Why did the Labour Party win the General Election of 1945?

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WHY DID THE LABOUR PARTY WIN THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1945?

INTRODUCTION

The general election result of 1945 was one the most important in British political history. The defeat of Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party after victory in Europe was an unanticipated shock to most in 1945. The electorate voted for significant change and a new approach to reconstruction in post-war Britain. The Labour Party won 47.7 per cent of the vote, with 393 seats, against the Conservative vote of 39.7 per cent and 210 seats. Following the rejection by the Labour Party of the continuation of the coalition government until the defeat of Japan, Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister on 23 May 1945 and from this date the various political parties began their preparation for the coming election.

The primary concern of the electorate was effective post-war reconstruction and the result of the election was chiefly determined by public perception of a party’s ability to deal with immediate domestic issues. The public were asked what the central question of the election was, 41 per cent answered housing, 15 per cent claimed full employment and 7 per cent said social security. This statistic clearly indicates the desire for social reform among the electorate; however, this does not fully explain why the Labour Party won the general election of 1945. The causes of Labour victory are particularly complex and the only concrete evidence for public attitudes are the fledgling opinion polls conducted from the mid-1930s. It is easy to make presumptions with statistical data which does not reflect nationwide opinion. The 1945 election was the first they had covered and thus the accuracy of their gauge of public opinion is questionable.

This essay is an attempt to analyse and evaluate all of the issues regarded as responsible for the outcome of the election. The election campaigns of each party were central in shaping public opinion and must be scrutinised. The chasm between the styles of Churchill and Attlee is vital for a thorough understanding of voting patterns in 1945. The growth of middle-class support for Labour is often understood to come from it becoming a ‘classless’ party during the election campaign. The ‘shift to the left’ which occurred during the Second World War explains the increase in Labour Party support; however, historians are divided over what caused this change. The popularity of the Beveridge Report, the Soviet Union and state-run industry all contributed to the increase in left-wing feeling. The direct effect of the Second World War on British politics and society is important. Evacuation, the Blitz, the experience of fighting in Europe and the effect of war on party organisation have been seen by some, especially Conservatives, as responsible for the change in voting patterns. The rise in anti-Conservative sentiment is more awkward to date, but Labour’s victory has been interpreted as the culmination of discontent over Conservative failings in post-war planning, the Great Depression and appeasement. All of these concepts are vital to consider in an analysis of the election, and historians have not reached consensus on the primary cause of the Labour Party victory.

HISTORIOGRAPHY

Historians have long considered the reasons for the outcome of the election. Paul Addison claims that the election victory ‘fell, like a branch of ripe plums, into the lap of Mr Attlee’ and that it was ‘Mr Attlee’s consensus’ which materialised following Dunkirk in 1940. Addison asserts that Labour’s victory was due to harmonious left-wing feeling which had been building during the war years. Kenneth O. Morgan does not agree with Addison’s idea of social patriots who had dominated public life during the war as creating a consensus of left-wing approval. Morgan admits that there was a new social agenda which surfaced during the war, but this agenda came from ‘the new realism in Labour domestic and foreign politics in the thirties.’ The combination of popular policy and good organisation in the latter stages of the war and election campaign was the reason for the Labour victory. 

Ralph Miliband and D.N. Pritt have gone further than Addison in the idea of social consensus. Miliband argues that the ‘experience of war which caused the emergence in Britain of a new popular radicalism, more widespread than at any time in the previous hundred years.’ The ‘popular radicalism’ Miliband is referring to is the growth in socialist ideas during the war which manifested itself in the 1945 election. Two years after Parliamentary Socialism, D.N. Pritt meekly interpreted the radicalism as ‘at least a half-formed socialist ideology’ admitting however, that ‘it is difficult to be positive on such matters.’ Pritt identified a distinct desire for socialism from the electorate, and that the Labour Party was the attractive and electable face of it.

