Suicide rates tend to rise under Tory rule

Suicide rates have tended to rise in the UK when a Conservative government has been in power during the last 100 years, with the big exception of Edward Heath's 1970-74 administration, according to a scientific paper published today.

The authors of the paper, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, calculate that 35,000 more people died in the last century than would have been the case if the Conservatives had not won an election.

They suggest the reason for the Heath blip was that his government coincided with the introduction of natural gas in the UK, which made it instantly harder for those who wished to kill themselves.

The paper is a commentary on a detailed study in the same journal of the suicide rates related to political regime in Australia over the last century. The Australian study found a significantly higher suicide risk when conservative governments took power than when Labour won an election, even after allowances were made for other factors that have an impact on suicide rates, such as annual changes in GDP, world war (low suicide rates), drought (high suicide rates) and the easy availability for a short time in Australia of sedatives which resulted in an increase of overdose deaths.

Richard Taylor of the school of public health at the University of Sydney and colleagues who carried out the study found that when both federal and state governments were controlled by the conservatives, men were 17% more likely to kill themselves and women 40% more likely to commit suicide than when Labour was in power.

Professor Taylor and his team say the political ideologies of the two ruling parties have become blurred over the years, but they believe it may be people's hopes and perceptions of their prospects under one or the other government that may influence them.

People kill themselves be cause of family or marital problems, mental illness, and for other personal reasons, they say. "But the context for these individual influences and risk factors cannot be ignored.

"Under favourable social and economic conditions an individual with risk factors for suicide is less likely to decide to commit suicide than under conditions where life prospects are bleak or uncertain. If life is not worth living it is because there is nothing to live for."

Mary Shaw from the department of social medicine at Bristol University and colleagues say in their commentary that the crude suicide statistics in England and Wales for 1901-1998 show the same pattern.

The average crude suicide rate in the 20th century under Labour and Liberal governments was 103 deaths per million per year. Under Tory governments from 1921 to 1940 and from 1950 to 1965 it was 1.17 times that, they say, and during Margaret Thatcher's years it was 1.16 times the Labour/Liberal rate.

The authors say suicide rates in the period of Thatcher government were highest in Labour-voting areas. During the 45 Tory years of the century, there were 238,431 suicides. They suggest that "roughly 35,000 of these people would not have died had Conservative governments not been in government. This is one suicide for every day of the century, or more appropriately, two for every day that the Conservatives ruled."