1979 United Kingdom general election

← Oct 1974 3 May 1979 1983 →
← outgoing members elected members →
All635 seats in theHouse of Commons 318 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	31,221,362 76.0% (3.2pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Margaret Thatcher James Callaghan David Steel Party Conservative Labour Liberal Leader since 11 February 1975 5 April 1976 7 July 1976 Leader's seat Finchley Cardiff South East Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles Last election 277 seats, 35.8% 319 seats, 39.2% 13 seats, 18.3% Seats won 339 269[a] 11 Seat change 62 50 2 Popular vote 13,697,923 11,532,218 4,313,804 Percentage 43.9% 36.9% 13.8% Swing 8.1pp 2.3pp 4.5pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in§ Results
Composition of theHouse of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election James Callaghan Labour Prime Minister after election Margaret Thatcher Conservative

The1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect635 members to theHouse of Commons. The election was held following the defeat of the Labour government in a no-confidence motion on 28 March 1979, six months before the Parliament was due for dissolution in October 1979.

TheConservative Party, led byMargaret Thatcher, ousted the incumbentLabour government of Prime MinisterJames Callaghan, gaining a parliamentary majority of 43 seats. The election was the first of four consecutive election victories for the Conservative Party, and Thatcher became the United Kingdom's and Europe's first electedfemale head of government, marking the beginning of 18 years in government for the Conservatives and 18 years in opposition for Labour.

Unusually, the date chosen coincided with the1979 local elections. The local government results provided some source of comfort to the Labour Party, who recovered some lost ground from local election reversals in previous years, despite losing the general election. The parish council elections were pushed back a few weeks.

The previous parliamentary term had begun inOctober 1974, whenHarold Wilson led Labour to a majority of three seats, seven months after forming a minority government following a hung parliament and the failure ofEdward Heath's Conservative government to form a coalition with the Liberals. Wilson had previously led the party in government from October 1964 to June 1970, and had served as party leader since February 1963.

However, after just two years back in Downing Street, he had resigned as prime minister,being succeeded by James Callaghan; and within a further year the government's narrow parliamentary majority had gone. Callaghan made agreements with theLiberals and later theUlster Unionists, as well as theScottish andWelsh nationalists, in order to remain in power. The Lib-Lab pact lasted until July 1978.

However, on 28 March 1979, following the defeat of theScottish devolution referendum, Thatcher tabled amotion of no confidence in Callaghan's Labour government, which was passed by just one vote (311 to 310), triggering a general election six months before the end of the government's term. It was the first government to lose a motion of no-confidence in the House of Commons since the first Labour government led by Ramsay MacDonald in October 1924.

The Labour campaign was hampered by recent memories of a series of industrial disputes and strikes during the winter of 1978–79, known as theWinter of Discontent, and the party focused its campaign on support for theNational Health Service and full employment. After intense media speculation that a general election would be held before the end of 1978, Callaghan had announced early in the autumn of that year that a general election would not take place that year, having received private polling data which suggested a parliamentary majority was unlikely.^[1]

The Conservative campaign employed the advertising agencySaatchi & Saatchi, and pledged to controlinflation as well as curbing the power of thetrade unions. The Conservatives also ran their campaign on the theme that "Labour Isn't Working" (unemployment reached a 40-year high of 1.5 million during 1978). The Liberal Party was damaged by allegations thatJeremy Thorpe, its former leader,had been involved in a homosexual affair and had conspired to murder his former lover. The Liberals were now being led byDavid Steel, meaning that all three major parties entered the election with a new leader.

The election saw a 5.2%swing from Labour to the Conservatives, the largest swing since the1945 election, whichClement Attlee won for Labour.Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, and Callaghan was replaced as Labour leader byMichael Foot in 1980. The results of the election were broadcast live on the BBC, and presented byDavid Dimbleby andRobin Day, withRobert McKenzie on the "Swingometer", and further analysis provided byDavid Butler.^[2] It was the first general election to featureRick Wakeman's song "Arthur" during the BBC's coverage. On ITV, the election broadcast was hosted byAlastair Burnet,Martyn Lewis,Peter Snow andLeonard Parkin.

