1983 United Kingdom general election

← 1979 9 June 1983 1987 →
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All650 seats in theHouse of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	30,671,137 72.7% (3.3pp)
First party Second party Third party   All Leader Margaret Thatcher Michael Foot David Steel (Lib.) Roy Jenkins (SDP) Party Conservative Labour Alliance Leader since 11 February 1975 10 November 1980 7 July 1976 (Steel) 7 July 1982 (Jenkins) Leader's seat Finchley Blaenau Gwent Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Steel) Glasgow Hillhead (Jenkins) Last election 339 seats, 43.9% 269 seats, 36.9% 11 seats, 13.8%[c] Seats won 397 209[b] 23 Seat change 58[a] 60[a] 12[a] Popular vote 13,012,316 8,456,934 7,780,949 Percentage 42.4% 27.6% 25.4% Swing 1.5pp 9.3pp 11.6pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in§ Results
Composition of theHouse of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Margaret Thatcher Conservative Prime Minister after election Margaret Thatcher Conservative

The1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave theConservative Party under the leadership ofMargaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of theLabour Party in1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories.^[1]

Thatcher's first term asPrime Minister had not been an easy time.^[2] Unemployment increased during the first three years of her premiership and the economy wentthrough a recession. However, the British victory in theFalklands War led to a recovery of her personal popularity, and economic growth had begun to resume.

By the time Thatcher called the election in May 1983, opinion polls pointed to a Conservative victory, with most national newspapers backing the re-election of the Conservative government. The resulting win earned the Conservatives their biggest parliamentary majority of the post-war era, and their second-biggest majority as a majority government, behind only the1924 general election (they earned even more seats in the1931 general election, but were part of theNational Government).^[3]

The Labour Party had been led byMichael Foot since the resignation of former Prime MinisterJames Callaghan as Leader of the Labour Party in 1980, and its new policies were considered moreleft-wing than before.^[3][4] Several moderate Labour MPs had defected from the party to form theSocial Democratic Party (SDP), which then formed theSDP–Liberal Alliance with the existingLiberal Party. Labour was further harmed by its promise to withdraw from theEuropean Economic Community, which alienated Pro-European groups.

The opposition vote split almost evenly between the Alliance and Labour. With its worst electoral performance since1931, the Labour vote fell by over 3,000,000 votes from 1979, accounting for both a national swing of almost 4% towards the Conservatives and their larger parliamentary majority of 144 seats, even though the Conservatives' total vote fell by almost 700,000. This was the last general election until2015 in which a governing party increased its number of seats.

The Alliance finished in third place but came within 700,000 votes of out-polling Labour; by gaining 25.4% of the vote it won the largest percentage for any third party since1923. Despite this, it won only 23 seats, whereas Labour won 209. The Liberals argued that a proportional electoral system would have given them a more representative number of MPs. Changing the electoral system from First-Past-The-Post had been a long-running campaign plank of the Liberal Party and would later be adopted by its successor, theLiberal Democrats.

The election night was broadcast live on the BBC and was presented byDavid Dimbleby, SirRobin Day andPeter Snow.^[5] It was also broadcast on ITV and presented byAlastair Burnet,Peter Sissons andMartyn Lewis.

Three future leaders of the Labour Party were first elected to Parliament at this election:Tony Blair (1994–2007),Gordon Brown (2007–2010) andJeremy Corbyn (2015–2020). In addition, two future Leaders of the Liberal Democrats,Paddy Ashdown andCharles Kennedy, were first elected.Michael Howard, who later served the Conservatives as Home Secretary in government and asparty leader from 2003 to 2005, was also first elected to Parliament in 1983.

At the same time, a number of prominent Members of Parliament stepped aside or lost their seats. Former Labour Prime MinisterHarold Wilson stood down from Parliament after 38 years, while the Alliance'sShirley Williams andBill Pitt lost their seats only a short time after having won them.Joan Lestor andTony Benn as well as former Liberal leaderJo Grimond andSpeaker of the House of Commons and former Labour Cabinet MinisterGeorge Thomas also departed from Parliament at this election, although Benn would return after winning aby-election inChesterfield the following year, and Lestor returned to Parliament after winning a seat at the next general election in 1987.

Michael Foot waselected leader of theLabour Party at the end of 1980, replacingJames Callaghan. The election of Foot signalled that the core of the party was swinging to the left and the move exacerbated divisions within the party. During 1981, a group of senior figures includingRoy Jenkins,David Owen,Bill Rodgers andShirley Williams left Labour to found theSocial Democratic Party (SDP). The SDP agreed to a pact with theLiberals for the 1983 election and stood as "The Alliance". For a while the Alliance topped the opinion polls and looked capable of achieving their goal of forming a coalition government at the next general election, but the success of the Falklands campaign in 1982 saw the political tide turn in favour of the Conservative government.

