 Next comes a history of the party from its 17th-century beginnings, at the time of the Restoration, followed by an account of the Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath years and Britain's trials and tribulations of the 1970s, which culminated in the election of Margaret Thatcher's first government in 1979.Within a few years, while holding onto power, the party began to split and fall apart.Wheatcroft seeks to explain this decline by offering factors long discussed by commentators