Lessons to be learned from the colourful 70s

Friday marks 40 years since the first General Election of 1974.

The wonks at BBC Parliament couldn’t wait for the actual anniversary and treated the nation to a re-run of the election night coverage last week.

There were lessons to be learned.

First of all, many of today’s Tories would have been much happier back then because there were far fewer women.

There’s a story that after the Coalition came to power in 2010 there was so many new, young female backbenchers that the Tories in Number 10 couldn’t tell them apart. Consequently they just referred to every bit of “Tory totty” as Rachel.

It’s believable not just because of the Conservative’s ongoing women problem that’s seen around 10% of those women first elected four years ago announce they’ll step down in 2015, but because Defence Secretary Philip Hammond kept referring to Shadow Health Minister Liz Kendall as “Rachel” on Question Time last week.

One theory is he was getting her mixed up with Shadow Work and Pensions secretary, Rachel Reeves, a Labour rising star like Kendall, but it seems odd that the name he kept alighting on should be the one in the tale of Downing Street’s casual sexism.

Hammond would’ve had no such trouble back in ’74 when the only place there were fewer women than in Parliament was the BBC studio where the results were being televised.

The coverage was dominated by men in coloured shirts and patterned ties.

It was Tony Blair who taught his troops the golden rule of plain suit, white shirt, coloured tie that’s become de rigueur for politicians on telly these days. The 70s were more colourful.

Harold Wilson made a victory speech against a multi-coloured background that looked like it had fallen victim to the Phantom Flan-Flinger on the previous Saturday’s Tiswas.

The 1970s were also more colourful in other ways the three main party leaders were a sailing orchestra conductor, a pipe-smoking sometime chat show host and a man who would later be accused and cleared of involvement in a gay murder plot.

More seriously, February 1974 was the last time until 2010 that no party emerged from a General Election with a clear majority.

Edward Heath tried and failed to form a Government in February 1974 before Harold Wilson came back to power, calling another election a few months later and earning a small majority.

The question is which player in today’s politics mirrors whom from back then?

On screen, Edward Heath appeared awkward, aloof and a bit weird. Yet despite his lack of the personal touch he did get elected in 1970. A lesson perhaps for Ed Miliband that the personality he so clearly lacks may not hold him back.

But then Heath favoured a pragmatic brand of Conservatism, free from the ideological zeal that drove his successor to Downing Street. David Cameron is seen as coming from that mould. He spends as much time keeping his backbench headbangers happy as he does doing down the Opposition. Without an obvious ideological anchor, Heath was ripe for being turfed out after one term in office. The polls currently point to that being Cameron’s fate too.

Yet Cameron has much in common with the Labour PM in 1974, Harold Wilson. They share a laidback attitude and easy charm. And in a supreme piece of politics Wilson held the Labour party together over the divisive issue of Europe with the promise of a referendum. Sound familiar?

We can be sure of one thing and hopeful of another when we look back at coverage of the 2010 election in 40 years’ time. Hopefully we’ll be shocked by how few women were involved in 2010, too.

Sure we’ll laugh at the fashions.