Talk:October 1974 United Kingdom general election

Ulster Unionists

To clarify my edit, even my mental arithmetic is strong enough to see that Labour would still have had an outright majority in the October election even if the Unionists had supported the Conservatives. In February, it's true the Tories would have out-numbered Labour with Unionist backing, but they would still have been short of an overall majority, and could probably have only have formed a government with the additional support of the Liberals. Sofia9 16:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

True, though one of the key points in much of the talk about February is the "largest party" rule. Because hung Parliaments are now rare (only three since 1918) expectations tend to be based on the majority governments that are more common - i.e. the largest party is "the winner". (See for example the recent discussion about coalitions in Scotland where many argued the SNP were entitled to a "first chance".) Had the Ulster Unionists still taken the whip, the Conservatives would have been the largest party in the Commons and in a stronger position to at the very least hang on for a few months. (Apart from anything else, the election - called quite suddenly only three weeks earlier - would have impacted on all three main parties' financial resources and another election was best delayed a bit.)

The 1923 general election saw the governing party remain the largest but lose its majority - it stayed in office until the Commons had voted it out. By contrast in 1929 the governing party was not the largest and the Prime Minister resigned before Parliament met. (Although it has to be said in 1929 8 days elapsed between polling and the PM leaving office, longer than Ted Heath's supposed "undemocratic" staying in power over the weekend, though I suppose transport considerations, public acceptibility and even a wish to give the new PM a bit of time to assemble his government before being deluged with matters of state were all factors.) Timrollpickering 20:46, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all that, and it's a very useful summary of the various historical precendents. My point above was merely that the entirely unambiguous previous wording - "both of these results were due to the Ulster Unionist Party no longer willing to sit in a coalition government with the Conservatives" - went far beyond what is supported by the facts. In the October election, the Conservatives would not have overtaken Labour even with Unionist backing (because Labour in fact had an absolute majority), while in February it's not entirely clear what would have happened. The most that can reasonably be said is that Heath would have been the favourite to retain power had the UUP still been taking the Tory whip. The other possible interpretation of the earlier wording is that Labour would not have won the second election if they hadn't been able to form a government after the first. As speculation goes that's perfectly plausible, but it doesn't exactly represent hard fact. I was also slightly sceptical about the use of the word "coalition". I'm not (quite) old enough to remember first-hand, but I've never had the impression that the old Tory-UUP relationship was thought of as a coalition as such - the UUP were arguably seen more as the semi-detached NI branch of the Conservative Party. Sofia9 00:51, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

You've ignored the events of 1973 when Tory support for "power sharing" alienated the majority of Unionists who took the step of resigning the Tory whip and forming their own party. Or parties!

Exile (talk) 21:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Don't understand the point you're making, Exile. The comments I made were all directly related to that very issue. Although of course not all Unionists who resigned the Tory whip 'formed a new party' - most just stayed with the UUP, but without the traditional Tory link. Sofia9 (talk) 03:25, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Page Layout

The page is only properly viewed by users who have a screen of 1280x800; anything less and the charts overlap. Surely smaller screen resolutions should be taken into account. Yours Czar Brodie (talk) 15:28, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Map

The map seems to show Perth and East Perthshire as Conservative, but, as noted elsewhere in the article, it was gained by the SNP at this election. Dunarc (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Good spot. I nominate Dunarc to upload a corrected version. Graemp (talk) 16:28, 6 May 2015 (UTC)

Liberals simply reissued Feb. 74 manifesto?

I am not convinced that the Liberal Party did simply reissue the manifesto that they used for the February 1974 general election. Although the link on the BBC website says this, I can see manifestos on "politicsresources" website - http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lib74feb.htm and http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/lib74oct.htm - and they appear to be different manifestos? User:aspaa 15:44, 20 April 2017 (UTC).

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

• Prime Minister Edward Heath (cropped).jpg

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. Community Tech bot (talk) 01:54, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Incumbents defeated section

I am not sure that it should say after Robert Lindsay, Lord Baniel 'Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs', as he did not hold this post at the time of the election. Other defeated MPs who had in the past been ministers (such as Sir Harmar Nicholls) and Christopher Mayhew do not have their ministerial service noted. Also I noted Piers Dixon was missing so have added him in.Dunarc (talk) 20:46, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Jeremy Thorpe infobox

Why is File:1965 Jeremy Thorpe.jpg not used as the infobox image for Jeremy Thorpe when it's used as the infobox image for his own Wikipedia article? I've put it in as the image for the infobox twice and it has been deleted. YttriumShrew talk 15 June 2019 4:33 AM UTC

I just noticed this myself. I suspect - and someone can correct me if I'm wrong - that it's a licensing issue, as the infobox image is a non-free image used on fair use grounds. Is it possible that fair use extends to Thorpe's page but not to the election page? Zcbeaton (talk) 12:42, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Incumbents defeated - Eddie Milne and Dick Taverne footnotes

The footnotes beside Dick Taverne and Eddie Milne in the Incumbents defeated section say "Elected as a Labour MP", as they do for Christopher Mayhew and Edward Griffiths. However while the latter two had both been elected in the previous election in February as Labour, Milne had won as an independent and Taverne as Democratic Labour Party. Indeed Taverne had resigned his seat and won a by-election as Democratic Labour when he left the Labour Party in 1973. Thus I wonder if the footnotes for Milne and Taverne need to be modified, as to me it could be read that they had changed parties since the previous election like Griffiths and Mayhew which was not the case. Dunarc (talk) 22:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)