DBWI: A Conservative Victory In 1970 UK General Election?

Hi all,

I've never seen this discussed on here, so thought I'd see what your thoughts are.

What if in 1970, things went slightly different in the Election Campaign (or perhaps running up to it) and for whatever reason, Edward Heath was able to lead the Tories to a narrow victory? I know what a lot of you are thinking-Wilson was the favourite to win the election, but when you look at the results (Labour in with a 14 seat majority), a big enough swing to the conservatives to allow them to form a government isn't out of the question...

So assuming that Heath wins, what does he do in office? How does he deal with 'The Troubles' and the Trade Unions? What's his foreign polecy like? What does a heath government do economically?

What do Labour do if they lose the election? Is Wilson out if this happens? If so, who'll succeed him as leader? In 1974 (or whenever the election comes), who wins? I think a Heath government is only likely to have a small majority, so the election would still come in 74.

Any ideas?
 
Hi all,

I've never seen this discussed on here, so thought I'd see what your thoughts are.

What if in 1970, things went slightly different in the Election Campaign (or perhaps running up to it) and for whatever reason, Edward Heath was able to lead the Tories to a narrow victory? I know what a lot of you are thinking-Wilson was the favourite to win the election, but when you look at the results (Labour in with a 14 seat majority), a big enough swing to the conservatives to allow them to form a government isn't out of the question...

So assuming that Heath wins, what does he do in office? How does he deal with 'The Troubles' and the Trade Unions? What's his foreign polecy like? What does a heath government do economically?

What do Labour do if they lose the election? Is Wilson out if this happens? If so, who'll succeed him as leader? In 1974 (or whenever the election comes), who wins? I think a Heath government is only likely to have a small majority, so the election would still come in 74.

Any ideas?

I personally think that the Troubles could have lasted much longer if Heath had won.....Wilson did a good job patching things up over there in N. Ireland.
 
Well Heath would have remained leader rather than being replaced by Powell so you probably wouldn't have had the '74 Powell government. The butterflies from that would be enormous. No 1975 Immigration Act, no Powelite economic reforms, possible entry to the EU. Britain would be unrecognisable.
 
Well Heath would have remained leader rather than being replaced by Powell so you probably wouldn't have had the '74 Powell government. The butterflies from that would be enormous. No 1975 Immigration Act, no Powelite economic reforms, possible entry to the EU. Britain would be unrecognisable.
And that’s not even talking about Ulster. Though I think having a Sitting PM the target of a bomb attack would have always meant it was going to end up that messy regardless of who it was.
 
Well Heath would have remained leader rather than being replaced by Powell so you probably wouldn't have had the '74 Powell government. The butterflies from that would be enormous. No 1975 Immigration Act, no Powelite economic reforms, possible entry to the EU. Britain would be unrecognisable.

Just one slight nitpick here: Powell wasn't elected until '76, September, to be exact, and the Immigration Act came in '77.

In any case, Britain didn't at ALL fare well under Powell as outsourcing on a mass scale, the gutting of many essential services(aka, the so-called 'reforms') and his tacit leniency towards known fascist organizations ensured that things would quickly go to hell in a handbasket in many places.
Powell's reign, though, as we all know, didn't last long: he was assassinated on the morning of Feb. 21, 1979, by a former Tory-turned-anarchist, and not too many in Britain missed him, either. Now, thankfully, the Britons had pretty quickly come to their senses and Tony Benn ended up taking Powell's place in April. Benn's vital, actual, reforms, though at first heavily blocked by the Tories, went a long way to fixing up Britain's economy, as did the repeal of the Immigration Act in June '79 and its replacement with a new one which eliminated all specific ethnic quotas. Benn also cracked down on the National Front, too.
Unrecognizable, you say? Very possibly....with Powell's horrific failure as a statesman, and the fact he came a bit close to starting WW3 back in September '77, after the German border crisis, let's just say.....
Britain might have had someone like Baroness Thatcher as PM instead of Tony Benn. There probably wouldn't be a massive non-white population as there is today(they now make up 28% of Britain's population!), as there might not have been any foul-mouthed extremists to completely discredit rightist nationalism over there. Britain might not have been able to keep the Pound while still maintaining cordial relations with the EU. And perhaps, just maybe, there wouldn't have been the takeover of the far-right NVDP party in West Germany in August '84, as a reaction to PM Benn, which led to it's implosion in just five years later(funny how it was the former East that helped create the German Federal Republic in '92!).
 
