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Callaghan, who easily recaptured his home constituency in Wales, now becomes leader of the opposition. He will be less tormented by the Labor Party's left wing, many of whose zealous members went down to defeat in marginal districts. So did the most able woman in his Cabinet, former Education Secretary Shirley Williams, 48. Another loser, predictably, was onetime Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe, 50, who soon faces trial on charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder a man who claimed to be his lover. A Tory easily bested eight other candidates to take Thorpe's North Devon seat.
Throughout the four-week campaign, which was brought about when Callaghan's government narrowly lost a vote of confidence in March, both major parties emphasized that Britain faced a clear choice. Callaghan offered a continuation of the moderate social democratic policies that have dominated British political and economic life since the end of World War II. Thatcher presented a clear break with the socialist past, advocating a return to the market economy and a retrenching of Britain's welfare state. As some commentators saw it, Labor, in a reversal of traditional roles, had become the party of established orthodoxy, while the Conservatives advocated radical reform.
The Tories entered the campaign with a lead of up to 21% in early polling. That was largely a result of public anger and frustration over a bitter winter of strikes and industrial strife that severely undermined Labor's claim to be the only party that could deal successfully with Britain's powerful trade unions. As the campaign continued, the Tory lead steadily dwindled; two days before the election one poll even showed a slight Labor edge. There seemed little doubt about the reason for the decline: the personality of Margaret Thatcher. To avoid a major gaffe by their outspoken leader, Tory strategists designed a media campaign to keep her on camera but away from confrontation. Nevertheless, Thatcher's sometimes hectoring, sometimes condescending manner irritated many voters. In one poll last week, she ranked behind both Callaghan and the Liberals' David Steel as a campaign performer. In the end, though, the desire for change proved overwhelming, and on election day Britons voted in near record numbers for the Tories and their fighting lady.
Thatcher thus takes her place alongside Israel's Golda Meir, India's Indira Gandhi and Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike as modern women politicians who have made it to the top. In keeping with British tradition, Thatcher will be addressed simply as "Prime Minister." Even before she paid her first visit to Downing Street, her campaign aides had arrived, their arms loaded with paper work. The government of a determined woman whose work ethic had been forged in the heartland of England was taking shape with no delay.
Grantham, a market town of 28,000 in Lincolnshire, has three claims to fame: the 281-ft. spire of St. Wulfram's Church is the third highest in England, Sir Isaac Newton went to school there, and Margaret Hilda Thatcher (nee Roberts) was born and raised in an apartment over her family's grocery store at the corner of North Parade and Broad streets.