One more heave

"One more heave" was a slogan used by Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe during the October 1974 general election and a phrase used pejoratively to describe the political strategy of Labour Party leader John Smith in the 1990s.

Liberal Party

Jeremy Thorpe became leader of the Liberal Party in January 1967. The 1970 general election was disappointing as the Liberals lost six of their twelve seats in the House of Commons. But in the February 1974 general election, they increased their number of MPs to 14 and won over 6 million votes (19.3%), their best result in terms of seats since 1945 and in terms of the percentage of the popular vote won since 1929. Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath had won four fewer seats than Labour's Harold Wilson but did not resign. Instead, he entered into negotiations with Thorpe and the Ulster Unionist Party to form a coalition government. Thorpe, never enthusiastic about supporting the Conservatives, demanded major electoral reforms in exchange for such an agreement. Unwilling to accept such terms, Heath resigned and Wilson returned for his second spell as Prime Minister. As Wilson did not have an overall majority, he was widely expected to call another election before too long; he did so in September 1974.

Thorpe thus anticipated a turning point and campaigned under the slogan "one more heave", aiming for a complete breakthrough with entering a coalition a last resort. The phrase is attributed to advertising agent and Liberal parliamentary candidate Adrian Slade. The slogan was memorable, but considered uninspiring. Future Liberal Party leader David Steel called the whole campaign "a slightly less successful re-run of February." David Dutton wrote in A History of the Liberal Party since 1900 that, "By adopting the phrase 'one more heave', the party tried to encourage the belief that its ambitions were eminently realizable. In practice, however, the task of retaining the fickle support that had been attracted in February, while at the same time persuading another substantial tranche of voters to desert their traditional preferences, was enormous. Even an extra 5 per cent of the total vote, evenly distributed across the country, would only have produced another six extra MPs."

In the general election, the Liberals received over 700,000 fewer votes and returned 13 MPs, down one. The result was a great disappointment to Thorpe and marked the beginning of the end of his tenure as leader. The Thorpe affair concerned his alleged homosexual relationship with Norman Scott and the shooting of Scott's dog by a hired gunman and led to Thorpe's ousting as Liberal leader in May 1976. He was later tried and acquitted of conspiracy and incitement to murder, but lost his seat at the 1979 general election.

Labour Party

adopted while in opposition following Neil Kinnock's 1992 General Election defeat to John Major. Under this approach Labour acted cautiously and aimed to capitalise on the unpopularity of the Conservative government.Tony Blair and Gordon Brown considered such an approach too timid and were critical of it in private. The electoral success of such an approach was never tested as Smith died of a heart attack in 1994 and Tony Blair won the subsequent leadership election.