The General Election of 1945 - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen this is the first in a series of six lectures on significant post-war general elections and the sixth and final lecture will be in May 2015 on the Tuesday after the election on the 2015 general election which I'm sure will be very significant now historians first began to study elections after 1945 in order to destroy myths which so often build up about them and some of these myths are encapsulated in slogans like in 1918 hang the Kaiser or home for Heroes in 1924 the Zenovia letter in 1931 the banker ramp now this lecture is on 1945 which is perhaps arguably the most significant of all postwar elections and uh one of the myths about that as I'll try and show is that uh is the influence of Winston Churchill in a famous speech in which he said that socialism could only come about with the aid of a political police a justo uh no doubt who m in the first instance and anyone who criticizes today's adversarial politics and looks back fondly to a time when political controversy was rather gentler and consensus politics reigned might ask whether today any political leader would dare compare his opponents to the gapo and some people assume that by contrast with today there was a period in the past of much gentler consensus politics but there was certainly no consensus in 1945 it was a bitter election so it's important to study the real factors which decide elections now the 1945 election of course led to the first labor majority government and it was also the first time ever that labor gained more votes than the conservatives it's true that there had been two labor minority governments between the wars in 1924 and 1929 but on each of those occasions the conservatives won more votes than labor but perhaps one reason why the 1945 election is so significant is that it was such a tremendous surprise and perhaps the most surprising outcome of any election in the 20th century hardly anyone predicted that Winston Churchill the Great War leader would be defeated most people and that includes most of the leaders of the labor party thought he was bound to win just as Lloyd George had won the 1918 election the so-called khy election he'd won it as the man who'd won the war and uh even on Election Day most of the newspapers assumed that Churchill would win the uh leader in the Daily Express on Election Day said there are reasons for expecting that by tonight Mr Churchill and his supporters will be returned to power and that was in some way there was a good basis for that because Churchill throughout the war had had tremendous support his support in opinion polls during the war had never fallen below 78% and for most of the time it had been well over 80% now I thought we might begin with hearing the two major Party leaders now of course the there was no television in those days it was suspended during the war and there were radio broadcasts I can't find recordings of them if anyone knows where they exist I'd be interested to hear but the path newsreal company did film the two party leaders and I thought we might start with Churchill you'll see that he's not I think quite at his best perhaps he was exhausted after the end of the European war and perhaps he sensed that the voters did that the problems of Peace were very different from those of War very complex and that he might not be able to represent the nation as well in peace time as it be been able to do in war so if the IT people can help us let's see Churchill broadcast five years ago I promised you blood toil tears and sweat and your untiring response brought us in the end victory over Germany today we still have tears not so many thank God but the conquest of Japan hand in hand with our American Allies is a formidable undertak making which we must and will see through to the end and we must still look forward atas to blood and sweat we have a terrific task ahead of us we have a shattered world around us and we must help to rebuild it we must strive for a sane and just peace which will will save us all and our children from the constant fear of War our trade and Industry must be restored to a sound peacetime footing so as to ensure steady employment for all we must strive to give everybody greater security against poverty unemployment sickness and old age above all we must tackle the housing problem with the same Drive which we put into our war effort up till now nearly all the builders have been at the wars up till now those at home have been mainly absorbed in bomb repairs but we are making good Headway and everything in human power will be done here are tremendous tasks they cannot be solved by G promises but only by national effort in which all of us must take our share every man and woman must be prepared to put its best effort into the job because it is only by hard work Enterprise energy and teamwork that we can win that is why I am asking today for the support of all men and women of Good Will during the War I rested my trust in the British people time after time I warned them of the danger ahead and they never failed once again now today I must tell you that in spite of all our victories a rough Road lies ahead what a shame it would be and what a Folly to add to our load the bitter quarrels with which the extreme socialists are eager to convulse and exploit these critical years for the sake of the country and of your own happiness I call upon you to march with me under the banner of Freedom towards the Beacon lights of national prosperity and honor which must ever be our guides and now we have a great contrast because Churchill was defeated by the leader of the labor