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The United Kingdom's general election of February 1974 was held on the 28th of that month. It was the first of two United Kingdom general elections held that year, and the first election since the Second World War not to produce an overall majority in the House of Commons for the winning party. Instead there was a hung parliament, even though many people had expected a Conservative victory for Edward Heath. Labour won the most seats (301, which was 17 seats short of an overall majority) with the Conservatives on 297 seats, although the Conservatives had a larger share of the popular vote. This election saw Northern Ireland diverging heavily from the rest of the United Kingdom, with all twelve MPs elected being from local parties (eleven of them representing unionist parties), following the decision of the Ulster Unionists to withdraw support from the Conservative Party in protest over the Sunningdale Agreement. In contrast the Scottish National Party achieved significant success in this election. They increased their share of the popular vote in Scotland from 11% to 22% and their number of MPs rose from 1 to 7. There were also the first Plaid Cymru MPs to be elected in a general election in Wales (they had previously won a by-election). Although the incumbent Conservative government of Edward Heath polled the most votes by a small margin, the Conservatives were overtaken in terms of Commons seats by Harold Wilson's Labour Party due to a more efficiently-distributed Labour vote, and the decision by Ulster Unionist MPs not to take the Conservative whip. The two largest parties both lost a considerable share of the popular vote, largely to the Liberals under Jeremy Thorpe who polled two and a half times the share of the national vote that they had achieved in the previous election. But even with over six million votes, only 14 Liberal MPs were elected. There had been some media expectation that the Liberals could take twice as many seats.〔(BBC Feb '74 Election coverage ) 〕 Heath did not resign immediately as Prime Minister. Assuming that Northern Ireland's Unionist MPs could be persuaded to support a Conservative government on confidence matters over one led by Wilson, he entered into negotiations with Thorpe to form a coalition government. Thorpe, never enthusiastic about supporting the Conservatives, demanded major electoral reforms in exchange for such an agreement. Unwilling to accept such terms, Heath resigned and Wilson returned for his second spell as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Liberals did not have enough seats to combine with another party to achieve an overall majority. This made the formation of a stable government in this parliament a practical impossibility. Wilson was widely expected from the outset to call another general election before long, and this happened in October that year. The election night was covered live on the BBC, and presented by Alastair Burnet, David Butler, Robert McKenzie and Robin Day.〔〔(BBC Programmes - Election 74 )〕 ==Campaign== On Thursday 7 February it was announced that Prime Minister Edward Heath had asked the Queen, who was in New Zealand at the time, to dissolve parliament, in order for a general election to take place on 28 February. The severe economic circumstances in which the election was held promoted both ''The Sun'' and the ''Daily Mirror'' to characterise it as a ‘crisis election’. On 10 February the National Union of Mineworkers, as expected, went on strike; however, it was more of a low-key affair than the high-profile clashes of 1972, with no violence and only six men on each picket line. Jim Prior later wrote that the miners had been "as quiet and well-behaved as mice".〔 The three-day week continued throughout the election; however, Heath did allow the late-night television curfew to be lifted to allow more coverage of the campaign. The low profile of the miners' strike allowed worries over inflation to dominate the election. On 15 February it was announced that the Retail Price Index showed a 20% increase in prices over the previous year.〔 On 21 February the Pay Board released a report on miners' pay, which unexpectedly revealed that they were paid less in comparison with other manufacturing workers, contrary to the claims of the National Coal Board. This came as a severe blow to the Conservative position. Four days later there was further bad news for Heath and his party, with the latest trade figures showing that the current account deficit for the previous month had been £383 million — the worst in recorded history. Heath claimed the figures confirmed "the gravity of the situation" and the need for a new mandate, prompting Roy Jenkins to quip, "He () presumably thinks a still worse result would have given him a still stronger claim".〔 One of the most unexpected and explosive events of the campaign was when the outspoken Conservative MP Enoch Powell, who had already announced that he could not stand for re-election on the Conservative manifesto, urged people to vote against Heath, because of the latter's policy toward the European Economic Community. In a speech in Birmingham on 23 February, Powell claimed the main issue in the campaign was whether Britain was to "remain a democratic nation ... or whether it will become one province in a new Europe super-state"; he said it was people's "national duty" to oppose those who had deprived Parliament of "its sole right to make the laws and impose the taxes of the country".〔 This speech promoted ''The Sun'' to run the headline "Enoch puts the boot in". A few days later he said he hoped for victory by "the party which is committed to a fundamental renegotiation of the Treaty of Brussels and to submitting to the British People ... the outcome of that renegotiation". These were the explicit manifesto promises of the Labour party.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「United Kingdom general election, February 1974」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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