In June, the History of Parliament were delighted to welcome an audience to the first lecture of our contemporary history series ‘parliamentarians on their past’ that uses our oral history archive. Here our Oral History Intern, Alfie Steer, reflects on the lecture ‘Memories of the 1983 General Election’ and explores the background to the 1983 general election.

To mark the fortieth anniversary of the 1983 general election, the History of Parliament Trust held a roundtable event at Portcullis House to share memories of the pivotal election. Alongside historians Robert Saunders and Helen Parr, and former Conservative MP Matthew Parris, Emma Peplow and Priscilla Privato from the trust’s Oral History Project presented a diverse collection of recorded interviews, exploring both the build up to 1983, the campaign itself, and its aftermath.

As the interviews richly capture, the 1983 election was the culmination of multiple profound changes in British politics and society. It consolidated Margaret Thatcher’s once shaky grip on both the Conservative Party and the country; it devastated the divided Labour Party, motivating a major rethink of the party’s image and ideology; and proved yet another false dawn for Liberal (and Social Democratic) hopes of ‘breaking the mould’ of British politics. As Helen Parr argued, while popular memory recalls much of the 1979 election, from Thatcher’s Francis of Assisi speech to Saatchi & Saatchi’s Labour isn’t working posters, it was really 1983 that set the course of British politics for the rest of the twentieth century. Its consequences for Britain’s three major parties remain keenly felt to this day.

Much of the build up to the campaign had been influenced by the Falklands War. Before then, according to Elizabeth Peacock, Thatcher had been ‘in deep trouble’, battling unemployment and an unhappy party. Some opinion polls even put the new SDP-Liberal Alliance on 50% of the vote. But British victory in the South Atlantic appeared to suddenly rejuvenate Thatcher’s public standing, allowing her to portray herself, according to David Steel, ‘as a combination of Britannia and Boudicca.’ For Peacock, Thatcher’s wartime leadership was an indispensable electoral asset.

Thatcher’s reputation and image as a strong, ‘conviction politician’ was able to win her party support even from the most unlikely of voters. Patrick Jenkin’s story of speaking to a voter in Monmouth neatly captures this.  

Yet it wasn’t patriotism alone that handed the Conservatives victory in 1983. The ‘right to buy’ scheme, transforming thousands of council house tenants into homeowners, was identified by Michael Stern as ‘adding to my majority in leaps and bounds’. In that respect, the election appeared not simply a short-term rally to the Conservatives, but potentially a more fundamental realignment of the British electorate. Yet, as Stern also noted, unemployment also remained a key issue. Furthermore, as Robert Saunders pointed out, the Conservatives in 1983 still lost over half a million votes compared to 1979. Far from being a straightforward positive endorsement, Thatcher’s victory owed much to a divided opposition, and the skilled ability to forge a winning electoral coalition on a declining minority share of the vote, and amid historic levels of unemployment. For Matthew Parris, the election also highlighted growing economic divisions throughout the country, not just between communities north and south, but from constituency to constituency.

1983 is also remembered as much as a Labour defeat as a Conservative victory. The result saw Labour reduced to its lowest seat count since 1935 and was nearly beaten to second place in the popular vote. The causes of such a disaster were multiple. Many of the interviewees expressed affection for the party’s leader, Michael Foot, but also doubted his leadership abilities. Ann Taylor described trying to persuade Foot to stand down before the election, while Alan Lee Williams dismissed Foot’s politics as ‘utterly silly’. The party’s shift to the left since the 1970s, including its adoption of a wide-ranging nationalisation programme and a commitment to nuclear disarmament, were considered far too radical to be electable. The decision of the ‘gang of four’ to form the Social Democratic Party in 1981 simply compounded the turmoil within Labour, and as noted by Ken Weetch, did little to aid the party’s electoral appeal.

Many memories recounted revealing moments that signalled Labour’s impending electoral doom. David Owen remembered seeing council house tenants in Plymouth, long considered the bedrock of the Labour vote, switching to the SDP. Labour’s Ted Rowlands remembered old communist miners being exasperated by Labour’s commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. John Cartwright remembered seeing the left-wing Labour MP Audrey Wise with her head in her hands on election night. It was a feeling no doubt shared by many Labour politicians. On a wider scale, Labour’s defeat was described by Cartwright as a ‘shock to the system’, and one that began the slow process toward the political centre ground and, eventually, electoral success under Tony Blair. Through collecting memories of these individual experiences, the personal ‘shocks to the system’ that played out across the country, the Oral History Project can help historians gain a grassroots perspective to how the defeat affected the outlook of many Labour politicians, and helped determine the party’s future trajectory.

Beyond the wider fortunes of the parties themselves, the interviews provide a candid insight into the day-to-day life of a parliamentary candidate. What shines through frequently is the diversity of experience, and the very personal toll elections could have. The media circus that surrounded the campaign in Plymouth Devonport highlighted the growing centrality of television for British politics. Yet other campaigns, such as Chris Smith’s in Islington, demonstrated the continued importance of old-fashioned door-knocking. Matthew Parris described how he felt less in touch with national politics during the election campaign, dedicating all his attention to the handful of small towns and villages that made up his West Derbyshire constituency. To cut through the noise some, such as Elizabeth Shields, deployed more novel campaign methods.

Inevitably, such variety of experience was most keenly felt regarding the election results themselves. The starkly different emotions experienced by Marion Roe and Bill Pitt illustrates this clearly.

These fascinating memories provide historians with personal accounts of the wide ranging political and social changes the 1983 election signified. From the rejuvenation of Thatcher to the crisis of Labour and the false dawn of the SDP-Liberal Alliance, these candid interviews can add a greater richness and complexity to many of Britain’s well known political narratives. Furthermore, when it comes to the emotional experience of campaigning itself, the magical highs of victory and the crushing lows of defeat, the Oral History Project provides a level of intimate insight not always possible in traditional archive records or electoral data.

A.S.

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Alfie Steer is a historian of modern and contemporary Britain, currently studying for a DPhil at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the history of the Labour Left from the end of the miners strike to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015. His most recent article was published in Contemporary British History, and has written book reviews for Twentieth Century British History and the English Historical Review. Outside of academia he has written for popular publications such as Tribune.