London, March 5: The Labour Party leader, Mr. Harold Wilson, returned to power as Britain’s Prime Minister last night.
Mr. Wilson, 58, accepted Queen Elizabeth’s commission to form a new Government soon after Mr. Heath turned in his resignation at Buckingham Palace.
With 301 of the 635 seats in the House of Commons, the new Labour Government will be a minority administration, the first since 1929.
Mr. Wilson’s moment came when the 14 MPs of the Liberal Party – the party playing its biggest role in British politics for half a century – opted out of any action to keep Mr. Heath’s Conservatives in power.
The Liberal MPs expressed themselves unanimously in favour of a national government made up of members of all the three main parties.
Mr. Heath’s resignation came four days after the general election in which his Conservative Party lost its majority in Parliament and emerged five seats behind the Labour Party.
He publicly said last night that he would support the new Labour Government on every policy that he considered realistic and in the national interest.
Mr. Wilson named a cabinet of familiar faces with one surprise – left-winger Michael Foot in the key job of Employment Secretary, empowered to try and settle the coal miners’ strike.
Otherwise key cabinet posts went to most of the same men who served in Mr. Wilson’s last Labour Government defeated in 1970, although not always in the same posts.