A ‘Government of National Unity’?

Abstract

Abstract The two elections of 1974, and the cross-party politics in between, provide a case where both pre- and post-election coalitions were contemplated by Ted Heath’s Conservative Party and the Liberal Party led by Jeremy Thorpe. The general election of 28 February 1974 saw a Liberal insurgency, a third-party vote that was twice as large as any that had been recorded since 1929 and the first hung parliament in the post-war era. This led to frenetic, but fruitless, negotiations between Heath and Thorpe, and the appointment of Harold Wilson as head of a minority Labour government. Yet that summer of 1974 saw sustained discussion of a ‘Government of National Unity’, electoral pacts, and pressure on Heath to form an alliance with the insurgent Liberals. Jeremy Thorpe’s belief that a formal agreement would be electorally damaging, Heath’s intra-party weakness, and, ultimately, a slim Labour majority punctured the prospect of a Conservative-Liberal alliance.