Abstract
On 28 March 1979 James Callaghan’s beleaguered Labour government faced a crucial vote of no confidence in a packed House of Commons. During one of the most dramatic nights at Westminster, the minority administration was defeated in a knife-edge vote (311 votes to 310) by a motley coalition of Conservatives, Liberals, Unionists and Scottish Nationalists. In 1979 Labour’s Energy Secretary, Tony Benn, noted in his diary: ‘That’s the end of a memorable day in British politics, the first time for 54 years that any government has been defeated on a vote of confidence.’ Not since Ramsay MacDonald’s first short-lived ministry that lasted only 287 days in 1924 had a government been dismissed in similar circumstances (Benn, 1991: 478; Shepherd and Laybourn, 2006: 161–84).
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© 2013 John Shepherd
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Shepherd, J. (2013). The Fall of the Callaghan Government, 1979. In: Heppell, T., Theakston, K. (eds) How Labour Governments Fall. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314215_6
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