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Background

On 16th March 1976, Harold Wilson announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party, five days after his sixtieth birthday. The precise reason why Mr. Wilson suddenly resigned after eight years as Prime Minister, and thirteen years as Labour Leader, was a mystery that many speculated upon but few understood. There were whispers of an MI5 plot to reveal evidence of his alleged status as a Soviet agent, or a compromising affair with his close adviser Marcia Williams. A more plausible explanation was that the Prime Minister was suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's disease, with his once formidable memory and political acumen diminishing. But politics is a cruel business, and no sooner did observers ponder the cause of Mr. Wilson's departure than they turned to the matter of who would succeed him.

As dictated by Labour's Constitution, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) Cledwyn Hughes immediately began devising the procedure for the election of a new party leader and Prime Minister. It was the first time that the party had selected its leader in office. After agreement was reached on electoral arrangements at a meeting of the PLP that evening, three MPs were nominated as candidates: Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and Michael Foot.

As the 'Lobby' - parliamentary journalists - scrambled to cover the surprise leadership election, they anointed the Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey as the immediate frontrunner. Mr. Healey was the candidate of the Right of the Labour Party, and as the party leader is selected by the Right-leaning PLP, the press and the bookmakers were confident in casting him as the favourite to win the contest. As Chancellor, he laid claim to an impressive record, steering the British economy from the brink of disaster in 1974 to calmer waters. Under his stewardship, unemployment and inflation had both fallen and a voluntary agreement on pay and benefits, commonly known as 'the Social Contract', was secured with the trade unions.

Once the heir apparent, Roy Jenkins now faced an uphill struggle for the leadership. As Home Secretary, he had presided over the most wide-ranging social reforms of the 1960s, and as Chancellor restored Labour's economic credibility after the devaluation of the pound in 1967. In opposition, however, his standing within the party was damaged by his support for Britain's entry into the EEC - European Economic Community in 1973. When Labour returned to government, he was passed over as Foreign Secretary and returned to the Home Office. A passionate pro-European in an overwhelmingly Eurosceptic party, Mr. Jenkins found himself isolated and wondered if the contest was his last chance to claim the top prize of British politics.

The standard bearer of the party's Left in the contest was Michael Foot, for years a rebellious backbencher and journalist, now a loyal minister in the Labour government. As editor of Tribune, he had been a harsh critic of past Labour leaders who deviated from his vision of 'democratic socialism'. But after the disastrous collapse in relations between the Heath Government and the trade unions, Mr. Foot played an essential role in securing the trade unions' support for the Labour government's pay policy as the Secretary of State for Employment. The odds in this contest, however, seemed to be stacked against him: the press calculated that only 127 of Labour's 319 MPs were on the Left of the party.


On 17th March, two new candidates entered the race. The first was another candidate of the Right, Tony Crosland. One of the party's foremost intellectuals, he had published The Future of Socialism in 1956, urging Labour to replace its traditional affinity for nationalisation with a focus on equality. During the 1960s he had the chance to put his philosophy into practice as Education Secretary, replacing the majority of selective grammar schools with comprehensive schools. He had recently assumed the office of Foreign Secretary, but despite his myriad of credentials, Mr. Crosland was not a natural politician and had few personal followers in the PLP.

The second was the ambitious radical of the new Left, Tony Benn. Once a loyal disciple of Labour leaders Hugh Gaitksell and Harold Wilson, Mr. Benn rapidly became disillusioned with the compromises and failures of political office and began advocating drastic solutions to the nation's problems, including an 'Alternative Economic Strategy' of import controls and investment in industry. in 1975, he was sacked as Secretary of State for Industry for advocating these ideas and was demoted to Secretary of State for Energy. Many of his colleagues on the Left were puzzled by his decision to stand given the candidacy of Mr. Foot, but Mr. Benn revelled in the opportunity to break collective responsibility and express his views more freely.

Following a week of frenzied campaigning, Cledwyn Hughes announced the results of the first ballot on 25th March:


Labour Leadership Election, First Ballot

Michael Foot: 108
Denis Healey: 73
Roy Jenkins: 68
Tony Benn: 35
Tony Crosland: 30


It was clear from the first ballot that Mr. Foot had performed far better than most MPs and commentators had anticipated, gaining a clear lead over the other candidates. He benefited greatly from the split in the Right, with Healey, Jenkins and Crosland all jostling for the same votes whilst Mr. Foot consolidated support across the Left and Centre of the PLP. Mr. Benn had managed a respectable showing but it was clear that there was no space for another candidate of the Left in the election, and he withdrew in favour of Mr. Foot. As he finished last, Mr. Crosland was automatically eliminated. He refused to endorse a candidate, but his campaign manager Roy Hattersley began to canvass frantically for Mr. Healey.

In terms of arithmetic, there were clearly more right-wing members of the PLP than the Left, but the Right was weakened by personal and ideological differences. Mr. Jenkins, Mr. Crosland, and Mr. Healey all coveted the leadership and were suspicious of each others intentions, preventing the emergence of a united front on the Right. Roy Jenkins resented his two colleagues' agnosticism on the issue of Europe, believing that they placed political opportunism above principle. As somewhat of a loner and technocrat within the PLP, Denis Healey was never close socially to either man and resented their interventions on economic issues during his tenure as Chancellor.

