably Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister
Battered by the Winter Of Discontent, Jim Callaghan's Labour Government lost a confidence motion in spring 1979 and Margaret Thatcher swept to power. The post-war consensus was ended. She discarded controls on wages and prices, deregulated, decontrolled, denationalised, reformed trade union law, sold council houses to their tenants, liberated the Falklands, reduced taxation, cut the costs of EU membership and, alongside President Reagan, ended the Cold War in victory.
The reaction of the left was determination to simply reverse the Thatcherite reforms. It was not until Tony Blair that Labour accepted Thatcher had not only ended the post-war consensus but established a new one.
10. 1997
John Major staggered to defeat at the hands of the Labour Party in 1997 at what may yet prove to have been the most significant election since 1945. To win, Tony Blair had to drop the old Left's commitments to renationalisation, the repeal of the Thatcher/Tebbit union reforms and unilateral disarmament.
Blair's promise to stand by Chancellor Ken Clarke's tax and spending programmes for the first three years of his Government and the well-planned 'prawn cocktail offensive' reassured business leaders and convinced Rupert Murdoch not only that Blair would win, but that he could be trusted.
Even so, the Labour vote at 13.5 million was less than Thatcher's 13.7 million in 1979 and 13.8 million in 1987, John Major's 14.2 million in 1992 and most notably Labour's 13.9 million in 1951.
LORD TEBBIT PICTURE BYLINE: CAMERA PRESS / Mark Harrison
dailymail.co.uk
Last edited:
