British Elections & Parties Review

The 2001 General Election

Lynn G. Bennie, Colin Rallings, Jonathan Tonge, Paul Webb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136345470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Containing contributions from leading names in British politics, this review continues to publish front-rank research on parties, elections and voting behaviour in Britain.

1. Chronology of Events 2001

JANUARY

2.	George Carman QC, one of Britain’s best known and respected libel lawyers, died at the age of 71.
4.	The Labour Party announced that it was receiving donations totalling £4 million from Science Minister Lord Sainsbury and former Conservative supporter Christopher Ondaatje. Labour’s voluntary disclosure of the gifts followed criticism sparked by their initial attempt to keep private millionaire publisher Paul Hamlyn’s donation of £2 million.
9.	The High Court ruled that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of Merseyside toddler James Bulger, would have their anonymity protected on their release from prison. Several news organizations had opposed the move to extend reporting restrictions.
15.	Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a £130 million initiative to tackle poverty in some of Britain’s most deprived estates. The regeneration plans would help to create posts for ‘neighbourhood managers’, fund community-driven projects and local authority initiatives.
16.	Laurent Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was assassinated by one of his bodyguards. Mr Kabila had overthrown the dictator President Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 but almost immediately banned other political parties, dashing hopes for democracy.
17.	Downing Street announced that the Prime Minister would not take part in a leadership debate in the run-up to the general election.
18.	Stuart Wheeler, the betting company millionaire, pledged £5 mi llion to the Conservative Party.
	The Sun newspaper welcomed the Court of Appeal’s decision to strip the former Liverpool keeper Bruce Grobbelaar of £85,000 damages he won over match-fixing allegations. It was the first case in English legal history a jury verdict had been set aside on appeal on the grounds it was ‘an affront and a miscarriage of justice’.
20.	George W. Bush took the oath of office on Capitol Hill to become the 43rd President of the United States of America. In his inauguration address President Bush pledged to ‘work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity’.
24.	Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson announced his resignation from the Cabinet for an unprecedented second time. Mr Mandelson claimed he had not acted improperly over the passport application of controversial Indian billionaire Srichand Hinduja but admitted he had misled the government. Mr Mandelson had come under increasing pressure since newspaper reports claimed that he had helped Mr Hinduja secure a UK passport after the tycoon pledged £1 million in sponsorship for the Millennium Dome while Mr Mandelson was in charge of the project. Dr John Reid replaced Mr Mandelson as Northern Ireland Secretary, while Helen Liddell was promoted to Scottish Secretary.
25.	In a surprise move, the Scottish Executive backed down on their refusal to fully implement the recommendations of the Sutherland Report, promising new proposals on free personal care for pensioners. The move came just minutes ahead of a vote in which Labour’s coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, had stated their intention to vote with the opposition.
30.	The Redfern Inquiry into the organ scandal at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital heavily criticized hospital managers for failing to ‘prevent Professor ven Velzen’s worst excesses’. The report revealed that over 2,000 hearts, a large number of brains and over 1,500 stillbirths or foetuses had been taken without consent.
31.	One of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing was found guilty of murdering 270 people. The guilty verdict on Abdel Baset Al Megrahi was delivered after an historic 84-day trail under Scots law in the Netherlands. Megrahi’s co-accused, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, was found not guilty.

