Myths about leaders: personalities and strategy-making

Abstract

This chapter aims to demonstrate that both Labour and the Conservatives were far more strategically proactive when approaching Minority Government in the 1970s than has been assumed in popular and scholarly accounts. The analysis of the strategy-making processes in both main parties provides new insights by drawing on a combination of recently released papers of bodies including Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet meetings, the No. 10 Policy Unit, the Conservative Research Department (CRD), and correspondence between party leaders and their respective advisers. The examination of the often-overlooked impact of Minority Governments on the formation of strategy ranges from the transformation of established institutions to such innovations as Conservative leader Edward Heath’s ‘Party Strategy Group’, created primarily as a response to the Wilson Minority Government in 1974.