UK election: History of the main political parties

LABOUR

The Labour party, traditionally the most left-wing of the three main parties, grew out of the working class movements of the 19th century Industrial Revolution.

Formed in 1900, initially as a parliamentary pressure group, it took power for the first time in 1924 and was also part of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition.

Labour came of age in 1945 when it swept to a landslide victory, ousting Churchill and putting Clement Atlee into Downing Street.

His government helped the country rebuild after World War Two and laid the foundations for the modern state, most notably by creating the National Health Service.

Despite its achievements, Labour narrowly lost the 1951 election and spent the following 13 years in opposition until Harold Wilson led them back into power in 1964. Wilson was to win power four times, but not consecutively.

Spurred on by the social liberalism of the time, Wilson's government changed law on divorce, homosexuality and abortion and abolished the death penalty. He supported the US war in Vietnam but, unlike Australia and New Zealand, turned down US requests to send troops. Against expectations, he lost the election of 1970.

Labour were back in power with a slender majority in the late 1970s but the government of Jim Callaghan is best remembered for the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978-79, when strikes crippled the country.

Months later, Labour were crushed at the polls and spent the next 18 years in exile, wracked by in-fighting under Michael Foot and then Neil Kinnock. Labour's 27.6 per cent share of the vote in the 1983 election was its lowest ever.

The party replaced its traditional symbol, the socialist Red Flag, with the red rose in 1986 as it tried to remodel itself and inch towards the political centre.

That process gathered pace after 1994, when Tony Blair became the youngest party leader in Labour history following the sudden death of John Smith.

Blair led Labour to a massive landslide victory in 1997 and repeated the feat in 2001 with only a slightly reduced majority.

His government has introduced a minimum wage and made the Bank of England independent, but his decision to go to war in Iraq has angered many traditional Labour leftists.

CONSERVATIVES

The Conservatives, often referred to as the Tory Party, are on the traditional right of politics and trace their history to the Glorious Revolution power struggle between the monarchy and parliament in the late 17th century.

The Tories upheld the supremacy of King James II over parliament. The word Tory comes from an Irish Gaelic word used to describe Roman Catholic supporters of the king.

The modern Conservative Party emerged in the mid 19th century under prime ministers Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli. Conservative Central Office -- the nerve centre of conservatism even today -- was set up in 1870.

The party competed for power with the Liberals until 1915 when it formed a coalition government with them.

That lasted until 1922 when it was brought down by a Tory backbench revolt. The event gave rise to the "1922 Committee" of Conservative backbench members of parliament (MPs) -- still active and influential today.

The party dominated politics in the interwar period. Between 1918 and 1945 the Conservatives were the largest party in parliament for all but two and a half years, and they formed the backbone of Churchill's wartime government.

Despite a shock defeat in the 1945 election, the Tories were back in power by 1951 and remained there for 13 years. The era was marked by rapid economic growth and the Suez crisis of 1956, which cost Prime Minister Anthony Eden his job.

Edward Heath's Conservative government of 1970-74 negotiated the entry in to the European Community but was crippled by miners' strikes, violence in Northern Ireland and inflation.

It was left to Margaret Thatcher, the country's first female prime minister, to remodel the Conservatives as a radical free-market machine which romped to election victories in 1979, 1983 and 1987.

She rolled back the state, took Britain to war over the Falkland Islands in 1982 and crushed the trade unions, bringing the miners to heel after their year-long strike in 1984-85. Unemployment rose to record highs and the former industrial heartlands were devastated.

The deeply unpopular poll tax and Conservative divisions over Europe undermined Thatcher and she was defeated in a leadership ballot in 1990. John Major took over and within weeks took troops to war in Iraq.

Major's government was blighted by the "Black Wednesday" debacle of 1992, when the pound was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).

He resigned in 1997 and the party has since struggled for leadership, turning to William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and, since 2003, Michael Howard.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

As a party, the Liberal Democrats are only 17 years old but, like the Conservatives, they trace their history back to the 17th century tussle between king and parliament.

They are the descendants of the Whigs, who advocated the supremacy of parliament over monarchy. The word Whig is thought to come from the Scottish name for a band of Puritan outlaws who opposed the king.

The Liberal Party was founded in 1859. Its founding father was four-times Prime Minister William Gladstone, who ensured the Liberals presented a serious alternative to the Tories for the rest of the century.

The Liberal Party's finest hour came in 1906 when they won a landslide election victory. Under the leadership of Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George, the party oversaw major reforms including the introduction of state pensions and the national insurance system.

By the early 1920s, however, the party was riven by internal divisions and went into rapid decline. By 1957 there were only five Liberal members of parliament.

The country's winner-takes-all electoral system has often worked against the Liberals and, despite a revival in the 1960s and 1970s, they failed to turn local successes into parliamentary seats. Their only taste of power came in a so called "Lib-Lab" pact with Labour in the late 1970s.

A significant turning point for Liberalism came in 1981, when a handful of moderate Labour MPs, disillusioned by their party's lurch to the left, quit to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP) which shared many Liberal Party ideals.

The two parties formed an alliance and took 26 per cent of the vote in the 1983 general election, the best performance by a third party since 1929. Five years later, in March 1988, they merged under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown.

Renamed the Liberal Democrats, the party has grown in popularity and is now viewed as being more leftist than Labour. It opposed the war in Iraq and has advocated tax rises to pay for public services.

Since Ashdown's resignation in 1999, the party has been led by Charles Kennedy.

- REUTERS