party Clement Atley who Peter Hennessy once compared to captain mannering in Dad's Army and and a great contrast we can now hear Atley if the IT people will be good enough rather shorter the parliament of 1935 had a big conservative majority and the policy pursued by the conservative government landed this country into war it was due to the action of the labor party that this conservative government resigned Mr Churchill who had opposed his own party formed an all party government which successfully brought us to Victory now a new Parliament must be elected the choice is between that same conservative party which stands for private Enterprise private profit and private interests and the labor party which demands that in peace as in war the interests of the whole people should come before those of a section labor puts First Things First Security from war food houses clothing employment Leisure and social security for all must come before the claims of the few for more rent interest and profit we have shown the that we can organize the resources of the country to win the war we can do the same in peace now Atley was of course much less well known to the public at that time than Churchill he'd been elected leader of the labor party in 1935 as a stop Gap indeed as I would show there was an attempt to to coup against Atley both before and after the general election and during the election the evening standard called him a caretaker but in fact he's the longest lasting political leader of any major party in the 20th century from 1935 to 1955 20 years he lasted longer as leader than Margaret Thatcher who was there for 15 years as leader of the conservative party it's also the case that Margaret Thatcher was repudiated by her party in 19 90 Atley was not he retired voluntarily with his reputation high but that wasn't the expectation when he became labor leader in 1935 one of his colleagues Hugh Dalton wrote in his uh diary a little mouse shall lead them beatric Webb wrote in her diary he looked and spoke like an insignificant elderly Clark without distinction in The Voice manner or substance of his discourse to realize that this little non-entity is the Parliamentary leader of the labor party and presumably the future Prime Minister is pitiable uh in 1940 the newspaper magnet cesil King having heard him speak described him as of very limited intelligence and no personality if one heard he was getting six a week in the service of the East Ham corpor ation one would be surprised he was earning so much and aniron Bon the left-wing leader of the labor party said that Atley seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle in 1942 there was an opinion poll on who should be the best successor to Churchill only 2% mentioned Atley and even in 1945 he was hardly known to The Wider public because although he'd been Deputy Prime Minister his work had been behind the scenes chairing committees now he was in fact a most efficient and effective chairman some civil servants indeed said he was the best chairman they' ever known but of course this was not known to the public now again anyone who thinks that Ed miliband has rather a lot of flack and perhaps has been too severely criticized and that that was once a golden age when politicians were treated more gently should look back at what Atley had to contend with and yet he proved to be one of the most successful Prime Ministers of the century and oddly enough his very lack of Charisma proved an advantage the labor party had been led by a charismatic leader Ramsey McDonald and they believed that he had betrayed them the party had had enough of charismatic leaders the fundamental purpose of the labor party at that time was to represent the working class the leader did not have to be from the working class but he had to have experience and sympathy of workingclass conditions now Atley himself with middle class the son of a prosperous solicitor who'd been to Oxford a graduate of Oxford but he'd gained experience of the working class working for many years with boys clubs in the East End of London where he lived and he then became mayor of Stepney before winning a labor seat in Parliament his colleague and Je jealous rival Herbert Morrison whom he defeated in 19 actually defeated in 1935 but Morrison never really accepted that defeat but the end of both their lives when Morrison was asked to sum up at his career after he been prime minister he said waspishly that he'd been the best mayor that Stepney had ever had but Atley probably had the widest EXP experience of working class and Grassroots politics of any labor leader ever he understood the labor party and said he did not believe that he was any wiser than the majority in the party he saw himself as the servant and spokesman of his party and that was the key to his success now the 1945 Landslide like the liberal Landslide of 196 under Campbell bamman shows that a part does not have to have a charismatic leader to win a landslide Victory 20th century landslides have been won by quite uncharismatic leaders and indeed Ernest Bevin who became foreign secretary in atley's government said of Atley he's our Campbell banman Margaret Thatcher in her memoirs pays tribute to Atley he was she says a radical Patriot and more sub than show unlike as she puts it more recent Prime Ministers I wonder who she had in mind Atley wrote a limeric about himself at the end of his life few thought he was much of a starter there were many who thought themselves smarter but he ended up PM c h and om M an Earl and a knight of the gter and the contrast between Churchill and Atley is also there in the way they described in their Memoirs becoming