Last Friday (14 January 2010) this column gently ribbed the BBC’s rather poor coverage of the first by-election of the current parliament at Oldham East and Saddleworth. This week, lamenting the empty schedules and looking to clear my hard drive, I settled down to watch the long since recorded “Decision 79″, BBC Four’s re-screening of the election night coverage from 3-4 May 1979.

I realise perceptions of this act will range from a little strange to the point where the mad-o-meter bounces off the scale, but I have good reason for re-living the night that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. In 1979 I was on the other side of the microphone, presenting a local election night programme of sorts. There was no television in the studio so we did everything off the Radio 4 feed. Our programme was probably rubbish and I’m not sure how informative, if at all, though it was certainly different and we had a good time doing it. I didn’t have a TV anyway in those days so this was the only time, until I skipped the country for May 2010, that I caught no election night TV.

The basic formula has not changed: panels of politicians, panels of journalists, expert number crunchers, newsreaders, reporters at various counts, longer than expected waits for the results to get going and a swingometer.

The swingometer was a pin in a board with a pointed and the other graphics primitive. These days they would be primitive in a school project, but I imagine moving 3D bar charts were pretty wild back then. The ‘Decision 79′ logo was certainly wild – in fact it was “far out, man”, as they used to say. In fact ‘far out’ also summed up the geographical skill of whoever marked on the map the various constituencies; Cheltenham floated somewhere near Bath, Guildford slumped to the middle of West Sussex and Surbiton drifted off into Kent.

This was three years post-punk, not that you could tell from the fashions on show. Wide ties and over-sized spectacles prevailed. David Dimbleby, anchor for he first time, had unreasonable quantities of hair. It never moved for five hours. Not a single hair. There was a lot of hair about, not all of it genuine. Comb-overs were everywhere without a shred of embarrassment or pre-modern irony. There was Frank Bough, king of the comb-over and curly sideburns, on OB in Guildford – why never became clear, presumably his contract meant he had to go somewhere. But the mother of all comb-overs belonged to the former Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe. It appeared to start just above his left ear, plastering his entire head before trailing into a curl at the back of the neck. You couldn’t see the join. It was a remarkable feat of follicle engineering. Nobody on the tele was bald in the 70s, but many were bearded. They were also remarkably old. Politicians, from the Prime Minister downward were in their sixties or seventies or looked to be. Political careers were more durable – longevity based on a less scandal-obsessed media and a greater value placed on public service. Another important difference was that people voted back then. Even in de-populated urban seats 65-70% of an unreliable register went to the polls, while in the shires 80% was the norm. In comb-over capital North Devon an amazing 89% turned out to turn out Thorpe, the slogan, ‘vote Liberal or we’ll shoot your dog’ having proved a less than effective message. In quite a few seats back then the Liberals just couldn’t be bothered to field a candidate.

But some things never change. Decent suit are timeless reliable items and then as now the dress sense of Liberals was also reliable – reliably dreadful, that is. Choice among these was the bloke who won the famous Orpington by-election, Eric Lubbock, by that stage ennobled as Lord Avebury, sported a deep yellow shirt with an orange and black tie for which there could never have been an excuse. I was asked, by a viewer too young to remember those times whether that was how people dressed back then. “No”, I was forced to point out, “not people, Liberals”. David Steel’s didn’t match his shirt, a fashion misdemeanour he made his own over the next misguided decade. Thirty years on Liberal Democrats still routinely inflict style crime upon on unsuspecting electorate. When will they learn that you just can’t trust a Liberal – not even to dress themselves.

But despite the improvements in technology, hairstyles and eyeware, some changes are not for the good. These days politicians speak regulation soundbites and wear average suits and sport bog standard party rosettes ordered from some dog show accessory company and probably made in China. To wear a rosette at all is just too embarrassing for some of them – and if one looks like a prize turkey without one who can argue. But back then rosettes were not only derogate, they were an art in themselves; usually made by one’s mother, certainly not standard items. Some were the size of a large pizza tray negating the need for other clothes. These were not just on the joke candidates either – and while both Labour and the Conservatives had standardised their party colours for 1979, mainly because the parties felt it would confuse the many people who by then had colour TV, some variations persisted – Labour in green and white in parts of the North East, the Liberals in purple and yellow in the South West, in yellow and green in the borders, orange and black elsewhere. The Conservatives were pretty much blue everywhere, having reluctantly abandoned their traditional red, yes red, in the North East. It was all more individual and less sadly corporate. I still mourn the passing of the homemade rosette, my mother made mine – I still have them somewhere.

Election nights when governments change become matters of legend and urban myth. The detail quickly gets lost. The now accepted narrative goes that the 1979 election took place in the aftermath of a winter of industrial strife, Labour was deeply unpopular and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives swept to power easily. In fact it wasn’t quite like that.

It was a very long night. No exit polls announced at 10pm, few confident predictions – polling had failed to track late swings at previous elections and was treat with caution as a result. Early declarations were few and far between. Unusually for the time, the contest was on local election day, slowing down the counts around the country.

