The Election of 1964
Following the collapse of the Conservative minority administration in the early weeks of 1964, Britain faced its second election in a year with the Right presenting a radical challenge to the post-war political order whilst the Liberal and Labour parties reached an unprecedented degree of unity in defence of that order.

The strength of the electoral pact forged by the Liberal and Labour parties just prior to the election allowed the Centre-Left to hold firm and achieve a major victory. With the Liberals seeing their vote fall for the second consecutive election to its lowest level since 1949, the pact allowed the party to maintain its large parliamentary representation. For Labour, it was far more transformative as the party achieved a major increase in its share of the vote whilst gaining an incredible 157 seats to overtake the Conservatives as the second largest party in parliament. Indeed, Liberal-Labour cooperation saw the Tories swept from virtually all of their marginal seats, with the Tories actually losing a small number of votes despite their merger with the National Liberal Party. Most surprisingly of all the unity of the turn of Labour towards the Liberals galvanised Communist support as disillusioned working class surged towards Britain’s primary party of protest – the Communists being frustratingly limited in their gains by the strength of the Lib-Lab Pact, this despite recording their highest ever share of the vote.

The greatest losers in 1964 were, of course, the Conservatives who saw their share of parliament cut in half. The most prominent Conservative to lose his seat was none other than the former leader of the recently dissolved National Liberal Party – Peter Thorneycroft. Having benefited from the relative strength of the local Liberal, Labour and Communist parties, and the weakness of the Conservatives, Thorneycroft had long retained his South Wales seat without being seriously challenged. However, with the Liberals backing a Labour candidate against him the public face of National Liberalism was knocked out of parliament for the first time since 1949. The repercussions of Thorneycroft’s defeat were very serious for the Conservative Party with the loss of such a prominent figure heaping further pressure of Powell’s leadership and bringing a number of ex-National Liberals to support the restoration of their party. However, as Margaret Thatcher, originally returned to parliament in a by-election in 1960, came to be the leading figure in the National Liberal group within the party she guided them towards a commitment to the unity of Right.

Gaitskell’s retention of his Leeds South seat in 1958 had famously been achieved through close cooperation between the Labour and Liberal parties. In the years since then across large parts of Yorkshire the two parties had increasingly started to fuse into a single organisation – much to the concern of the Liberal Party’s national leadership. The victory of Gaitskell’s close ally, Denis Healey, in Leeds East was typical of Yorkshire which returned a raft of Lib-Lab candidates – all of them either ‘Orange’ Liberals or moderate Labourites. With the Labour leadership closely tied to Yorkshire, the local Liberal Party had effectively come under Labour’s control.

The Communists had enviously eyed East Fife for decades. Bordering the most solidly Communist constituency in the country, West Fife having been held by the Party since 1935 – returning at times substantial majorities, the Communists had never managed to break Conservative-Liberal duopoly over the constituency. The London born ultra-radical Stalinist, Sid French, seemed an unlikely candidate to achieve the breakthrough. Yet popular disgust at Labour’s entrance into an alliance with the Liberals amongst the region’s notoriously radical working class allowed French to garner enough votes to win the seat with a majority of just 33 over the incumbent Conservative and 439 over the third placed Liberal challenger – making East Fife one of the night’s most closely contested elections.

With the Right securing a pitiful level of parliamentary representation, the Conservative winning only 22 seats more than in 1945, the Lib-Lab Alliance was swept to power with an immense 111 seat majority. Out of government for less than a year, Jo Grimond returned to 10 Downing Street with his party’s popularity in decline and with a government reliant upon an alliance with a Labour Party that once again promised to threaten the Liberals’ leadership of the Centre-Left.

Left to Right: Hugh Gaitskell – Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, James Callaghan – Chancellor of the Exchequer and Emlyn Hooson – Home Secretary
Despite the impressive performance of Labour candidates as the polls, the cabinet remained heavily Liberal. As Callaghan and Hooson returned to the positions they had occupied from 1958-1963, Hugh Gaitskell replaced the retiring figures of Archibald Sinclair and Clement Davies as both Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. Across the government Labour were granted just 1/3 of ministerial positions, in line with a pre-election agreement, as Grimond made clear his determination to ensure that the government would be controlled and directed by the Liberals.

It was widely believed that the Lib-Lab Alliance had both won the election and was held together by widespread fear concerning the radicalisation of the Conservative following Enoch Powell’s capture of the leadership. With Powell’s prestige badly damaged by the halving of the party’s parliamentary representation it was feared that splits and rebellions could tear the party apart. Instead, an unlikely alliance of One Nations around Edward Heath and National Liberals around Margaret Thatcher would rein in the power of the Rightist radicals in an effort to make the Conservative Party electable again.