The election did not have to be held until 1984. Although political circumstances were clearly favourable for the government and opposition parties anticipated that Mrs Thatcher would go to the country in June, earlier in 1983 the Conservatives were split on the timing of the election. One faction favoured a June election, but another group wanted to wait until October before going to the country, while some within the Party even advocated delaying the contest until 1984. Supporters of waiting to a later time to hold an election included Thatcher's deputy andHome SecretaryWilliam Whitelaw andJohn Biffen who was then serving asLeader of the House of Commons.^[6] On 27 April it was reported that all the Conservative party's regional agents had unanimously expressed a preference to Thatcher for a June election, although some members of her cabinet were advising her to wait until October.^[7] On 8 May senior Conservatives met atChequers and agreed to go to the country on 9 June. The election was formally called the next day and Parliament was dissolved on 13 May for a four-week official election campaign.^[6]

The campaign displayed the huge divisions between the two major parties. Thatcher had been highly unpopular during her first two years in office until the swift and decisive victory in theFalklands War, coupled with an improving economy, considerably raised her standings in the polls. The Conservatives' key issues included reducing unemployment (which had increased from 1.5 million in 1979 to more than 3 million by 1982), continuing economic growth following the recent recession, and defence. Labour's campaign manifesto involved leaving theEuropean Economic Community, abolishing theHouse of Lords, abandoning the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent by cancellingTrident and removing cruise missiles — a programme dubbed by Labour MPGerald Kaufman "the longest suicide note in history"; "Although, at barely 37 pages, it only seemed interminable", notedRoy Hattersley. Pro-Labour political journalistMichael White, writing inThe Guardian, commented: "There was something magnificently brave aboutMichael Foot's campaign but it was like theBattle of the Somme."^[8]

The Alliance had had a setback ahead of the campaign at theDarlington by-election in March. The contest was one that had looked promising ground for the SDP, but despite heavily campaigning in the Labour-held seat, the SDP candidate, who struggled when interviewed for television byVincent Hanna finished a poor third, which stalled the momentum of the Alliance.^[9] During the campaign, on Sunday 29 May,David Steel held a meeting with Jenkins and other Alliance leaders at hisEttrickbridge home. Steel, who polls showed was more popular proposed that Jenkins take a lower profile and that Steel take over as leader of the campaign. Jenkins rejected Steel's view and remained "Prime Minister designate", but Steel did have a heightened role on television for the last 10 days of the election campaign. According toSteve Richards the meeting meant Jenkins' "confidence was undermined and he staggered to the finishing line with less verve than he had displayed in the early days of the SDP" and showed little sign of his earlier "exuberance".^[10][11]

Following boundary changes in 1983, the BBC and ITN (Independent Television News) co-produced acalculation of how the 1979 general election would have gone if fought on the new 1983 boundaries. The following table shows the effects of the boundary changes on the House of Commons:^[12]

The Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher visitedBuckingham Palace on the afternoon of 9 May and askedthe Queen todissolve Parliament on 13 May, announcing that the election would be held on 9 June.^[13] The key dates were as follows:

The election saw the Conservatives win alandslide victory,^[1] improving on their 1979 result and achieving their best results since1935. Although there was a slight drop in their share of the vote, they made significant gains at the expense of Labour. The Tories have yet to match their 1983 seat total in any subsequent general election, although they recorded a higher share of the popular vote in2019.

The night was a disaster for the Labour Party; their share of the vote fell by over 9%, which meant they were only 700,000 votes ahead of the newly formedthird party, the SDP–Liberal Alliance. The massive increase of support for the Alliance at the expense of Labour meant that, in many seats,^[which?] the collapse in the Labour vote allowed the Conservatives to gain. Despite winning over 25% of the national vote, the Alliance got fewer than 4% of seats, 186 fewer than Labour. The most significant Labour loss of the night wasTony Benn, who was defeated in the revivedBristol East seat. SDP PresidentShirley Williams, then a prominent leader in the Social Democratic Party, lost herCrosby seat which she had won in aby-election in 1981.Bill Rodgers, another leading figure in the Alliance (like Williams, one of the "Gang of Four") also failed to win his old seat that he previously held as a Labour MP.

In Scotland, both Labour and the Conservatives sustained modest losses to the Alliance. Labour remained by far the largest party, with 41 seats to 21 for theScottish Conservatives. The Scottish Conservatives have been unable to match their 1983 Westminster seat total since, although they did record a slightly larger share of the Scottish vote in2017, by which time theScottish National Party had become the dominant party in Scotland with the Conservatives being the largest unionist party, with 13 seats won in 2017; their strongest performance in Scotland in 34 years.

On a nationwide basis, the 1983 UK general election was the worst result in Labour's modern history until the2019 general election, in terms of seats won. The result in 1983 remains the worst-ever modern performance for Labour in England.

Seats won in the election (outer ring) against number of votes (inner ring)

Data from Guardian daily polls published inThe Guardian between May and June 1983. Colour key:

•   Conservative
•   Labour
•   Alliance
•   Others

The disproportionality of the House of Commons in the 1983 election was "20.62" according to theGallagher Index, mainly between the Conservatives and the Alliance.

• List of MPs elected in the 1983 United Kingdom general election
• 1983 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland
• 1983 United Kingdom general election in England
• 1983 United Kingdom general election in Wales
• 1983 United Kingdom general election in Scotland
• 1983 United Kingdom local elections

• Butler, David E.; et al. (1984),The British General Election of 1983, the standard scholarly study
• Craig, F. W. S. (1989),British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower,ISBN 0900178302
• Clarke, Harold D.; Mishler, William; Whiteley, Paul (1990), "Recapturing the Falklands: models of Conservative popularity, 1979–83",British Journal of Political Science,20 (1):63–81,doi:10.1017/S0007123400005706,S2CID 154466533

• The Challenge of Our Times, 1983 Conservative Party manifesto
• The New Hope for Britain, 1983 Labour Party manifesto
• Working Together for Britain, 1983 SDP–Liberal Alliance manifesto

• 1983 United Kingdom general election
• General elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom
• 1983 elections in the United Kingdom
• June 1983 in the United Kingdom
• Premiership of Margaret Thatcher
• Michael Foot
• History of the Conservative Party (UK)

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