FEBRUARY

1.	Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel maker, announced 6,000 job losses as part of a radical overhaul of their UK operations. A Treasury select committee report expressed concern over the ability of Chancellor Gordon Brown to influence policy decisions of other government departments and urged the Prime Minister to take action to re-address the growing power of the Treasur
3.	Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s press officer, faced fresh calls to resign after being reprimanded by Cabinet Secretary Richard Wilson for comments deriding Tory economic policy as ‘ an insult to Mickey Mouse’. The remark, made at a political briefing, broke civil service rules on impartiality.
6.	Ariel Sharon, the leader of the right-wing Likud Party, was elected as the new Prime Minister of Israel. Sharon, the country’s leading right-wing ‘hawk’, was a former Defence Minister and the architect of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
7.	The government rejected the key finding of the landmark Police Foundation report into drugs policy. The report had recommended the easing of penalties for possession of soft drugs and a reclassification of ecstasy and LSD.
8.	The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) cut interest rates by a quarter of a per cent to 5.75 per cent. It was the first change in interest rates for a year.
12.	Outlining a Green Paper on the future of secondary schools, Schools: Building on Success, Education Secretary David Blunkett revealed that the government intended to overhaul the secondary school system in England. A new type of secondary school, building on what ministers saw as the success of specialist schools, would replace ‘the bog standard comprehensive’.
	In the biggest anti-nuclear demonstration in Scotland since the 1960s, Labour MP George Galloway, Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan and Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas were among 379 people arrested at the Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde.
15.	The government launched a £3 million advertising campaign to persuade more people to register to vote. The campaign entitled Make your Voice Heard was targeted at ethnic minorities, homeless people and unconvicted prisoners.
18.	Tony Blair told nearly 3,000 delegates at Labour’s Spring Conference that prudence and stability would continue to be the party’s watchwords should they win a second term in office.
20.	A routine inspection at Cheale Meats abattoir in Essex discovered traces of foot and mouth disease (FMD). The highly infectious virus, affecting cloven-hoofed animals, had last been detected in Britain 20 years earlier
22.	Veteran Welsh Labour politician Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos died at the age of 84.
23.	The government imposed a ban on the movement of livestock into and out of the UK and urged people to stay away from the countryside as more cases of FMD were identified.
25.	Speaking after his first meeting with President Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair said he believed Britain had a crucial role to play in pulling Europe and America closer together. During the talks at Camp David, Mr Blair won the President’s support for the proposed 60,000 European defence force on the condition that it did not undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
26.	The government unveiled a ten-year plan to tackle persistent criminals. The £700 million initiative allowed judges to take greater account of repeat offenders’ records when passing sentence but also offered greater help with rehabilitation through better drug treatment, education and training in jails.
28.	Ten people died when a high-speed passenger train collided with a freight train near Selby, North Yorkshire. The Great North Eastern Railways (GNER) passenger train had been derailed after striking a Land Rover that had veered off the M62 motorway. Gary Hart, the driver of the Land Rover, was later convicted of causing ten deaths by dangerous driving.
	Sir Nigel Wicks, a former private secretary to Baroness Thatcher, replaced Lord Neill as chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

MARCH

4.	A bomb exploded outside BBC Television Centre as officers attempted a controlled explosion. A police spokesman said the bomb was ‘almost certainly’ the work of the Real IRA.
	Conservative leader William Hague was heavily criticized by opposition parties for claiming Labour would turn Britain into ‘a foreign land’. Speaking at the party’s Spring conference, Mr Hague denied that his attitudes were racist or xenophobic.
6.	Prime Minister Tony Blair sought to boost the Labour Party’s green credentials by pledging £100 million towards the development of renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar power.
7.	Delivering a budget that he claimed would put families first, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that the Working Families Tax Credit would rise by £5 and promised working families further help with the costs of childcare. The Chancellor also outlined a series of measures to help businesses and encourage enterprise. For motorists, all car tax rates were frozen and the cheaper rate of £55 for smaller cars was extended to an extra five million vehicles.
8.	The Scottish Executive suffered its first defeat over proposals to help the Scottish fishing industry. A Labour amendment, which removed a call for financial aid for fishermen taking part in a voluntary tie-up sche...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Abstracts of Articles
• Introduction
• Political Knowledge and Electoral Choice
• Downs, Stokes and Modified Rational Choice: Modelling Turnout in 2001
• Old Extremism or New Moderate Centrism? The 2001 Elections in Northern Ireland
• Did Devolution Make a Difference? The First Post-Devolution UK Election in Scotland
• The Impact of Constituency Campaigning in the 2001 General Election
• European Integration, Party Politics and Voting in the 2001 Election
• Electoral Strategies and Female Candidacy: Comparing Trends in the 2001 and 1997 General Elections
• Distortion Magnified: New Labour and the British Electoral System, 1950-2001
• Trade Unions and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000) in the 2001 General Election: Tentative Third Parties and Trammelled Officers
• The Barnett Formula and the 2001 General Election
• Micro-Geography and Socialization: New Ways of Investigating the Turnout Problem
• Was There a Rural Rebellion? Labour and the Countryside Vote in the 2001 General Election
• Why Do the Conservatives Always Do (Even) Worse in Wales?
• Reference Section
• 1. Chronology of Major Political Events 2001
• 2. Summary Results of the 2001 General Election
• 3. Parliamentary By-elections 1997-2001
• 4. Public Opinion Polls 2001
• 5. Local Elections 2001