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Summary “The Conservative Party was politically successful in the 1980s because of the problems of the Labour Party”. Assess the validity of this view£5.49
This 9 page document contains an analysis featuring a number of 'open doors' that analyse whether the Conservatives were politically successful and whether it was because of the problems in the Labour Party.
The document also contains support and contradict arguments that are used to assess the...
“The Conservative Party was politically successful in the 1980s because of the problems of the Labour
Party”
Assess the validity of this view (25 marks)
Analysis:
When? - Whilst it was clear that the Conservatives won the 1983 election due to the problems in the
Labour Party, it was also clear that by the 1987 election the Labour Party had recovered under Kinnock
and the party had become much more respectable with the Labour Party regaining 1.5 million votes
during the 1987 election. The Labour Party was quite a lot different in 1987 compared to what it was in
1983 with the Labour Party in 1983 under the leadership of Michael Foot being seen as ‘too socialist’ and
‘too far gone’. Kinnock was then seen as a modernizer who would bring the Labour Party back to the
centre ground of the political spectrum which is why Labour gained back seats in 1987 as Kinnock had
gone some way to re-acclimating the party, however Kinoock arguably couldn’t earn back many more
seats as it takes a long time to be able to change the views and the opinions of the British electorate. For
this reason, it may well be the case that the Conservatives won in 1983 because of problems in the
Labour Party, however in 1987 the Conservatives might have won more due to other factors such as the
successes of Thatcher and the Conservative Party such as the successes with housing , as by that time it
was clear in the eyes of many that the Labour Party had recovered and been revamped under the
leadership of Kinnock.
Similarly, it has to be considered that there is no specified date for the problems of the Labour Party so
again, surely the argument of ‘when?’ can be made? One of the reasons why the Labour Party was
struggling throughout the 1980s was because of the fact that they were being seen as increasingly
responsible for the ‘winter of discontent’ which took place between 1978 and 1979. Harold Wilson actually
indirectly caused the winter of discontent when he abandoned and disregarded the document title ‘In
place of strife’ which had been proposed by Barbara Castle back in 1969 which was an attempt to put
legal shackles on the trade unions which would stop the trade unions from having the ability to be able to
take industrial action. Wilson chose not to follow on the things that were proposed in the in place of strife
document as he had been backed into a corner by the Trades Union Congress, who rejected the idea and
threatened to remove the Unions’ financial support from the Labour Party. All that this did was it made the
divisions inside Labour over the trade unions even bigger, with many Labour members and MPs making
the claim that Harold Wilson was putting ‘money over morals’. Had Wilson gone through and accepted
what was being proposed in the in place of strife document, So surely, because of this, you could very
much make the argument that the problems and division of Labour dating back as far as the 1960s,
actually also caused the Conservative Party to be politically successful in the 1980s.
What exactly were the problems of the Labour Party caused by? - Some of the problems and arguments
in the Labour Party in the 1980s were caused as a direct result of the policies of the Conservative party,
so in that case you would argue that the Conservative Party was politically successful because of their
policies as opposed to labour problems, as it was the policies which caused the Labour problems. An
example of the Conservative Party fuelling the problems and divisions of the Labour Party would be in
1982, when the Conservative Party brought and introduced nuclear weapons, and with it established the
Trident Nuclear Submarine programme. This fractured the Labour Party even more than they were
already over this issue, with half favouring unilateral nuclear disarmament, and the other half not. Again,
after the Labour Party criticised the 1980 Housing Act after claiming that the discounts for the purchase of
council houses by tenants would lead to a shortage of council housing. This caused another big divide in
the Labour Party and it was a divide that was caused almost directly by the Conservative Party.
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