The Sheffield Rally was a political event held by the United Kingdom's Labour Party on Wednesday 1 April 1992, a week ahead of the 1992 general election on 9 April.
The Sheffield Rally was a political event held by the United Kingdom's Labour Party on Wednesday 1 April 1992, a week ahead of the 1992 general election on 9 April.
An event in preparation for eighteen months, [1] the rally was held at the Sheffield Arena, an indoor sports venue in Sheffield, England. It was attended by 10,000 Labour Party members, including the entire shadow cabinet, and is reported to have cost some £100,000 to stage. [1] It was the idea of strategist Philip Gould, [2] who was involved in the subsequent successful election campaign of Bill Clinton, who was elected as President of the United States later that year. [2] Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, was flown into the city by helicopter. [3]
The rally was modelled partly on American presidential campaign conventions, with sound and light performances on the stage and celebrity endorsements played on a large video screen. At one point in the proceedings, Kinnock and the shadow cabinet paraded to the stage from the back of the venue, passing through an increasingly enthusiastic audience, with the shadow cabinet being introduced with titles such as "The next Home Secretary" (in reference to Roy Hattersley) and "The next Prime Minister" (in reference to Kinnock); Labour had been in opposition for 13 years and had lost the previous three consecutive general elections, in 1979, 1983 and 1987, to the Conservatives.
This culminated in an emotional and animated Kinnock taking the podium and shouting a phrase four times which was generally reported as "We're all right!", [4] although Kinnock would later claim the phrase was "Well all right!" shouted "in the manner of a rock and roll singer." [5] The footage has often been re-broadcast since as an example of overconfident campaigning. Kinnock followed this by proclaiming "We'd better get some talking done here, serious talking." [3]
Although Labour's internal polls at the time suggested the event had little effect on the level of support for the party, media commentators, and some prominent Labour politicians, thought the rally came over as "triumphalist" to television viewers of subsequent news programmes. [1]
The Conservatives won the election eight days later, finishing eight percentage points ahead of Labour in voting, but with a much smaller parliamentary majority than in 1987. It is widely regarded as one of the most surprising election results of the 20th century, as pollsters had predicted a small Labour majority or a hung parliament.
Mirroring Labour's poll results, several analysts and major participants in the campaign believe it actually had little effect. Jim Parish, senior campaigns officer for the Labour Party from 1985 to 1993 and an organiser of the rally, wrote: "The catastrophic 6–7 per cent drop in Labour support occurred before the rally and was – I am reliably informed – known in Sheffield that night." [6] Polls conducted in the final week of the campaign continued to show either the two main parties neck-and-neck or Labour slightly ahead, as they had done prior to the rally. [7]
Some accounts suggest the event only received widespread attention after the election, [8] an opinion Kinnock shared in an April 2010 New Statesman interview: "It wasn't until about ten days after the election that people started writing about the 'hubristic Sheffield rally' and all the rest of it." [9]
In fact, the rally was discussed several times during the BBC's election-night coverage; David Dimbleby questioned Labour's then Shadow Chancellor, John Smith, about the hubristic nature of the rally; BBC commentator David Davies suggested it may have hurt Labour in the Midlands, being seen as “too self-congratulatory, too soon”; and both Conservative David Mellor and Shirley Williams of the SDP discussed it in a roundtable conversation.
In a 1995 interview for the BBC Two documentary series The Wilderness Years, Kinnock said: "...all of the years in which I'd attempted to build a fairly reserved, starchy persona – in a few seconds, they slipped away." [10] In the 2010 New Statesman interview, Kinnock expressed a different opinion on the effect of his performance at the rally. He said: "Given my time again, I wouldn't repeat it – but the great legend is complete, bloody rubbish." [9]
In 2021, writing on Kinnock's failure to become Prime Minister, Steve Richards argued that the rally had "acquired a mythological status as fatal event", but noted that prior to Labour's defeat "there was no suggestion that Kinnock had made a terrible blunder". He noted that the BBC's political editor John Cole had indicated he had been impressed in his live reporting of the rally and it was only retrospectively that it started to be portrayed as showing Kinnock as "overconfident and cocky". Richards concluded that blaming the event for Labour's defeat was "a red herring" and the party would have lost the election even if there had been no Sheffield Rally. [11]
The event is often mentioned in relation to other purported political miscalculations or gaffes, such as the Paul Wellstone memorial during the 2002 United States Senate election in Minnesota. [12] or the Howard Dean "Dean Scream" incident. [13] [14]
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock, is a Welsh politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1995, first for Bedwellty and then for Islwyn. He was Vice-President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. Kinnock was considered to be on the soft left of the Labour Party.