prime minister Churchill said this I felt as if I were walking with Destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and this trial Atley was asked in the 1960s what were your own emotions on becoming prime minister and replied just to know that there were jobs to be done he said you didn't feel that Destiny had overtaken you he said no I had not much idea about Destiny in his Memoirs he writes about election day in the following way he said I got back to stanmore on the evening of the count during the count labor victories began to come in conservative ministers were losing seats and we were making a clean sweep of the Big Towns as the day wore on Country results confirmed Med our Victory and by the middle of the afternoon it was clear that we had won a great Victory Lord portal who was chairman of the Great Western Railway gave the family tea at Paddington and presently I was told by the Prime Minister that he was resigning a summons to the Palace followed my wife drove me there and waited outside for me the king gave me his commission to form a government he always used to say that I looked very surprised as indeed I certainly was at the extent of our success we went to a victory rally at Westminster Central Hall where I announced that I had been charged with the task of forming a government looked in at a faban society Gathering and then returned to stanmore after an exciting day the times ofit of Atley in October 1967 said much that he did was memorable very little that he said which I think is is right but the outcome as I've said was a surprise now why did it happen now here I hope I've got a handout of the 1935 election if the IT people can put it up yes there you are and you can see the conservatives won a large majority and seemed securely in power and this election victory in fact was a second conservative Landslide following that of 1931 when the conservative dominated national government had won no fewer than 554 seats and labor just 52 labor was blamed for the financial crisis and for running away in 1935 voters still remember the financial crisis of 1931 and they feared that if a labor government was return to office the economy would be in a mess financial crisis would return some in the audience will no doubt say PL now all the evidence we have is that if there hadn't been a war but a peacetime election in 1940 the conservatives would have won that too that labor had made somewhat of a recovery from the terrible defeat of 1931 but seemed on a plateau that wasn't much above 38 or 40% now opinion polls in Britain the Gallup pole began in 1937 and um the peak labor reached before the war was I think 40% but in 1940 a coalition government was formed in which labor held many of the key positions indeed it was Labor as Atley implied in his election broadcast it was Labor that forced the resignation of Neville Chamberlain labor and Tory Rebels because in a debate on the Norway expedition in May 1940 the normal conservative majority of over 200 fell to 81 and it was clear to all that the war could only be continued under coalition government and labor was asked whether it would join such a government and they said they would but not under Neville Chamberlain so that meant that Chamberlin had to resign and Winston Churchill became pm and the formation of the Coalition in 1940 was a political event of fundamental importance because it seemed to legitimize labor criticism of the conservative governments of the 1930s because those governments seemed first as at said it they seem to have failed to keep the peace through their policy of appeasement and secondly they seem to have failed to prepare Britain adequately for war and shortly after the evacuation of Dunkirk a pamphlet was published called guilty men which blamed the conservatives for everything that had gone wrong in the 30s in foreign policy but it wasn't only foreign policy it was domestic policy as well because during the war everyone was employed and people asked themselves if we can have full employment in Wartime why not also in peace time then in 1941 the Soviet Union became an ally when attacked by Germany and although we now know the losses were horrendous it seemed to be doing well in holding its own and people attributed that to the success of Soviet planning and Soviet socialism and in 1943 a home in intelligence report uh said that there was an almost unanimous belief that the success of the Russian armies is due to the political system of that country now you might say well why didn't that help the Communist party uh which did gain a little in membership but of course nothing like the labor party and the answer is I think that people took the view that the Soviet system was the Russian version of socialism but the labor party was the British version version of socialism so once labor was in the government it seemed they'd been right to oppose the conservatives in the 1930s conservative policies seem the wrong policies um now oppositions however often face the accusation that they are inexperienced although they may be very good critics of the government they really wouldn't be able to handle the problems of government practically now you could not say that of the labor party in 1945 because after all labor had been in government for 5 years the conservatives couldn't say labor was incompetent or extreme though Churchill did say those things but it appeared rather ludicrous and the labor ministers were mainly concerned with the home front the leading conservatives Churchill and Eden were mainly concerned with fighting the war but the ministers who the average person would come into contact with on the home front