In ideological terms, it was becoming increasing clear that Mr. Jenkins was drifting even further rightward than the other contenders. In January, he had warned that increasing public spending would threaten 'the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice', a stance that was closer to the Liberal Party's policies than Labour's. This intervention was bitterly criticised by the Keynesian Crosland, who had long argued that a high level of spending was necessary to reduce unemployment and inequality. The Chancellor, on the other hand, had little time and inclination for these theoretical disputes and followed a more pragmatic course. His policy expertise lay more in the field of foreign affairs than economic theory.


While the Right of the Labour Party had been consumed by in-fighting and introspection, the Left began to organise and broaden their support. Shaken by the defeat of the Eurosceptic cause in the 1975 referendum on Britain's membership of the EEC, they rebounded with full force in the leadership election. Michael Foot left most of the campaigning to his able deputies: Eric Heffer, Albert Booth and his young protégé Neil Kinnock, who began the task of ward-heeling across the PLP. Political commentators were surprised by the success of their efforts, but on closer inspection Mr. Foot's clear lead on the first ballot is not difficult to explain.

Since the internal party conflict in the 1950s between the Bevanites and Gaitskellites, political journalists had grown accustomed to reporting upon a split between the 'Left' and the 'Right' of Labour, with both sides engaged in a bitter struggle to wrestle control of the Party. It was commonly assumed that the Right possessed a numerical advantage in the PLP, thereby blocking the Left's chances of ever winning the leadership. Harold Wilson won the leadership in 1963 as a 'unity candidate', winning support from both wings of the Party, though over time alienating both and re-opening the conflict at the heart of the Party.

The reality of the PLP, however, was far more complex than this interpretation allowed. There were ideological groupings of the Left and Right within the Party, but as Peter Kellner and Christopher Hitchens of the New Statesman observed, there was also a significant number of MPs in the middle with more fluid allegiances. There were the union-sponsored MPs, whose support required the cultivation of close relationships with union leaders, such as David Basnett of the General and Municipal Workers. Here, Mr. Healey succeeded in gaining the support of the GMW, but Mr. Foot swept support among the other key unions such as the Transport Workers and the National Union of Mineworkers. There were also the MPs of the Celtic fringe, with whom Mr. Foot performed surprisingly well, cultivating close relationships with MPs from Scotland and Wales. The success of Mr. Foot and the failure of Mr. Healey in wooing MPs from these groups allowed the former to consolidate a broad coalition of support from across the Party.

Figures on the Right of the Party had good reason to panic and were anxious to prevent a Foot victory at any cost. The results of the second ballot were announced on 30th March:


Labour Leadership Election, Second Ballot:

Michael Foot: 153
Denis Healey: 90
Roy Jenkins: 70


On first glance, the second ballot seemed to confirm Mr. Foot's status as the frontrunner in the leadership contest. As well as sweeping up the former supporters of Tony Benn, he had gained the support of eight centrist MPs who had supported Mr. Crosland in the first round. But despite Mr. Foot's runaway lead, it seemed unlikely that many of Mr. Jenkins' supporters, if any, would support Mr. Foot in the third ballot. Shortly after Mr. Jenkins' elimination from the contest, three of his supporters David Marquand, Robert Maclennan and David Owen penned an article in The Guardian warning against the dangers of a Foot leadership and pledging their support for Denis Healey. If all of Mr. Jenkins' supporters backed Mr. Healey, then he would narrowly win the leadership with 160 votes to Mr. Foot's 153. But if Mr. Foot won the support of four more MPs, he would be elected Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister...

The results of the third ballot were announced on 5th April 1976:


Labour Leadership Election, Third Ballot:

Denis Healey: 158
Michael Foot: 155


The Labour leadership contest concluded with a narrow victory for Denis Healey, who secured just three more votes than his challenger. Mr. Healey had secured almost all of Mr. Jenkins’ supporters as expected, with two idiosyncratic exceptions. Douglas Jay voted for Mr. Foot because of a shared antipathy to Europe, while Brian Walden, soon to leave Parliament, voted for Mr. Foot because he was ‘a man of principle.’

The result was given to Denis Healey, who was waiting in his room in the House of Commons, by Cledwyn Hughes. Mr. Healey breathed a sigh of relief and turned to his campaign manager Joel Barnett like an giddy schoolboy, 'Well, as the Duke of Wellington said at Waterloo, it has been the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. Prime Minister! Phew!' In the office of the Right Honourable Michael Foot MP, the mood was sombre but reflective. The ambitious firebrand Neil Kinnock tried to cheer his mentor up. 'We've lost this fight, but we've got Healey by the short and curlies. They can't ignore us now.' Eric Heffer nodded vigorously in assent.

A special meeting of the parliamentary Labour Party followed at 4pm in the House of Commons. Denis Healey delivered a bravura performance of almost half an hour, promising to overcome Britain’s economic problems and smash the Tory opposition. Michael Foot followed with a softer and gracious speech that was well received by MPs, talking of unifying the party after the contest. Harold Wilson spoke to loud cheers, and whispered afterwards to Cledwyn Hughes, ‘Remember to tell the lobby I had a standing ovation.’

As dictated by constitutional convention, Denis Healey was called to an audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace and was asked to form a government. After returning from this audience, Denis and Edna Healey entered 10 Downing Street.

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