Editing Edward Heath (section)

===Unemployment===
There was a steep rise in unemployment for the first two years of the Heath ministry, but it was then reversed. Labour in 1964 had inherited an unemployment count of around 400,000 but saw unemployment peak at 631,000 in early 1967. At election time in June 1970, the unemployment numbers were still high at 582,000. Heath and the Conservatives were pledged to "full employment" but within a year it became clear that they were losing that battle, as the official unemployment count crept towards 1,000,000 and some newspapers suggested that it was even higher. In January 1972 it was officially confirmed that unemployment had risen above 1,000,000 – a level not seen for more than 30 years.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/20/newsid_2506000/2506897.stm |title=UK unemployment tops one million |work=BBC News |date=20 January 1972 |access-date=25 May 2011}}</ref> Various other reports around this time suggested that unemployment was higher still, with ''[[The Times]]'' newspaper claiming that "nearly 3,000,000" people were jobless by March of that year.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/cinc%201930s.shtml |title=Capitalism In Crisis&nbsp;– Unemployment in 1930s |publisher=Socialist Studies |access-date=25 May 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121028013514/http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/cinc%201930s.shtml |archive-date=28 October 2012}}</ref>