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All 630 seats in the House of Commons 316 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Opinion polls | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 77.1%, ![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Composition of the House of Commons after the election | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1964 United Kingdom general election was held on 15 October 1964, five years after the previous election, and thirteen years after the Conservative Party, first led by Winston Churchill, had regained power. It resulted in the Conservatives, led by the incumbent Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, narrowly losing to the Labour Party, led by Harold Wilson; Labour secured a parliamentary majority of four seats and ended its thirteen years in opposition. Wilson became (at the time) the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Rosebery in 1894.
Both major parties had changed leadership in 1963. Following the sudden death of Hugh Gaitskell early in the year, Labour had chosen Harold Wilson (at the time, thought of as being on the party's centre-left), while Alec Douglas-Home (at the time the Earl of Home) had taken over as Conservative leader and Prime Minister in the autumn after Harold Macmillan announced his resignation. Douglas-Home shortly afterward disclaimed his peerage under the Peerage Act 1963 in order to lead the party from the Commons.
Macmillan had led the Conservative government since January 1957. Despite initial popularity and a resounding election victory in 1959, he had become increasingly unpopular in the early 1960s, and while it was for a while thought likely that the Conservatives would win the scheduled 1964 general election, albeit with a reduced majority, the emergence of the Profumo affair in March 1963 and Macmillan's handling of the matter all but destroyed the credibility of his government. While he survived a vote of no confidence in June 1963, polling indicated that the Conservatives would lose the next election heavily if Macmillan remained in power, which, along with health issues, caused Macmillan to announce his resignation in the autumn of 1963.
Douglas-Home faced a difficult task in rebuilding the party's popularity with just a year elapsing between taking office and having to face a general election. Wilson had begun to try to tie the Labour Party to the growing confidence of Britain in the 1960s, asserting that the "white heat of revolution" would sweep away "restrictive practices ... on both sides of industry". The Liberal Party enjoyed a resurgence after a virtual wipeout in the 1950s, and doubled its share of the vote, primarily at the expense of the Conservatives. Although Labour did not increase its vote share significantly, the fall in support for the Conservatives led to Wilson securing an overall majority of four seats.[1] This proved to be unworkable, and Wilson called a snap election in 1966.
The pre-election campaign was prolonged, as Douglas-Home delayed calling a general election to give himself as much time as possible to improve the prospects of his party. The election campaign formally began on 25 September 1964 when Douglas-Home saw the Queen and asked for a dissolution of Parliament. The campaign was dominated by some of the more voluble characters of the political scene at the time. While George Brown, deputy leader of the Labour Party, toured the country making energetic speeches (and the occasional gaffe), Quintin Hogg was a leading spokesman for the Conservatives. The image of Hogg lashing out at a Wilson poster with his walking stick was one of the most striking of the campaign.[citation needed]
Many party speakers, especially at televised rallies, had to deal with hecklers; in particular Douglas-Home was treated very roughly at a meeting in Birmingham. Douglas-Home's speeches dealt with the future of the nuclear deterrent, while fears of Britain's relative decline in the world, reflected in chronic balance of payment problems, helped the Labour Party's case.[2]
The election night was broadcast live by the BBC, and was presented for the fifth and final time by Richard Dimbleby, with Robin Day, Ian Trethowan, Cliff Michelmore and David Butler.[3]
Main article: Opinion polling for the 1964 United Kingdom general election |
Opinion polling for UK general elections |
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1951 election |
Opinion polls |
1955 election |
Opinion polls |
1959 election |
Opinion polls |
1964 election |
Opinion polls |
1966 election |
Opinion polls |
The Conservatives made a surprising recovery from being well behind Labour when Home become prime minister, and would have won if 900 voters in eight seats had changed votes.[4] Labour won a very slim majority of four seats, forming a government for the first time since 1951. Labour achieved a swing of just over 3%, although its vote rose by only 0.3%. The main shift was the swing from the Conservatives to the Liberals of 5.7%. The Liberals won nearly twice as many votes as in 1959, partly because they had 150 more candidates. Wilson became Prime Minister, replacing Douglas-Home. The four-seat majority was not sustainable for a full Parliament, and Wilson called another general election in 1966. In particular the small majority meant the government could not implement its policy of nationalising the steel industry, due to the opposition of two of its backbenchers, Woodrow Wyatt and Desmond Donnelly.
89 female candidates stood in the election with 29 women being elected as MPs (11 for the Conservatives and 18 for Labour).[5]
This was the only election in Britain's recent history when all seats were won by the three main parties: no minor parties, independents or splinter groups won any seats. It is also the only time both Labour and the Conservatives have taken over 300 seats each and was the last election in which one party, namely the Conservative Party, contested every single seat. The Conservatives had previously held off on contesting certain Liberal-held seats as per local-level agreements to avoid vote-splitting, but ended that policy at this election. The resultant splitting of votes actually helped grant Labour a majority, by throwing two formerly Liberal-held seats in northern England to Labour; however, the outcome of the election would not have been meaningfully altered had the Liberals retained the seats, as Labour would still have had as many seats as the other two parties combined, and Liberal leader Jo Grimond was not inclined to prop up a minority Conservative government.