were labor for example Ernest Bevin who was minister of Labor and national service Herbert Morrison who was Home Secretary and Hugh Dalton who was president of the Board of Trade so labor had a kind of double dividend it was both in government but also in opposition it got credit for the good decisions the government had made it also got credit for having been the opposition in the 1930s now um opinion polls were forbidden for a time in the war and the last one one published the last Gallup poll was in February 1940 that gave the Neville Chamberland government you may be surprised to hear 51% of the vote and the opposition parties 27% of the vote and sometimes when reading about the period or watching Neville Chamberlain on television you might give the impression that the whole country was against him that he was enormously unpopular in fact the Chamberlain government was enormously Popular until it actually fell now when polling resumed in June 1943 there had been a turnaround the labor party had 38% of the vote and the conservatives had just 31% of the vote and during the war there was an electoral truth between the parties they agreed not to oppose each other but the conservatives began losing seats to Independents who were on the left and to a new short-lived leftwing party called common wealth and the labor party sorry the conservative party lost 11 seats in by-elections during the War uh some of these byelections were given a huge significance uh in the eddisbury byelection in 1943 the Commonwealth party issued a poster saying Hitler is watching eddisbury and in a seat in daventry in northamptonshire the Conservative candidate said three countries will be pleased if I am defeated Germany Italy and Japan rather implausible now the real change of mood came in my view with the publication of the beverage report in December 1942 shortly after that in February 1943 the there was a debate in Parliament on the beverage report and the coalition government's line was that this was really excellent but we can't make any promises about it we have to see whether we can afford it and that seemed to remind people of what they saw as broken promises after 1918 Promises of homes fit for Heroes other social reforms but in the end it proved the country couldn't afford it and there was a Revolt by MPS against the Coalition line and 119 MPS voted against it including 97 labor MPS all but two labor backbenches voted against their own government's line and incidentally it was Lloyd George's last parliamentary vote he voted with the Rebels for immediate implica implementation of the beverage report so that was a clear sign that the government might be out of touch with parliamentary opinion and perhaps public opinion now Labor's lead grew as the war went on and a Gallop poll in 1945 put labor 20% ahead of the conservatives now I'll try and work this you'll see the result of the generation you can see that the conservatives actually gained from February 1945 the election was in July but I think now if we saw an opinion poll which put one party 20% ahead of another 5 months before the election we would say that the opposition had no chance that the party 20% behind really had no chance but that time as I've said opinion polls were fairly new they begun in 1937 rather untried and most people took no notice of them they prepared as some they preferred as some do today to rely on their intuition which told them what Churchill was unbeatable and most labor leaders also believed that the conservatives were bound to win possibly with a reduced majority now on the day of the election a liberal newspaper called the news Chronicle which no longer exists published a Gallup poll which indicated the actual result almost precisely Almost 100% it was absolutely right that hardly anyone took the slightest notice of it now to understand what happened in 1945 you must remember that although this is now obvious to us it it wasn't obvious to people then and almost everyone including the labor leaders believed that Churchill was bound to win had they thought differently they would have acted differently no doubt and the truth is that Westminster had become very insulated from political change from what was happening in the country we've seen that recently I think in the Scottish referendum that things were happening in Scotland which took the leaders by surprise I they were aware of it because they took notice of opinion polls then they didn't so they unaware of it now Churchill was particularly insulated for the obvious reason that he was concentrating on the war and the election came at came um about in rather curious and indeed unique circumstances now victory in Europe day was the 8th of May and that meant there was a strong case for an election there hadn't been an election for 10 years since 1935 there was no reason then to continue the coalition government but when should the election be called now Churchill despite his reputation as a fire Eater of the right was always attracted to the idea of Coalition certainly a coalition that he could lead and the wartime cooperation had given him great respect for labor leaders particularly Ernest Bevin and in a radio broadcast as early as March 1943 he invited the lab lab party to continue with the Coalition after the war surprisingly perhaps leading labor figures agreed with him Bevan agreed with that Herbert Morrison agreed and H doton agreed so there would be another coupon election like that of 1918 which Lloyd George a liberal had fought with the conservatives and in September 1943 dolon told a newspaper editor it would be total lunacy for the labor party to fight Churchill but the