Because of the anaemic economic and social backdrop in this election, it presaged the1980 United States presidential election 18 months later in which, in a situation with some parallels, incumbent US PresidentJimmy Carter was likewise defeated by Republican challengerRonald Reagan, an advocate of similar socioeconomic policies to those of Margaret Thatcher's Britain.

Future Prime MinisterJohn Major, who went on to succeed Thatcher in November 1990, entered Parliament at this election, retaining theHuntingdonshire seat inCambridgeshire for the Conservatives. Prominent MPs Jeremy Thorpe,Shirley Williams andBarbara Castle were among the members of parliament who retired or lost their seats.

As of 2025, this is the earliest British election from which a major party leader (Steel) is still alive.

After suffering avote of no confidence on 28 March 1979, Prime MinisterJames Callaghan was forced to announce that he would request a dissolution of Parliament to bring about a general election. The key dates were as follows:

Callaghan succeededHarold Wilson as the Labour prime minister after the latter's surprise resignation in April 1976. By March 1977, Labour had become aminority government after two by-election defeats cost them the three-seat majority they had won in October 1974, and from March 1977 to August 1978 Callaghan governed by an agreement with theLiberal Party through theLib–Lab pact. Callaghan had considered calling an election in the autumn of 1978,^[3] but ultimately decided that imminent tax cuts, and a possible economic upturn in 1979, could favour his party at the polls and delayed the election until the following year. Although published opinion polls suggested that he might win,^[4] private polls commissioned by the Labour Party from MORI had suggested the two main parties had much the same level of support.^[1]

However, events would soon overtake the Labour government and prove Callaghan's decision to delay an election to be a costly mistake. A series of industrial disputes in the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent", led to widespreadstrikes across the country and seriously hurt Labour's standings in the polls while boosting support for the Conservative opposition. When theScottish National Party (SNP) withdrew support for theScotland Act 1978, avote of no confidence was held and passed by one vote on 28 March 1979, forcing Callaghan to call a general election. As theprevious election had been held in October 1974, Labour could have held on until the autumn of 1979 if it had not been for the lost confidence vote.

Margaret Thatcher had won her party's1975 leadership election over former leaderEdward Heath, taking over the leadership of the party in February 1975, four months after the party's failure to win the October 1974 election. Heath had led the party for a decade but lost three of the four elections he contested.

David Steel had replacedJeremy Thorpe as leader of the Liberal Party in 1976, after allegations of homosexuality andconspiracy to murder his former lover forced Thorpe to resign. TheThorpe affair led to a fall in the Liberal vote, after what had been thought to be a breakthrough in theFebruary 1974 election.

This was the first election since 1959 to feature three new leaders for the main political parties. The three main parties all advocated cuttingincome tax. Labour and the Conservatives did not specify the exact thresholds of income tax they would implement but the Liberals did, claiming they would have income tax starting at 20% with a top rate of 50%.^[5]

Without explicitly mentioning Thatcher's sex, Callaghan was (asChristian Caryl later wrote) "a master at sardonically implying that whatever the leader of the opposition said was made even sillier by the fact that it was said by a woman". Thatcher used the tactics that had defeated her other male opponents: constantly studying, sleeping only a few hours a night, and exploiting her femininity to appear as someone who understood housewives' household budgets.^[6]

A proposal for the two main party leaders to participate in twotelevised debates was put forward by former Labour MP turned broadcasterBrian Walden. These would have been produced byLWT and were planned to be shown onITV on 22 & 29 April 1979. WhileJames Callaghan immediately accepted Walden's proposal,Margaret Thatcher decided to "wait a few days before replying" to the invitation. According toThe Glasgow Herald, Some of Mrs Thatcher's advisers were concerned that she had more to lose from such debates, fearing that it would lead to a "presidential-style 'Her or me' campaign" which would see policy issues become of less importance. However it was also reported that the danger of declining was that Mrs Thatcher would be charged by Labour as being "scared" to face the Prime Minister.^[7] At the insistence of the Liberals, their leaderDavid Steel was also invited by LWT to take part, and accepted the offer. However, Mrs Thatcher declined the offer to take part, saying that the election was for a government, not a president, which meant that the debates did not go ahead.^[8]

