On 15 October 1964, voters in the United Kingdom went to the polls in a general election that ended 13 years of Conservative government. Labour, led by Harold Wilson, won 317 of the 630 seats in the House of Commons. The Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home, took 304 and the Liberals nine. Labour’s overall majority was only four. The result returned Labour to office for the first time since 1951.

The election followed the Conservatives’ third successive victory in 1959. Harold Macmillan’s government had since been damaged by the Profumo affair and other setbacks. Macmillan resigned in October 1963 after becoming ill, and Douglas-Home succeeded him. To enter the Commons, the new prime minister renounced the earldom he had inherited and won a by-election in Kinross and West Perthshire.

Wilson became Labour leader in February 1963 after Hugh Gaitskell’s sudden death. He presented Labour as the party of economic and technological modernisation. In his 1963 conference speech, he argued that Britain needed to use the ‘white heat’ of scientific change, an idea that remained closely associated with his leadership.

The result was far closer than the seat totals alone suggest. Labour took about 44.1 per cent of the vote and the Conservatives about 43.4 per cent, a difference of roughly 200,000 votes. The Liberals increased their vote substantially but secured only nine seats under the electoral system.

Wilson became prime minister on 16 October. His government inherited a serious balance-of-payments problem and had little room for defections or defeats in the Commons. The narrow majority limited its freedom of action throughout Parliament.

Rather than continue with such a fragile position, Wilson called another general election for 31 March 1966. Labour won that contest with a much larger majority. The 1964 election had therefore changed the government, but it did not settle whether Labour could govern securely.