UK General Election 1987

The United Kingdom general election of 1987 was held on 11 June 1987 and was the third consecutive victory for the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. She was the first Prime Minister since the 2nd Earl of Liverpool to lead a party to three successive elections, a record subsequently equalled by Tony Blair.

The Conservative government had survived the industrial disputes with mine workers (1984–85) and print unions (1985–86), and had weathered the 1986 Westland affair even with the resignation of Michael Heseltine and Leon Brittan, and the overall economy was strong. The Labour party at the time was slowly returning to a more centrist stance under new leader Neil Kinnock and was expecting to do much better than in the 1983 election. The main aim of the Labour party was, arguably, not to win a majority of parliamentary seats but simply to reestablish themselves as the main progressive centre-left alternative to the Conservatives, after the rise of the SDP forced Labour onto the defence. Indeed, the Labour party succeeded in doing so with this general election. The SDP and the Liberals renewed their Alliance but co-leaders David Owen and David Steel could not agree whether to support either major party in the event of a hung parliament. This turned out to be a purely academic problem, as the Conservatives were reelected with a reduced majority of 102 seats. The failure of the Alliance to break through the electoral barriers ultimately resulted in the merger of the two parties in 1988 to become the Social and Liberal Democrats (latterly Liberal Democrats).

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