The Labour campaign reiterated their support for theNational Health Service andfull employment and focused on the damage they believed the Conservatives would do to the country. In an early campaign broadcast, Callaghan asked: "The question you will have to consider is whether we risk tearing everything up by the roots." Towards the end of Labour's campaign, Callaghan claimed a Conservative government "would sit back and just allow firms to go bankrupt and jobs to be lost in the middle of a world recession" and that the Conservatives were "too big a gamble to take".^[9]

The Labour Party manifesto,The Labour way is the better way, was issued on 6 April.^[10] Callaghan presented five priorities:

1. "We must keep a curb on inflation and prices";
2. "We will carry forward the task of putting into practice the new framework to improve industrial relations that we have hammered out with the TUC";
3. "We give a high priority to working for a return to full employment";
4. "We are deeply concerned to enlarge people's freedom"; and
5. "We will use Britain's influence to strengthen world peace and defeat world poverty"

The Conservatives campaigned on economic issues, pledging to control inflation and to reduce the increasing power of the trade unions who supported mass strikes. They also employed the advertising agencySaatchi & Saatchi who had created the "Labour Isn't Working" poster.

The Conservative campaign was focused on gaining support from traditional Labour voters who had never voted Conservative before, first-time voters, and people who had voted Liberal in 1974.^[11] Thatcher's advisers,Gordon Reece andTimothy Bell, co-ordinated their presentation with the editor ofThe Sun,Larry Lamb.The Sun printed a series of articles by disillusioned former Labour ministers (Reg Prentice,Richard Marsh,Lord George-Brown,Alfred Robens andLord Chalfont) detailing why they had switched their support to Thatcher. She explicitly asked Labour voters for their support when she launched her campaign inCardiff, claiming that Labour was now extreme.^[12] Choosing to start her campaign in the strongly Labour-supporting city was part of Thatcher's strategy of appealing to skilled manual workers (NRS social groupC2), whom both parties had previously seen as certain Labour voters; she thought that many of these would support her promises to reduce unions' power and enact theRight to Buy their homes.^[6] On 29 April the Conservatives held a massive rally in London for Conservative trade unionists. TheGlasgow Herald called it an "astonishing rally" which it likened to "the razza-matazz of an American presidential-style jamboree" and stated "Nothing quite like it has been seen before in a General Election in Britain." Several celebrities includingLulu,Molly Weir andNigel Davenport appeared to support Thatcher and the Conservatives, while others likeEric Sykes andLes Dawson sent messages of support. It was also announced former Labour MPEddie Griffiths was backing the Conservatives against his former party.^[13]

An analysis of the election result showed that the Conservatives gained an 11% swing among the skilled working class (the C2s) and a 9% swing amongst the unskilled working class (the DEs).^[14]

Thatcher's stance onimmigration in the late 1970s (following the vast immigration from Asian and African-Caribbean nations during the 1950s and 1960s) was perceived as part of a rising racist public discourse,^[15] As Leader of the Opposition, Thatcher believed that theNational Front (NF) was winning over large numbers of Conservative voters with warnings against floods of immigrants. Her strategy was to undermine the NF narrative by acknowledging that many of its voters had serious concerns in need of addressing. The National Front had a relatively small following and did not win any seats in parliament.