Henry Pelling and Steven Fielding have taken a different approach to the 1945 election. Pelling and Fielding focus more on anti-Conservative sentiment, rather than the popularity of socialism and the Labour Party. Pelling stresses the fear of return to similar conditions of the Great Depression and the problems the Conservatives had dealing with unemployment. The ‘swing of the pendulum’ came, he argues, as a result of foreign and domestic policy failures in the 1930s. Pelling does not dismiss war-time issues; he still sees the securing of the credit for the Beveridge Report by the Labour Party, the popularity of the Red Army, and the mistakes of Winston Churchill as partly responsible for Labour’s election victory. Fielding agrees that there was anti-Conservative sentiment was clear after 1940, however, his interpretation of public opinion is that it is more complex than a straightforward swing towards the Labour Party. According to Fielding distrust of the Conservatives is a more accurate explanation of the 1945 election result. This distrust came from both widespread fear of a return to unemployment and the Conservative reaction to the Beveridge Report in 1942. This distrust, especially in terms of the Beveridge Report, led to a ‘social coalition’ between the working class and the sporadic sections of the middle class.

There is little harmony among historians on the primary reasons for the Labour Party victory in 1945. The National Government forced flexibility in terms of left and right wing policy making. This is one important reason why the Conservative Party and the Labour Party both recognised social reform and post-war reconstruction as the key election issues. It is also vital to note that left-wing sentiment does not necessarily mean that people will vote for the Labour Party. This is the main problem with much of the statistics on public opinion from the war years. War-time Britain was a depoliticised society, debate was limited and it was an era in which public opinion for the most part did not matter. In order to make conclusions about the election we are forced to make assumptions about attitudes which are not as accurate as they might be. This explains why there is little agreement among historians on the reasons for Labour’s victory. There is however, something to gain from considering what they all agree upon. It is evident there was an increase in widespread left-wing opinion from 1940 to 1945. Historians have acknowledged this as fact, but where this left-wing sentiment manifested itself is where historiographical consensus breaks down. An attempt to understand the gulf in opinion would best start with the election campaigns themselves.

THE ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

The Labour Party and the Conservatives took exceptionally different approaches in their election campaigns. The respective manifestoes and radio broadcasts were poles apart both in terms of content and style. This is partly due to the different visions of post-war Britain of the separate parties, and the dissimilar personalities of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. In September 1944 and January 1945, the British Institute of Public Opinion asked the public were asked who they would like to see leading the new Government after the war. September’s results were Churchill with 24 per cent, Eden obtained 21 per cent and Attlee a mere 7 per cent of the popular vote. In January Churchill decreased to 20 per cent, Eden increased to 31 per cent whilst Attlee’s share of the vote fell to 4 per cent. Cantwell also shows us a sharp drop in the popularity of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister from autumn 1944 which continued to drop until the election. This is why the election campaigns were so important in shaping and accentuating public opinion. The electorate was volatile, especially in consideration of accepting Attlee as a serious candidate for Prime Minister so quickly. His prowess in addressing the nation and sensing the public mood, and the increased credibility of the Labour Party in terms of policy, contributed to the defeat of the Conservatives in 1945.

The Labour Party manifesto entitled Let Us Face the Future was a bold expression of post-war socialist policy. Herbert Morrison did not include Attlee’s name in the programme, instead of stressing specific Labour personalities, it was a set of proposals succinctly written and accessible to the electorate. The focus of the manifesto was nationalisation. Labour advocated the nationalisation of iron and steel, inland transport, fuel and power, and the Bank of England. The Conservative manifesto, Mr Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors was somewhat different to Labour’s approach. It was written by Churchill himself and focused significantly on foreign policy. There was however, a promise to commit to the full programme of reconstruction agreed by the coalition during the war. It was constructive, but its vagueness in some areas must be considered a weakness and representative of division in the Conservative Party.

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As has become clear, housing was the biggest concern for the electorate in 1945. It is estimated that about two million homes had been destroyed in the Blitz. The destruction that the British people faced during the Second World War was unprecedented. The reaction of the Conservatives and the Labour Party to this problem was vital in the election campaign. It was Labour’s ‘firm and direct’ promise that every family will have ‘a good standard of accommodation’ which was most attractive to the electorate. However unrealistic this aim, the Labour Party’s pledge was exactly in tune with the public mood. The ...

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