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The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their seats. The Conservatives, including the Ulster Unionists, were given a majority of 31. The election was the first in which people could vote from the age of 18, after the Representation of the People Act 1969. Most opinion polls prior to the election had indicated a comfortable Labour victory and had put Labour up to 12.4% ahead of the Conservatives. However on election day, a late swing gave the Conservatives a 3.4% lead. The Election date was supposedly chosen because Harold Wilson wanted to go to the polls before the introduction of decimal coinage in early 1971, for which his government had been responsible and which he thought was hugely unpopular and because Wilson sought to gain some momentum by surprising the Conservatives, who were expecting an October election. Commentators believed that an unexpectedly bad set of balance of payments figures released in polling week, and loss of national prestige after the England football team's defeat in the World Cup, contributed to the Labour defeat. Other factors that were cited as reasons for the Conservative victory included union indiscipline, rising prices, the risk of devaluation, the government’s imposition of Selective Employment Tax (SET) and a set of jobless figures released on polling day showing unemployment at its highest level since 1940. Interviewed by Robin Day, the outgoing Prime Minister Harold Wilson highlighted the possibility that “complacency engendered by the opinion polls” may have resulted in a poor turnout of Labour supporters. American pollster Douglas Schoen and Oxford University academic R. W. Johnson asserted that Enoch Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, although the Conservative vote only increased by 1.7 million. Johnson later stated "It became clear that Powell had won the 1970 election for the Tories...of all those who had switched their vote from one party to another, 50 per cent were working class Powellites". The Professor of Political Science Randall Hansen assessed a range of studies, including some which contended that Powell had made little or no difference to the result, but concluded that “At the very least, Powell's effect was likely to have fired up the Conservative vote in constituencies which would have voted Tory in any event”. Election night commentators Michael Barratt and Jeffrey Preece both dismissed any special ‘Powell factor’, as did Conservative MPs Reginald Maudling, Timothy Raison and Hugh Dykes. The most notable casualty of the election was George Brown, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, who lost to the Conservative candidate in the Belper constituency. Brown had held the seat since 1945. Unusually for the Liberals the by-elections between 1966-1970 had proved fruitless, with many Liberal candidates losing deposits. The Liberals found themselves struggling to introduce their new leader Jeremy Thorpe to the public due to the extensive coverage and attention paid to Enoch Powell. The election result was poor for the Liberals, with Thorpe only narrowly winning his own seat in North Devon. On the BBC, the election coverage was led by Cliff Michelmore along with Robin Day, David Butler and Robert McKenzie. There were various cutaways to the BBC regions. The coverage has been rerun on BBC Parliament on several occasions, including on 18 July 2005 as a tribute to Edward Heath upon his death the previous day. Its most recent screening was on 9 October 2010. BBC coverage of the 1970 general election was parodied by Monty Python's Flying Circus in its famous Election Night Special sketch. |