, let's just say.....
Britain might have had someone like Baroness Thatcher as PM instead of Tony Benn.

Thatcher would never have been Prime Minister. Sure, she was a fine Chancellor of the Exchequer under Powell, but I doubt she would have gone further than that.

I think she came off as too much of a "schoomarm," almost too matronly for the electorate's tastes. She would have a difficult time winning the leadership, much less the premiership.

I don't know how far she would have gone had Heath been elected in 1970. Her policies under Powell seem very similar to those expressed in that year's manifesto. I could see her in a very prominent position in a Heath government, maybe Chancellor as in OTL.
 
Thatcher would never have been Prime Minister. Sure, she was a fine Chancellor of the Exchequer under Powell, but I doubt she would have gone further than that.

I think she came off as too much of a "schoomarm," almost too matronly for the electorate's tastes. She would have a difficult time winning the leadership, much less the premiership.

I don't know how far she would have gone had Heath been elected in 1970. Her policies under Powell seem very similar to those expressed in that year's manifesto. I could see her in a very prominent position in a Heath government, maybe Chancellor as in OTL.

Fine, perhaps, if you're willing to overlook the sheer amount of rampant corruption that had occurred when Powell was in office.
But in any case, I have no doubts a Thatcher Ministership would have been at least rather bad for Britain, if not as disastrous as Powell's was IOTL.(You might also wanna talk to the 800,000 or so Britons who left the country in the years that Powell was in office. About 80,000 of them ended up here in America, although they were unfortunate enough to have landed here when Ronnie Reagan was still in office.)
 
Fine, perhaps, if you're willing to overlook the sheer amount of rampant corruption that had occurred when Powell was in office.

I believe that Thatcher was exonerated by the Blair Commission during the mid-nineties. If she was guilty of anything, it was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. She might have had a better chance had she been apart of a Heath government.
 
I believe that Thatcher was exonerated by the Blair Commission during the mid-nineties. If she was guilty of anything, it was being at the wrong place at the wrong time. She might have had a better chance had she been apart of a Heath government.

Maybe so. Tony Blair was a fairly competent PM(though I always liked John Smith a little better: he was PM from 1989-1992 IIRC), though I still believe he was a little too lenient towards Powell's crooked subordinates, even if Thatcher really was just in a bad spot at the worst time possible......
 
Interesting comments guys.

Have to agree that a Britain without Powell as PM would be radically different. It could be argued though that if Heath won in 70, a Labour government took office in 74, then Powell might make it in 78/79 or so.

That said, I take it the consensous is that Heath doesn't try anything 'Powellite' in terms of the economy. I think you're all right about Europe, as we've probably all heard Heath's speeches on the subject.

Noone's mentioned Labour yet-could (or would) Wilson stay as leader if he loses in 1970? It's probably too early for Benn to take the reigns at that point-and it's even questionable whether we get Bennism without Powell in office as a contrast. Barbara Castle and Michael Foot were fairly popular figures on the left, but there was also Callaghan and Jenkins etc.

I wonder whether there would be any world wide butterflies from Heath winning in 70? Without Powell in office practicing a simelar ideology to 'Reaganomics', would Reagan be able to beat Ford in the 76 primaries-and Jimmy Carter in the election?

