Smethwick in the 1964 general election

The West Midlands constituency of Smethwick gained national media coverage at the 1964 general election, when Peter Griffiths of the Conservative Party gained the seat against the national trend amidst racism.

After the Second World War, Smethwick attracted a significant number of immigrants from Commonwealth countries, the largest ethnic group being Sikhs from the Punjab in India. There was also a background of factory closures, and a growing waiting list for local council housing. Griffiths ran a campaign critical of both the opposition, and the government's, immigration policies.

The Conservatives were widely reported as using the slogan "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour." but Colin Jordan, a British Neo-Nazi and leader of the British Movement, claimed that members of his group had produced the initial slogan as well as spread the poster and sticker campaign; Jordan's group in the past had also campaigned on other slogans, such as: "Don't vote - a vote for Tory, Labour or Liberal is a vote for more Blacks!". Griffiths did not condemn the phrase and was quoted as saying "I should think that is a manifestation of popular feeling. I would not condemn anyone who said that."

The 1964 general election had involved a nationwide swing from the Conservatives to the Labour Party; which had resulted in the party gaining a narrow five seat majority. However, in Smethwick, the Conservative Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths gained the seat and unseated the sitting Labour MP, Patrick Gordon Walker, who had served as Shadow Foreign Secretary for the eighteen months prior to the election. Griffiths did, however, poll 436 votes less in 1964 than when he stood unsuccessfully for the Smethwick constituency in 1959:

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