The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority.
The 1992 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 April 1992, to elect 651 members to the House of Commons. The election resulted in the fourth consecutive victory for the Conservative Party since 1979, with a majority of 21 and would be the last time that the Conservatives would win an overall majority at a general election until 2015. It was also the last general election to be held on a day which did not coincide with any local elections until 2017. This election result took many by surprise, as opinion polling leading up to the election day had shown a narrow but consistent lead for the Labour Party under leader Neil Kinnock.
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley, is a British politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. A member of the Labour Party, he was MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook for over 32 years from 1964 to 1997, and served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.
John Smith was a British Labour Party politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 until his death from a heart attack in May 1994. He was also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Monklands East.
The 1987 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive general election victory for the Conservative Party, who won a majority of 102 seats and second landslide under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 to lead a party into three successive electoral victories.
Dame Margaret Mary Beckett is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Derby South since 1983. A member of the Labour Party, she became Britain's first female Foreign Secretary in 2006 and served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair throughout his tenure. Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994, Beckett briefly served as Leader of the Opposition and Acting Leader of the Labour Party following John Smith's death in 1994.
The Community Charge, commonly known as the poll tax, was a system of taxation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government in replacement of domestic rates in Scotland from 1989, prior to its introduction in England and Wales from 1990. It provided for a single flat-rate, per-capita tax on every adult, at a rate set by the local authority. The charge was replaced by Council Tax in 1993, two years after its abolition was announced.
The Socialist Campaign Group is a grouping of left-wing Labour Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The group also includes some MPs who formerly represented Labour in Parliament, but have had the whip withdrawn or been expelled from the party.
Bryan Charles Gould is a New Zealand-born British former politician and diplomat. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1994. He was a member of the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet from 1986 to 1992, and stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1992.
James Marshall was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Sheffield Arena, known for sponsorship purposes as Utilita Arena Sheffield, is a multi-purpose arena located in Sheffield, England. It is situated near Meadowhall and lies between Sheffield city centre and Rotherham town centre.
Edward Samuel Miliband is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since 2021. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005. Miliband was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition between 2010 and 2015. Alongside his brother, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, he served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The 1983 Labour Party leadership election was an election in the United Kingdom for the leadership of the Labour Party. It occurred when then leader Michael Foot resigned after winning only 209 seats at the 1983 general election, a loss of 60 seats compared to their performance at the previous election four years earlier. This was the worst showing for Labour since 1935 until 2019.
The 1988 Labour Party leadership election saw Tony Benn, identified with the left wing of the British Labour Party, challenge the incumbent leader Neil Kinnock identified with the more moderate social democratic wing.
"It's The Sun Wot Won It" was the headline that appeared on the front page of United Kingdom newspaper The Sun on 11 April 1992 in which it claimed credit for the victory of the Conservative Party in the 1992 general election. It is regularly cited in debates on the influence of the press over politicians and election results and has since become a British political catchphrase.
The Portillo moment was the declaration of the result for the Enfield Southgate constituency in the 1997 UK general election, at around 3:10am on 2 May 1997. The Labour Party candidate Stephen Twigg defeated the sitting MP, Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo. The result was perceived as a pivotal indication that the Conservatives would be voted out of office after 18 years, and that Labour would win the election by a substantial majority.
"One more heave" was a slogan used by British Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe during the October 1974 general election and a phrase used to describe the political strategy of John Smith, leader of the Labour Party from July 1992 until his death in May 1994.
The 2016 Labour Party leadership election was called when a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party arose following criticism of his approach to the Remain campaign in the referendum on membership of the European Union and questions about his leadership of the party.
John Major formed the second Major ministry following the 1992 general election after being invited by Queen Elizabeth II to begin a new administration. His government fell into minority status on 13 December 1996.
| Political career |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| Shadow Cabinet elections | ||
| Party elections | ||
| General elections | ||
| Family |
| |
| Related topics | ||