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Last update: 14/10/15

The turnout at polling stations for the 1970 General Election fell by 3%. Labour’s number of votes, 12.2 million, was ironically the same amount they had needed to win six years earlier.

Nothing if not one of the canniest politicians ever, Harold Wilson must have realised the dangers of linking his popularity to something as capricious as the England football team, yet just such a policy had worked wonders for him four years earlier. There he was at Wembley on that sunny day in July, standing proudly alongside HM The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh as the Jules Rimet trophy was handed to the victorious England captain Bobby Moore. Yet six months earlier, the Prime Minister had enquired of one of his ministers – “Just what is the World Cup?”

Once the implications for ‘national prestige’ were fully comprehended, Wilson agreed to a central government funding project to improve seven host venues for the tournament, at a cost of £500,000 – a staggering £21m in today’s terms. His investment would pay off handsomely.

Four years later – and with Alf Ramsey’s men facing mounting criticism for a less than exhilarating style of play – calling an election during the World Cup might have seemed like an obvious hazard, but Labour had recently moved ahead in the polls, and Wilson feared the future backlash from the introduction of decimal currency the following February. The national team was expected to reach the final and return at least with silver medals. Only the favourites, Brazil, seemingly stood between them and glory once again. Unfortunately four days before the polling stations opened, the England team would be knocked out of the World Cup in Mexico in a surprise quarter final defeat at the hands of West Germany. More powerful men than Wilson had previously failed to bring football under their control: Hitler, fuming at the the inability of his master race to defeat Norway in 1936, had left the ground before the final whistle. He would never watch a competitive match again.

As it was, Wilson’s Labour lost 60 seats, and Heath’s Conservatives would gain 65 for a Tory majority of 43 seats over Labour and 31 seats overall. Wilson dismissed any suggestion of a Mexican connection – “governance of a country has nothing to do with a study of its football fixtures” – but years later in his memoirs, the late Denis Healey, then defence minister and later chancellor, let slip that as early as that April the Premier had called a strategy meeting at Chequers “in which Harold asked us to consider whether the government would suffer if the England footballers were defeated on the eve of polling day?” Even more explicit in his published reflections of the period was serious football fan Tony Crosland, then local government minister and later foreign secretary, who blamed the defeat “on a mix of party complacency and the disgruntled Match of the Day millions.”

Yet Wilson and his cabinet had perhaps overlooked more important factors than the efforts of eleven soccer players un accustomed to the heat and high altitude conditions in Mexico. 1970 was the first time 18-year-old citizens were allowed to vote since the age of majority had been reduced from 21 in January that year. This General Election was also the first time ballot papers were marked with the name of the party as well as the candidates. Young adults, more interested in pop music’s top twenty – yet finely atuned to parental discussions at home and the thoughts of their peers in the workplace and at college – could not possibly cast their vote incorrectly. And finally, Polling stations stayed open until 2200 BST (2100 GMT)- also a first. All these factors would conspire to defy the polls, and the widely expected Labour victory. Suddenly, the very epitome of Britain’s ‘white heat’ revolution of the mid-60’s was no more. For Harold Wilson, it was a crushing and totally unexpected defeat.