Dimbleby put it to venerable psephologist, David Butler: “It’s amazing really, I’ve never sat in this chair before, but by quarter to one in the morning, David, you would normally be …”

“Oh we’d be quite clear. We’d be giving you a very clear prediction,”

An early reminder of just how much politics has changed was the appearance of the General Secretary of the Labour Party to hold forth on his party’s prospects. It was a stodgy old official called Ron Hayward who wore a tweedy jacket and the obligatory huge glasses, looking like a geography teacher, as did many Labour representatives. He was a well know figure then was Ron. These days the General Secretary is a mere functionary who would dream of doing TV interviews in the normal run of things. In those days the GS held the fort between Labour’s warring factions and their alternative power centres of the National Executive Committee (left wing) and the cabinet (right wing). Reading Ron’s body language and the code of his words he knew perfectly well Labour had lost.

Others were less certain. The early results were contradictory with some substantial swings to the Conservatives, such as at Torbay, where Dimbleby casually reported that the Conservative, “Sir Frederick Bennett, has held the seat since 1955, a friend of Rhodesia and South Africa” had been re-elected taking a large swath of formerly Liberal support. Meanwhile tiny rotten boroughs where “slum clearance had dramatically reduced the electorate”, declared early; places like Glasgow Central, Salford East and Newcastle Central where the swings to the Conservatives were smaller or non-existent but the number sounded like those for a large council ward. The BBC’s on-day research indicated that Margaret Thatcher lagged behind both her party and then PM, Jim Callaghan. Pundits of the right opined that if the Conservatives won they would win despite Margaret Thatcher. Southern seats continued to come in for the Tories. Bob Worcester observed, “Mrs Thatcher has protected her rear”. The tittering in the studio was audible. This was the heyday of Morcambe and Wise.

Not a single marginal had declared until 12:55 when the Tories gained their first seat from Labour at Nelson and Colne, in Lancashire . But at 12:50am, after 22 results, the BBC computer (which would have been the size of a small house, had solemnly predicted an overall majority of 38 for the Conservatives (Con 337, Lab, 271, Lib 9 SNP 3 others 15). Denis Healey, the outgoing chancellor, dismissed the prediction from the Leeds Town Hall fireside – what did computers know! It wasn’t until around 4am that it became clear the computer knew more than Denis.

Increasing computer power wasn’t the only sign of the future. In St Marylebone someone called Porritt polled 691 votes for something called the Ecological Party. They managed 0.1% of popular vote nationally. It took them 31 years to win their first parliamentary seat. While England backed the Tories, Scotland swung to Labour. The lack of recognition by the Conservatives of Scotland’s collective will led to their subsequent destruction as a political force north of the border. 30 years on they remain more or less irrelevant. David Butler remarked on the result in City of London and Westminster South – “last time the Labour candidate was a West Indian and there were signs of prejudiced voting”. I suppose the Labour Candidate could have been a visiting cricketer, but I dare say they meant he was black. The Labour Government had introduced the Race Relations Act – a milestone in social progress. It marked the start of the transformation of Britain from a casually racist, post-imperial country to a more tolerant, inclusive society. It is always the social and cultural changes made by Labour governments that matter most and endure.

In ’79 interviewers were more deferential, campaigning more polite and security almost non existent. One of the few with protection, outgoing Home Secretary, Merlin Rees – a genuinely nice man, bemoaned personal attacks on the PM (that today would barely raise an eyebrow) from the Leeds fireside. PM to be Thatcher fought her way into her count, then fought her way out again. The lack of technology and the variation in swings deprived her of the opportunity to declare victory. In Cardiff, still PM Callaghan (moderate comb-over) ducked and dived to avoid the media. The BBC’s Michael Cockerell (complete with comb-over) lurked in a corridor to ambush Uncle Jim, waffling hilariously: “There are lots of statues here of great Welsh figures from history: Owen Glendower, David Lloyd George, Boadicea”. Eh! Callaghan took a different route. When his seat finally declared his acceptance speech was shouted down. Eventually he invited the ‘Troops Out’ candidate (Ireland, not Iraq), an ancient Trot called Pat Arrowsmith, up to speak. They left the stage and went outside to face rent-a-mob once again. This had happened to Prime Minister Callaghan at virtually ever meeting he did. It’s now inconceivable.

It’s hard to believe now but the commentators on the night questioned the legitimacy of Margaret Thatcher’s mandate. After all, she only had 43% of the popular vote! David Cameron would kill for that mandate. Would the Trade Unions let her have her own way? Keith Joseph, then the ideologue on the Conservative right reassured from the Leeds fireside – monosyllabic, remarkably mad looking and positively scary told us there would be “no alarm, no dislocation”. Within weeks Geoffrey Howe’s emergency budget had delivered the economic equivalent of electo-convulsive therapy to an already sick patient and the economy duly slumped into a coma. The ‘lack of a mandate’ didn’t worry the Conservatives then and it isn’t worrying them today. What goes around comes around.

At 4:30am Rick Wakeman’s unremittingly dreadful “Myths and Legends of King Arthur” played out the show and with it the seventies and post-war era ended. Watching the evening again 31 years later was more than nostalgia. It was the chance to re-live history. To view the changes to our country, some for the better, some less so and the extent to which our politics has degenerated. The BBC archive holds much of our post-war history. We under-estimate its value at our peril.

　

*For the record the final tally was Conservative 339, Labour 269, Liberal 11 Others 16,