labor rank fire wouldn't have it they said we want to fight the election as an independent party nevertheless in May 1945 after the day Churchill made another bid of a more limited kind he spoke to the labor leaders asking if they would agree to extend the Coalition until the war with Japan was over now that at the time they thought would be another 18 months because people didn't anticipate the effects of the atom bomb some didn't even know about it but there was a problem that was faced because the government had agreed to go to the country as soon as the war in Europe was over there was no mandate for the extension of parliament's time so Churchill proposed a referendum to extend the Coalition of course Britain had never had a referendum at that time but he said let's have a referendum to get approval to extend the Coalition and what he proposed to do was to publish a letter to Atley inviting labor to continue the Coalition until the end of the Japanese war and Atley and the other labor leaders agreed to this but they said there has to be an addition to the letter that church had drafted the addition was an extra sentence which said this in the meanwhile we should do our utmost to implement the proposals for Social Security contained in the white paper and for full sorry for Social Security and full employment contained in the white paper which we have laid before parament and Churchill agreed to that the letter was published and the decision then had to be approved seemed at first a formality by the national executive of the labor party and the rank and file because the leaders couldn't agree to Coalition on their own that's what Ramsey McDonald had done in 1931 he'd been repudiated and Atley wasn't going to make that mistake Now by Chance the Party Conference a labor party conference was meeting at that time in May and Atley took the proposal to the national executive where Bevin proposed it Atley characteristically part of his strength perhaps the labor party as labor party leader he said nothing he gave no lead he waited for the others to say what they thought and the others said they were totally against it with only three dissensions who were all trade unionists and when it came to the conference it was rejected almost unanimously so we've got this odd situation the leader of the labor party was going to become Prime Minister didn't want to fight an election which was going to bring him Victory but was then overruled by his own party telling him he had to fight the election now there was another strange thing that happened immediately after that conference because there was an attempt to remove atley's leader the chairman of the national executive of labor party Harold lasy political scientist incident the academic he wrote a letter to Atley which it wasn't made public at the time of course that there was a widespread feeling he said that the continuance of your leadership and I think he was expressing the view of the labor party the continuance of your leadership is a grave hardship to our hopes of victory in the coming general election he said your resignation of the leadership would now be a great service to the party just as Mr Churchill changed Orin Le for Montgomery before El alamain so I suggest you owe it to the party to give it the chance to make a comparable change on the eve of this the greatest of our battles and Atley replied a short letter he said dear lasi thank you for your letter contents of which have been noted he did not resign the leadership instead he wrote to Winston Churchill rejecting the proposal to continue the Coalition and saying that the idea of the referendum was unb and a weapon of communist and fascist dictators they had been perfectly happy to agree to the draft of the letter proposed none of this of course was known to the public these background Maneuvers now the labor decision not to continue the Coalition was as decisive as the decision not to join a government under Chamberlain in 1940 the first decision in 1940 put Churchill into Downing Street the second decision removed him from Downing Street showed the increasing power and influence of the labor party and of its leaders because Churchill was put there by the labor party and ejected by the labor party and the labor leaders themselves were dragged out of the Churchill Coalition by the Scruff of their necks and against their wishes now Churchill was terribly upset at getting atley's letter of rejection and especially at the loss of Ernest Bevin and he wrote to him shortly afterwards you know what it means to me not to have your Aid in these terrible times and then he revealed his hope that the returns of party Warfare would be temporary he said we must hope for reunion when party passions are less strong he continued to hanker after Coalition still um Labor's decision meant the Coalition had to come to an end and Churchill wrote To The King asking if he might resign and in typical churchan language he said to bring this present and not in glorious Administration to an end and he then held a party with the labor leaders to commemorate the government and again with a characteristic language he told them the light of History will shine on all your helmets and the party went into the garden to be photographed but then it started to rain rather heavily and Churchill said we'd better finish this or my political opponents will say that it is a conspiracy on my part to give them all rheumatism now churcher was asked by the king to form a new caretaker government composed mainly of conservatives to prepare for the election and that government was formed on 23rd of May it lasted two months till the election