Conservative Electoral Success (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
Conservative Electoral Success
Introduction
At the start of 1982, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most unpopular prime ministers in living memory. Yet in the 1983 general election, the Conservative Party secured a landslide victory. Although Conservative popularity declined between 1983 and 1987, the party won another substantial victory in 1987. Understanding how this electoral dominance was achieved requires examining multiple interconnected factors.
The 1983 election
The Falklands War effect
The political landscape transformed in 1982 following the Falklands War. In April 1982, Argentina's military regime invaded the Falklands Islands. Thatcher's immediate response involved a full-scale military effort to recover the islands. This decision carried enormous risk but British forces achieved complete success. The relatively painless victory vindicated Thatcher's leadership and boosted her political standing considerably.
The Falklands factor galvanised grass-roots Conservative activists. Thatcher's willingness to make tough but ultimately successful decisions demonstrated to voters that she possessed the same resolve for domestic governance. Her self-confidence grew, allowing her to dominate the party more completely than before.
Most national press outlets and even much of the Labour Party supported the recovery operation, unleashing widespread patriotism across the country.
Without question, victory in the Falklands conflict helped deliver the Conservative landslide. It probably also slowed the rise of the Alliance. However, the Falklands factor alone does not fully explain the 1983 result.
Labour Party weaknesses
The Labour leadership suffered from a serious credibility problem. Michael Foot struggled to manage the divisions within his party and performed poorly on television. The Labour election manifesto was dominated by left-wing promises, including unilateral disarmament, withdrawal from the EEC, and the abolition of fox hunting. One Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, described the manifesto as "the longest suicide note in history".
Labour remained deeply divided internally. When Neil Kinnock replaced Foot as leader in 1983, the party faced marginalisation from both Thatcherism and the rising SDP. These internal divisions severely undermined Labour's electoral credibility and contributed significantly to their defeats in both 1983 and 1987.
Although Kinnock came from Labour's Left, he confronted the extremist Militant Tendency (an 'entryist' organisation seeking to infiltrate the Labour Party from within by promoting Trotskyite revolutionary socialism) and the 'Bennites', along with union leaders. He criticised Arthur Scargill for failing to hold a strike ballot during the miners' strike of 1984.
At the 1985 Labour Party conference, Kinnock condemned the Militant Tendency-controlled Liverpool City Council, declaring:
"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council! – a Labour council! – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you, and you'll listen, you can't play politics with people's jobs and people's services."
By 1986, Kinnock successfully expelled Militant Tendency from the Labour Party, though it remained perceived as dominated by the Left and the trade unions.
The splintering of opposition
Another important factor was the fragmentation of political opposition. Even discounting nationalist parties, the anti-Conservative vote totalled 16 million, 3 million more than the pro-Conservative vote. Yet the Conservatives secured a huge majority of 144 seats.
The Electoral System Distortion
The 1983 result exemplified the distorting effect of the first-past-the-post system (an electoral system where the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins, regardless of whether they achieve a majority). The Alliance obtained only half a million fewer votes than Labour but had 186 fewer seats in Parliament.
Election results
In the June 1983 general election:
- Conservative: 397 seats (42.4% of votes)
- Labour: 209 seats (27.6% of votes)
- Liberal & SDP: 23 seats (25.4% of votes)
The result represented a massive Conservative parliamentary majority despite winning less than half the popular vote.
The 1987 election
Conservative campaign strategy
The Conservative Party fought the 1987 election on themes of strong defence, a growing economy, and promised lower taxes. They maintained backing from the majority of the press throughout the campaign.
After its heavy 1983 defeat, Labour's new leader Neil Kinnock was determined to move the party toward political credibility. This proved a huge task. By 1987, Kinnock's leadership had restored party discipline and made the organisation more efficient. Even so, Labour suffered another heavy defeat.
The Alliance loses momentum
Maintaining the levels of support gained in 1981 and 1982 proved difficult for the SDP-Liberal Alliance. This occurred partly due to ideological differences; opposition to Thatcher alone was insufficient to provide unity. Personal differences existed between the two Davids leading the parties. The Alliance obtained 24 per cent of the vote in the 1987 election, nowhere near the peak of 40 per cent it had polled just before the Falklands War.
The Decline and Merger of the Alliance
The SDP began to shrink. It had only emerged because the Labour Party of 1981 was increasingly perceived as unelectable. Moderate socialists had felt compelled to leave Labour to fight against hard-left extremism. Now, as Neil Kinnock established his grip on the party, it appeared that moderate socialism had returned to business and the SDP had no real identity or purpose.
In 1988, the Liberal Party and the SDP formally merged to form the Liberal Democrats. David Owen disagreed with the merger and resigned. Many other MPs switched their allegiance back to Labour. The Liberal Democrats remained a force in politics, especially through slick campaigning in by-elections and local elections, but hopes of 'breaking the mould' melted away.
Election results
In the June 1987 general election:
- Conservative: 375 seats (42.2% of votes)
- Labour: 229 seats (30.8% of votes)
- Liberal & SDP: 22 seats (22.6% of votes)
The Conservatives maintained a substantial majority, though with a reduced seat count compared to 1983.
Historiographical perspective
In 1989, the left-wing academic Paul Hirst wrote about the Conservatives' electoral success:
Paul Hirst's Analysis (1989)
"Mrs Thatcher's governments since 1979 have blended the new economic doctrine with opportunism. The virtues of the free market and the private firm, the hostility to nationalisation, the opposition to high taxes and a willingness to cut public expenditure, and the preference for sound money and a strong pound have all been consistent factors in Conservative thinking and rhetoric since the 1920s. Yet she threw away monetarism when it became a political liability. She abandoned much of the substance of her economic ideas in order to seek the pragmatic goal of prosperity. For the beneficiaries of this boom it has indeed become the case that they 'had never had it so good' – in 1987 they voted with their wallets."
Hirst's analysis suggests that Thatcher's success stemmed not from ideological rigidity but from pragmatic adaptation, blending free-market rhetoric with opportunistic policy shifts to maintain prosperity and electoral support.
Key Points to Remember:
- The 1983 Conservative landslide resulted from the Falklands War victory, Labour's weak leadership and left-wing manifesto, and the Alliance splitting the opposition vote.
- The first-past-the-post electoral system distorted results in 1983: the Alliance won 25.4% of votes but only 23 seats, while Conservatives won 42.4% but 397 seats.
- Labour leader Neil Kinnock expelled Militant Tendency from the party by 1986, improving party discipline but Labour still lost heavily in 1987.
- The SDP-Liberal Alliance collapsed after 1987, merging to form the Liberal Democrats in 1988, as moderate socialism returned to Labour under Kinnock.
- Historian Paul Hirst argued Thatcher's success came from opportunistically abandoning strict monetarism and ideological rigidity to pursue pragmatic prosperity, ensuring electoral support from economic beneficiaries.