The ‘homogeneity’ debate

The main features of the party system in Great Britain until 1974 were its simplicity and its homogeneity. Two major parties won nearly all the seats in the House of Commons, and captured around 90% of the votes. Moreover, regional differences within the country were not important, since the principal divisions in electoral terms were derived from socio-economic, not territorial, factors. These divisions reinforced the two-party system, which was based on a bipolarisation of society into the middle and working classes. Thus parties appealing to regional or nationalist sentiment did very badly.

As recently as the 19 70 election these features seemed to hold good. The two major parties won nearly all the seats in Great Britain, leaving the Liberals with only 6 seats (7.5% of the UK vote) and others with 2 seats (6 if Northern Ireland is included). The only Nationalist success outside Northern Ireland was a single SNP member, for the Western Isles.

The picture altered considerably in 1974, when the two-party system and homogeneity received a powerful blow. Minor parties won 25% of the vote in both elections, and in Scotland they won 30.5% in February and 39% in October. In 1979, the two-party system recovered somewhat. Minor parties fell back to 19.2% of the vote in the country as a whole, and to 27.1% in Scotland. In 1983, the advent of the Liberal-SDP Alliance brought a new ‘third-party’ challenge to the party system. The Alliance took 25.4% of the UK vote, and 24.5% of the vote in Scotland.