What actually happened in British elections
Britain did not hold a general election in 1967, and the Conservatives did not win one that year. The elections around it ran as follows. Labour under Harold Wilson won in October 1964 with a majority of only a handful of seats, then called a second election in March 1966 and won a much larger majority of close to a hundred. The Conservatives under Edward Heath did not win a general election until June 1970.
So 1967 was a year in the middle of a parliament, and the “Conservative victory” in the title is best read as a description of the year’s local and by-election mood. In 1967 voters were able to express a view, and many of them were turning against the government that had been returned so decisively only a year earlier.
A government with a large majority and a weak position
After the 1966 result, Wilson’s Labour government had a comfortable working majority and the confidence that goes with it. Its programme in 1967 was busy and in some respects socially liberal, and several of the year’s landmark laws passed through Parliament with government support or goodwill, including the Abortion Act and the Sexual Offences Act. Later in the year, the breathalyser tests introduced for drivers also became a visible change in daily life.
The economy was the government’s weak point. Britain struggled with a balance of payments problem and with pressure on sterling, which was held at a fixed rate against the dollar. Wilson had resisted devaluation for years, and ministers repeatedly said the rate would be defended. Wage and price restraint was unpopular, and unemployment was rising from low levels. Overseas, the government was dealing with the end of empire in places such as Aden, and with the closure of the Suez Canal after the June war in the Middle East, which added to Britain’s trading difficulties.
In May 1967 the government made a second application to join the European Economic Community. That was widely seen as an attempt to give the country a new direction, though it was ended by French opposition in November, as the Common Market veto of that month made clear.
April 1967: the London council elections
The clearest early sign of the change in mood came in April 1967, in the elections to the Greater London Council. Labour had won control of the new council at its first election in 1964 and had held it since. In 1967 the Conservatives won control by a large margin, taking the great majority of seats on the council.
Local elections are a poor guide to what would happen in a general election, because turnout is low and voters often use them to register a protest against the party in national government. Even so, the London result was large enough to be read as a verdict on the Wilson government, and it encouraged Conservatives who had felt discouraged after two defeats.
November 1967: the Hamilton by-election
The most surprising result of the year came on 2 November 1967 in Hamilton, a Lanarkshire constituency in Scotland. The seat had been held by Labour with a majority of well over 16,000 and was considered one of the safest Labour seats in the country. The vacancy was caused by the departure of the sitting Labour member.
The Scottish National Party candidate, Winnie Ewing, won the by-election by a little under 2,000 votes. It was the first SNP gain of a Westminster seat for some years, and it came as a shock to both Labour and the Conservatives. Commentators were divided about whether it was a lasting shift or a protest vote, and the question was not settled quickly. The party lost the seat again at the 1970 general election, but Hamilton is generally remembered as the moment Scottish nationalism became a serious force in British electoral politics.
Notably, this was a defeat for Labour rather than a Conservative gain, which is a reminder that dissatisfaction with the government in 1967 did not simply flow to the main opposition party.
Devaluation and its aftermath
Two weeks after Hamilton, on 18 November 1967, the government devalued the pound, reducing its official rate from 2.80 dollars to 2.40 dollars. Wilson went on television to reassure the public, and his remarks were widely interpreted as an attempt to downplay what had happened. The pound devaluation was a heavy blow to the government’s reputation for economic management, and the chancellor, James Callaghan, moved to the Home Office shortly afterwards in a reshuffle.
Devaluation was followed by spending cuts and a new round of restraint in 1968. The government’s standing recovered somewhat before 1970, but the opinion polls through much of 1967 and 1968 showed the Conservatives well ahead.
The result in 1970
The general election, when it came, was held on 18 June 1970. Most of the opinion polls expected a Labour win, and the Conservative victory under Heath came as a surprise to many observers. It gave the Conservatives a modest but workable majority. This is the Conservative victory that belongs in the history books, and it was won three years after the year this article is about.
For readers who came looking for a 1967 election, the useful summary is that the year had no national vote, but it contained several smaller ones that mattered: a Conservative landslide in London in April, a nationalist upset in Scotland in November, and a government in difficulty between the two.