Home told D. R. Thorpe that the most important reason for the Conservative loss was Iain Macleod's "The Tory Leadership" article, in which the former cabinet minister claimed that an Etonian "magic circle" conspiracy had led to Home becoming prime minister.[4]
317 | 304 | 9 |
Labour | Conservative | Lib |
Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
Labour | Harold Wilson | 628 | 317 | 63 | 4 | +59 | 50.3 | 44.1 | 12,205,808 | +0.3 | |
Conservative | Alec Douglas-Home | 630 | 304[note 1] | 4 | 65 | −61 | 48.3 | 43.4 | 12,002,642 | −6.0 | |
Liberal | Jo Grimond | 365 | 9 | 5 | 2 | +3 | 1.4 | 11.2 | 3,099,283 | +5.3 | |
Independent Republican | N/A | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.4 | 101,628 | N/A | ||
Plaid Cymru | Gwynfor Evans | 23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.3 | 69,507 | 0.0 | ||
SNP | Arthur Donaldson | 15 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 64,044 | +0.1 | ||
Communist | John Gollan | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 46,442 | +0.1 | ||
Independent | N/A | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 18,677 | N/A | ||
Independent Liberal | N/A | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 16,064 | N/A | ||
Republican Labour | Gerry Fitt | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 14,678 | N/A | ||
Ind. Conservative | N/A | 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0.0 | 6,459 | N/A | ||
British National | John Bean | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 3,410 | N/A | ||
Anti-Common Market League | John Paul & Michael Shay | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 3,083 | N/A | ||
Ind. Nuclear Disarmament | Pat Arrowsmith | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,534 | N/A | ||
Fellowship | Ronald Mallone | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,112 | 0.0 | ||
Patriotic Party | Richard Hilton | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,108 | N/A | ||
League of Empire Loyalists | Arthur K. Chesterton | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 1,046 | N/A | ||
Communist Anti-Revisionist | Michael McCreery | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 899 | N/A | ||
Christian Progressive | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 865 | N/A | ||
Taxpayers' Coalition Party | John E. Dayton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 709 | N/A | ||
Agriculturalist | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 534 | N/A | ||
Independent Labour | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 458 | N/A | ||
National Democratic | David Brown | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 349 | N/A | ||
Socialist (GB) | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 322 | 0.0 | ||
World Government | Gilbert Young | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 318 | N/A | ||
British and Commonwealth | Miles Blair | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 310 | N/A | ||
Social Credit Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland | John Hargrave | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 304 | N/A | ||
Christian Socialist | N/A | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 265 | N/A |
Government's new majority | 4 |
Total votes cast | 27,657,148 |
Turnout | 77% |
Headline swing: 3.1% to Labour |
Party | Votes | % of vote | Candidates | Seats | % of seats | +/– | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | 12,103,049 | 44.8 | 618 | 317 | ||||
Conservative & Unionist | 11,600,745 | 42.9 | 618 | 292 | ||||
Conservative | 10,292,974 | 38.1 | 599 | 286 | ||||
Unionist | 981,641 | 3.6 | 65 | 24 | ||||
National Liberal | 326,130 | 1.2 | 19 | 6 | ||||
Liberal | 3,081,929 | 11.4 | 361 | 9 | ||||
Plaid Cymru | 69,507 | 0.3 | 23 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
SNP | 64,044 | 0.2 | 15 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Communist | 46,442 | 0.2 | 36 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Other parties and independents | 53,116 | 0.2 | 47 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Total (turnout: 77.2%) | 27,018,832 | 100.0 | 1,718 | 618 | 100.0 | ![]() | ||
Did not vote | 7,984,670 | |||||||
Registered voters | 35,003,502 | |||||||
British population | 52,608,000 | |||||||
Source: Rallings & Thrasher |
Party | Votes | % of vote | Candidates | Seats | % of seats | +/– | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conservative & Unionist | 10,106,028 | 44.1 | 511 | 262 | 51.3 | |||
Conservative | 9,894,014 | 43.1 | 500 | 256 | 50.1 | |||
National Liberal | 212,014 | 0.9 | 11 | 6 | 1.1 | |||
