Word: heaths
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...vote- 11.9 million v. 11.7 million for Labor-but they also lost 26 seats and their comfortable 16-seat majority in the last Parliament. The upstart Liberals got their biggest vote in history, but it converted into disproportionately few seats. Confronted with those agonizingly close results, Prime Minister Edward Heath advised Queen Elizabeth that, contrary to British custom, he would not resign in favor of Labor's Harold Wilson but would try to keep his embattled party in power by forming a new government...
Under the unwritten rules of the British constitution, Heath did not necessarily have to resign if the other party failed to get a majority. But Harold Wilson had historical precedent on his side in contending that it was his right to form the next government-indeed, never before in similar circumstances had a British Prime Minister refused to step down. As Heath sat silent in No.10 Downing Street, Wilson issued a terse statement from Labor headquarters a few blocks away. Underscoring the urgent need for a government that could deal promptly and decisively with the coal miners' strike...
Rumored Ploy. Heath remained closeted all day with his chief advisers, struggling desperately to work out a successful strategy. One rumored ploy: Heath would resign and pass the party leadership-and prime ministership -to William Whitelaw, his Employment Secretary and former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The theory was that the popular Whitelaw might be a more acceptable choice to hold the Tories in power than Heath. Finally, just before 8 p.m., Heath made the short journey to Buckingham Palace, where he informed the Queen that he intended to explore ways of carrying on his administration...
...would seem an almost impossible task. Heath had sought a larger mandate to deal with the miners and inflation; he was stunningly rebuffed. To many Britons, Conservatives as well as Laborites, his refusal to resign not only smacked of opportunism but risked intensifying divisions in the country. Wrote Peter Jenkins in the Guardian: "Nothing in his term of office so ill becomes him like his leaving...
Inevitably, inflation has become the chief issue of the campaign, as it was in 1970; in that election, the Conservative upset of the Labor Party was largely credited to housewives who bought Heath's pledge "to cut prices at a stroke." This time, Labor's Harold Wilson is seeking to turn the tables on Heath. He urges voters "to cut Mr. Rising Prices [Heath] at a stroke"-meaning at the ballot box. "If prices go up any faster," he told an appreciative Labor audience last week, "housewives are going to decide it's cheaper to do their...