Thatcher criticised Labour immigration policy in January 1978, with the goal of attracting voters away from the NF and to the Conservatives.^[16] Her rhetoric was followed by an increase in Conservative support at the expense of the NF. Critics on the left reacted by accusing her ofpandering to racism.^[17] Sociologists Mark Mitchell and Dave Russell responded that Thatcher had been badly misinterpreted, arguing thatrace was never an important focus ofThatcherism.^[18] Throughout her premiership both major parties took similar positions on immigration policy,^[19] having in 1981 passed theBritish Nationality Act withbipartisan support.^[20] No policies aimed at restricting immigration were passed or proposed by her government, and the subject of race was never highlighted by Thatcher in any of her major speeches as prime minister.^[21] Although Thatcher had pledged to address concerns felt by NF voters including matters related to immigration and presided over a period of disaffected race relations early in her premiership, the Conservative Party under her leadership actively began reaching out to ethnic minority voters ahead of the 1983 general election.^[22]

The Conservative manifesto, drafted byChris Patten andAdam Ridley and edited byAngus Maude, reflected Thatcher's views and was issued on 11 April.^[23] It promised five major policies:

1. "to restore the health of our economic and social life, by controlling inflation and striking a fair balance between the rights and duties of the trade union movement";
2. "to restore incentives so that hard work pays, success is rewarded and genuine new jobs are created in an expanding economy";
3. "to uphold Parliament and the rule of law";
4. "to support family life, by helping people to become home-owners, raising the standards of their children's education and concentrating welfare services on the effective support of the old, the sick, the disabled and those who are in real need"; and
5. "to strengthen Britain's defences and work with our allies to protect our interests in an increasingly threatening world".^[24]

In the end, the overall swing of 5.2% was the largest since 1945, and gave the Conservatives a workablemajority of 43 for the country's first female prime minister. The Conservative victory in 1979 also marked a change in government which would continue for 18 years, including the entire 1980s, until theLabour victory of 1997. It marked a period of political stability in the United Kingdom following four changes of government in the space of 15 years. Although the Conservatives would go on to win more seats under Thatcher in1983 and1987, and again underBoris Johnson in2019, the Tories have never since matched the 43.9% of the popular vote they won in 1979. This also remains the most recent election in which the Tories won an overall majority from opposition.

The SNP saw a massive collapse in support, losing 9 of its 11 MPs. The Liberal Party had a disappointing election; its scandal-hit former leaderJeremy Thorpe lost his seat inNorth Devon to the Conservatives.

The National Front (NF) would record their highest ever vote in a general election with 0.6% of the popular vote. They would decline after. This was also the highest vote for a BritishFar-right party until2010 when theBritish National Party received a higher popular vote.

The disproportionality of the House of Commons in the 1979 election was "11.57" according to theGallagher index, mainly between the Conservatives and the Liberal Party.

• List of MPs elected in the 1979 United Kingdom general election
• 1979 United Kingdom local elections
• 1979 United Kingdom general election in England
• 1979 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland
• 1979 United Kingdom general election in Scotland

• Butler, David E.; et al. (1980),The British General Election of 1979, the standard scholarly study
• Campbell, John (2008),Margaret Thatcher, Volume 1: The Grocer's Daughter
• Craig, F.W.S. (1989),British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower,ISBN 0-900178-30-2
• Jenkins, Peter (1989),Mrs. Thatcher's Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era
• McAllister, Ian; Mughan, Anthony (1985), "Attitudes, Issues, and Labour Party Decline in England, 1974–1979",Comparative Political Studies,18 (1):37–57,doi:10.1177/0010414085018001002,S2CID 153934506
• Penniman, Howard R. (1981),Britain at the Polls, 1979: A Study of the General Election, p. 345online
• Särlvik, Bo;Crewe, Ivor (1983),Decade of Dealignment: The Conservative Victory of 1979 & Electoral Trends in the 1970s, p. 393

• United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979Archived 23 February 2008 at theWayback Machine

• Conservative manifesto, 1979, 1979 Conservative Party manifesto
• The Labour Way is the Better Way, 1979 Labour Party manifesto
• The Real Fight is for Britain, 1979 Liberal Party manifesto

• 1979 United Kingdom general election
• General elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom
• 1979 elections in Europe
• 1979 elections in the United Kingdom
• May 1979 in the United Kingdom
• Premiership of Margaret Thatcher
• James Callaghan
• History of the Conservative Party (UK)

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use British English from May 2014
• All Wikipedia articles written in British English
• Use dmy dates from September 2020
• Pages using bar box without float left or float right
• Webarchive template wayback links