The 1997 General Election, held on May 1st 1997, dramatically brought to an end 18 years of Tory government, and brought the first of three election victories for New Labour.

Conservative Downfall

On April 9th, 1992, John Major astonishingly won the Conservative Party its fourth consecutive election victory in a row, completing one of the greatest upsets in British political history and achieving the most votes of any Prime Minister in UK history. However, the jollities of April 9th did not last long for Major’s government. 

On September 16th, 1992, Britain was forced into a hasty withdrawal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), after the pound, under much market speculation, fell beneath the minimum floor for members. This day of economic turmoil would become known as ‘Black Wednesday’. In response to the crisis, the government hiked interest rates by 5% within a day, in a desperate attempt to remain in the ERM, but to no avail. It was left to Chancellor Norman Lamont to confirm the humiliating conclusion to ‘Black Wednesday’ in a speech outside the Treasury. 

After Black Wednesday, the Conservatives failed to recover their economic credibility. This was despite consistent GDP growth of over 2% annually, inflation falling to 2.1% by polling day in May 1997, and interest rates more than halving to under 6% in 1996.

The Conservative Party was also ridden with bitter infighting during the mid-1990s, much of it over the issue of Europe. The most notable example of this was the ‘Maastricht rebels’. 

Just a few weeks before the 1992 election, John Major had negotiated and signed the Treaty of Maastricht, the next treaty in the European integration process. However, it was not until after the election that Parliament would get a vote on the Treaty, in which time the government’s majority had been slashed to 21. 

The treaty itself was widely supported by all parties in the House of Commons, but by negotiating an ‘opt out’ on the Social Chapter, which had several provisions on workers’ rights, many Labour MPs felt unable to support that treaty, meaning most abstained when the European Communities (Amendment) Bill passed a Commons vote in May 1993. However, in the week it received royal assent in July 1993, the Labour Party tabled an amendment to the bill which would postpone the Treaty from being enforced until the UK had signed up to the Social Chapter. The Government was defeated in this vote, with several Eurosceptic Conservative MPs voting against the government to hold up the treaty's enactment. In response, John Major called for a new vote the following day on an amendment that would force the Commons to support the government’s position on the Social Chapter, or he would dissolve Parliament, effectively forcing a confidence vote on the issue. He would survive this vote by a majority of 40 and saw off the so-called Maastricht Rebels.

Following his victory in the confidence vote, during what he believed to be an off-the-record conversation following an interview with ITN Political Editor Michael Brunson, he described three of his own Cabinet members as being part of the “b*stards”, showing the extent of the divisions and strength of feeling at the time.

A further debate on European policy worth noting was whether the Conservative Party should totally rule out joining a single European policy or leave its options open. This issue would later form the basis of the ill-fated 2001 Conservative Party election campaign, when leader William Hague continuously called on voters to “save the pound” by voting Conservative, fearing Blair would take the UK into the Eurozone during his second term.

A final obvious sign of Conservative divisions that led to the Party’s defeat in the 1997 General Election was the 1995 Conservative Party leadership election. With the party becoming increasingly ungovernable, John Major dramatically resigned as leader to force a leadership contest, telling his MPs to “put up [another candidate] or shut up”. The only candidate to challenge Major was Eurosceptic Welsh Secretary John Redwood, who won just 89 votes to Major’s 218.  

Behind the scenes, the party relocated its election operations and “media centre” to Millbank Tower, eventually moving its headquarters there in 1997. The so-called spin operation, controlled from Millbank, was effective for Labour in getting their message out and executing a near-perfect election strategy. Every day during the 1997 election campaign started with a morning press conference on a particular issue, before the campaign's focus went ‘on the ground’ with Prescott on the ‘Prescott Express’ battle bus and Tony Blair touring the country in an attempt to connect with voters. 

Two key figures in the Millbank operation and the effectiveness of ‘spin’ were Peter Mandelson and Alistair Campbell.

Tony Blair and the modernisers of the Labour Party wasted no time in carrying out extensive internal reforms to the party so that it would have broader appeal amongst the electorate. Amongst the most significant was the decision to abolish Clause IV from the Labour Party constitution, which symbolically ended the party’s commitment to nationalisation of industry. 

Labour also moved away from tax and spend, and began to speak of ‘fiscal responsibility’, a term formerly associated with the Tories. To further convince voters that Labour could be trusted with the economy, Labour pledged in their 1997 election manifesto to stick to the Conservative Party’s spending allocations until 1999 and not to raise income tax during their first term in office. Both commitments were rigidly stuck to. 

Despite the modernisation of their economic policy, Labour remained committed to public services and social justice. Tony Blair stated that his “main three priorities for government…[were] education, education and education”, giving the issue top billing in his final conference speech before the 1997 election as well as in the election manifesto itself. Education, a key priority of Third Way politics, was seen as the best way of facilitating social mobility and achieving a more equal society.

To fund improvements to education and health while sticking to the departmental spending allocations set by the Conservative government, Labour pledged a one-off windfall tax on privatised utilities such as British Telecom and British Gas. 

Voting

Result

Labour won their highest ever seat total (419) and biggest ever parliamentary majority (179 seats) in the 1997 General Election. The Conservatives won just 165 seats, their worst seat total since the Liberal landslide of 1906. The Liberal Democrats won their highest seat total since 1929, largely the result of tactical anti-Tory voting. There was no breakthrough for the nationalist parties despite devolution being high on the political agenda.

Gender

The number of women elected to the House of Commons rose to a record 120, 101 of whom came from the Labour Party, which introduced all women shortlists in some seats to increase the level of female representation in Parliament. However, this did not appear to affect voting patterns between males and females in the ’97 election. According to an Ipsos survey carried out in May 1997, Labour held a 14% lead over the Conservatives amongst men, compared to 12% amongst women.

Class

The Conservatives only held the most support amongst AB social class voters. They had lost most support from 1992 from so-called ‘Middle England’ in C1 and C2, where Labour polled 37% (level with the Conservatives in C1) and held a 23% lead over the Tories amongst C2 voters. Labour won nearly 3 in 5 DE voters in 1997.

The Liberal Democrats lost support the further down the social class grading, with 22% support amongst AB compared to 13% amongst DE. This is potentially because those in AB who would typically vote Conservative were unconvinced by Labour’s modernisation, particularly on economic policy, but wanted to vote elsewhere to show their dissatisfaction with the record of the Major government. It could also be because seats with an above national average AB social class population would more likely have a Lib Dem challenger than a Labour challenger.

Age

All age groups showed a lead for Labour. However, the general trend is that Labour’s lead decreased as the age groups increased. There was a 22% lead for Labour among 18–24-year-olds compared to just a 3% lead among 55-64-year-olds. There was a slight increase in support for Labour among the over-65s, possibly due to Labour’s manifesto pledges for “older citizens”.

Nearly 50% of 18–44-year-olds voted Labour, and turnout was high amongst this group due to the prospect of the first non-Conservative government since the 1970s. A final statistic worth noting is that the Lib Dems polled consistently in the high teens in each age bracket, with 1 in 5 middle-aged voters (45–54-year-olds) voting for Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats.

Ethnicity

Labour won the most support of all ethnicities. Amongst white voters, Labour held an 11% lead over the Conservatives, but amongst non-white voters, this figure rises sharply to a 52% lead. Over 4 in 5 black voters voted Labour, with only 12% voting Conservative. Interestingly, the Lib Dem vote amongst non-White voters was half that of white voters, with only 5% of Black voters voting Lib Dem.