Of course, that may well lead to the Democrats being in office-and Carter losing big in 1980, for simelar reasons to Reagan's defeat in that election IOTL.
 
I'm one of those Labour heathen who believe Heath winning in 1970 would have been what we needed. Instead we became tired and got that particular medicine a few years late - if we'd lost under Tony in '88 rather than John in '92 we would have come back in force once Hurd's government collapsed and avoided the do-nothing Blair years, which were frankly an embarrassment to the post-Benn Labour Party. No government should last too long, IMO.

So who knows? If Heath had won, I reckon we'd've been back come 1975. How much harm could that corporate posho have done anyway? Surely no more than Bloody Virgil. Much blood indeed...
 
I'm one of those Labour heathen who believe Heath winning in 1970 would have been what we needed. Instead we became tired and got that particular medicine a few years late - if we'd lost under Tony in '88 rather than John in '92 we would have come back in force once Hurd's government collapsed and avoided the do-nothing Blair years, which were frankly an embarrassment to the post-Benn Labour Party. No government should last too long, IMO.

So who knows? If Heath had won, I reckon we'd've been back come 1975. How much harm could that corporate posho have done anyway? Surely no more than Bloody Virgil. Much blood indeed...

Yeah, There's a good chance Heath winning would have re energized labor.
 
Hi all,

I've never seen this discussed on here, so thought I'd see what your thoughts are.

What if in 1970, things went slightly different in the Election Campaign (or perhaps running up to it) and for whatever reason, Edward Heath was able to lead the Tories to a narrow victory? I know what a lot of you are thinking-Wilson was the favourite to win the election, but when you look at the results (Labour in with a 14 seat majority), a big enough swing to the conservatives to allow them to form a government isn't out of the question...

So assuming that Heath wins, what does he do in office? How does he deal with 'The Troubles' and the Trade Unions? What's his foreign polecy like? What does a heath government do economically?

What do Labour do if they lose the election? Is Wilson out if this happens? If so, who'll succeed him as leader? In 1974 (or whenever the election comes), who wins? I think a Heath government is only likely to have a small majority, so the election would still come in 74.

Any ideas?

The problem was that Heath was virtually unelectable so getting a victory in 1970 is very difficult.

Assuming it did happen then there would be confrontations with the unions and I doubt Heath would be able to handle it. He was a brittle character and he tended to over react to problems. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up with a state of emergency sometime during his period in office.
 
The problem was that Heath was virtually unelectable so getting a victory in 1970 is very difficult.

Assuming it did happen then there would be confrontations with the unions and I doubt Heath would be able to handle it. He was a brittle character and he tended to over react to problems. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't end up with a state of emergency sometime during his period in office.
I know it’s cliché to over state the importance of sports relation to politics but I think the Australian cost guard having to fish him out of the sea really did for his public image. That Private eye cover of Ted clinging to the morning cloud with the head line “Tory party all at sea” has gone down in history.
 
Forgive me please as an American jutting in with an "Out of Character" Post.

One post touched on Reagan winning the 1976 election. It also mentioned him beating Ford. That means Watergate is not butterflied. With Reagan splitting the Republican ticket, and from the RIGHT, no way as nominee does Ronnie beat Carter. Not post-Watergate and the fall of Vietnam.

And no one has mentioned the Falklands? How can that be butterflied? And if not, how does it affect this world? What would military spending be like ITTL? What about the Labor Government deployment of a task force to the Falklands in 1977 as a deterrent? Is that butterflied?:confused:

Just looking to be educated.:eek:
 
Most of what needs to be said has been said IMHO, but if I may try to defend Blair. It was less of a do-nothing, more ultra-timid baby-steps. Meaning most of the Public Sector got what amounted to a Nip & Tuck, at most. A concept, which, AFAIK, seems to be gaining ground in terms of popularity and credibility. And let's not forget that British Debt:GDP fell to 18% before the Crash kicked in. Something that appears to have saved our skins here in UK.
 
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