Labour | 9,982,360 | 43.5 | 511 | 246 | 48.1 | |||
Liberal | 2,775,752 | 12.1 | 323 | 3 | 0.6 | |||
Communist | 24,824 | 0.1 | 22 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Other parties and independents | 48,287 | 0.2 | 42 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Total (turnout: 77.0%) | 22,937,251 | 100.0 | 1,409 | 511 | 100.0 | ![]() | ||
Did not vote | 6,867,376 | |||||||
Registered voters | 29,804,627 | |||||||
English population | 44,610,500 | |||||||
Source: Rallings & Thrasher |
Party | Votes | % of vote | Candidates | Seats | % of seats | +/– | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | 1,283,667 | 48.7 | 71 | 43 | 60.6 | +5 | ||
Conservative & Unionist | 1,069,695 | 40.6 | 71 | 24 | 33.8 | −7 | ||
Unionist | 981,641 | 37.3 | 65 | 24 | 33.8 | −1 | ||
National Liberal | 88,054 | 3.3 | 6 | 0 | 0.0 | −6 | ||
Liberal | 200,063 | 7.6 | 26 | 4 | 5.6 | +3 | ||
SNP | 64,044 | 2.4 | 15 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Communist | 12,241 | 0.5 | 9 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Other parties and independents | 4,829 | 0.2 | 5 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Total (turnout: 77.6%) | 2,634,539 | 100.0 | 197 | 71 | 100.0 | ![]() | ||
Did not vote | 759,352 | |||||||
Registered voters | 3,393,891 | |||||||
Scottish population | 5,209,000 | |||||||
Source: Rallings & Thrasher |
Party | Votes | % of vote | Candidates | Seats | % of seats | +/– | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Labour | 837,022 | 57.8 | 36 | 28 | 77.8 | |||
Conservative & Unionist | 425,022 | 29.4 | 36 | 6 | 16.7 | |||
Conservative | 398,960 | 27.6 | 34 | 6 | 16.7 | |||
National Liberal | 26,062 | 1.8 | 2 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Liberal | 106,114 | 7.3 | 12 | 2 | 5.6 | |||
Plaid Cymru | 69,507 | 4.8 | 23 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Communist | 9,377 | 0.6 | 5 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Total (turnout: 80.1%) | 1,447,042 | 100.0 | 112 | 36 | 100.0 | ![]() | ||
Did not vote | 358,453 | |||||||
Registered voters | 1,805,495 | |||||||
Voting age population | 1,805,925 | |||||||
Welsh population | 2,676,400 | |||||||
Source: Rallings & Thrasher |
Party | Votes | % of vote | Candidates | Seats | % of seats | +/– | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conservative & Unionist | 401,897 | 63.0 | 12 | 12 | 100.0 | ![]() | ||
Ulster Unionist Party | ||||||||
Labour | 102,759 | 16.1 | 10 | 0 | 0.0 | ![]() | ||
Independent Republican | 101,628 | 15.9 | 12 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Ulster Liberal | 17,354 | 2.7 | 4 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Republican Labour | 14,678 | 2.3 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 | |||
Total (turnout: 71.7%) | 638,316 | 100.0 | 12 | 100.0 | ![]() | |||
Did not vote | 252,236 | |||||||
Registered voters | 890,552 | |||||||
Voting age population | 891,043 | |||||||
Northern Irish population | 1,458,000 | |||||||
Source: Rallings & Thrasher |
Both BBC and ITV provided live televised coverage of the results and provided commentary.
These declarations were covered live by the BBC where the returning officer was heard to say "duly elected".
Constituency | Winning party 1959 | Constituency result 1964 by party | Winning party 1964 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Con | Lab | Lib | Others | |||||
Cheltenham | Conservative | 19,797 | 14,557 | 7,568 | Conservative hold | |||
Salford West | Labour | 16,446 | 20,490 | Labour hold | ||||
Billericay | Conservative | 35,347 | 33,755 | 10,706 | Conservative hold | |||
Exeter | Conservative | 18,035 | 16,673 | 8,815 | Conservative hold | |||
Battersea South | Conservative | 10,615 | 12,263 | 3,294 | Labour gain | |||
Liverpool Exchange | Labour | 7,239 | 16,985 | Labour hold | ||||
Holborn and St Pancras South | Conservative | 13,117 | 15,823 | 226 | Labour gain | |||
North Devon | Liberal | 13,985 | 4,306 | 19,031 | Liberal hold | |||
Stockport South | Conservative | 13,718 | 16,755 | 7,107 | Labour gain | |||
Barons Court | Conservative | 14,800 | 15,966 | 2,821 | Labour gain | |||
Bolton West | Liberal | 13,522 | 16,519 | 10,086 | Labour gain | |||
Smethwick | Labour | 16,690 | 14,916 | 262 | Conservative gain | |||
Huyton | Labour | 22,940 | 42,213 | 899 | Labour hold | |||
Orpington | Conservative | 19,565 | 4,609 | 22,637 | Liberal win | |||
Torrington | Conservative | 16,889 | 5,867 | 14,831 | Conservative hold | |||
Kinross and Western Perthshire | Conservative | 16,659 | 4,687 | 3,649 | Conservative hold |