result was known Churchill again typically said that a caretaker government was a good title because it means we will take very good care of everything that affects the welfare of Britain and of all classes in Britain and so the campaign began there was no television as I've said there were radio broadcasts and the first was given by Churchill in which he said this a free Parliament a free Parliament look at that is odious to the Socialist doctrines my friends I must tell you that a socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of Freedom there can be no doubt that socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state no socialist government conducting the entire life and Industry of the country could afford to allow free sharp or violently worded expressions of public discontent they would have to fall back on some form of gestapo and Churchill pronounced Gestapo with a soft G and the accent on the last syllable gapo which perhaps added to its Force some form of gestapo no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance labor he said would gather all the power to the Supreme party and the party leaders Rising like stately Pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of civil servants no longer servants and no longer civil socialism was an attack on the right of the ordinary man and woman to breathe freely without having a harsh clumsy tyrannical hand clapped across their mouth and nostrils now you must remember this speech was delivered very shortly after the clearest possible evidence of the Nazi death camps with the liberation of bson it was few weeks after people discovered what they' suspected but the horror I think proved worse than most people uh had imagined and it was rather absurd to suggest that atley's Coalition colleagues were secret totalitarians and here again it was an advantage that akley was leader of the labor party because you couldn't see him really as a Hitler or himler in Disguise and after all pretty odd that Churchill made that speech after seeking from Atley and other labor leaders continuation of the Coalition if he really thought the labor leaders were totalitarian widely want to continue with him in government and the best criticism of him I think was made by his daughter Sarah who wrote The Following letter to him she said people would certainly not tolerate totalitarianism but they will not understand why socialism leads to this because socialism as practiced in the war did no one any harm and quite a lot of people good the children of this country have never been so wellfed or healthy what milk there was was shared equally the rich didn't die because their meat ration was no larger than the poor and there is no doubt that this common sharing and feeding of sacrifice was one of the strongest bonds that unified us so why they say cannot this common feeling of sacrifice be made to work as effectively in peace very powerful critique in my view and explanation of Labor's Victory now the next day Atley gave a brilliant and waspish reply on the radio he said this when I listened to the prime minister's speech last night I realized at once what was his object he wanted the electors to understand how great was the difference between Winston Churchill the great leader in War of the United Nation and Mr Churchill the party leader of the conservatives he feared lest those who had accepted his leadership in war might be tempted out of gratitude for having followed him further I thank him for having disillusioned them so thoroughly but in his second broadcast Churchill continued with this theme he said in a socialist system all effective and healthy opposition and the natural change of parties in office from time to time would necessarily come to an end and a political police would be required to enforce an absolute and permanent system upon the nation in his third broadcast he said that under socialism central government is to plan for all our lives and tell us exactly where we are to go and what we are to do and any resistance to their commands will be punished the executive he said could not allow itself to be challenged or defeated at any time in any form of parliament they might allow now the the election was held on the 5th of July but the results weren't declared for 3 weeks until the 26th of July and that was for two reasons firstly because of wakes week in the north of England elections in some of the north of England constituencies were postponed for a week or two weeks so they were staggered but more important the uh vote was counted three weeks later to give time for the votes of soldiers overseas to be counted so the three weeks Gap Churchill took a holiday brief holiday in France before going to the Potsdam Conference as prime minister and he said his holiday was rather ruined because he said the mystery of the ballot boxes and their contents had an ugly trick of knocking on the door and peering in at the windows now on the 26th of July as he was leaving potan he told his doctor he'd had a premonition in the form of a dream he said I dreamed that life was over he said I saw it was very Vivid my dead body under a white sheet on a table in an empty room he said I recognized my bare feet projecting from under the sheet it was very lifelike perhaps this is the end and he woke up on the day of the election he said with a stab of sharp stab stab of almost physical pain now he promised his military agitant who was watching them as listening and watching the results with him he promised him a brandy for every conservative game but the poor man only got three brandies there were three victories against the swing if Atley had promised that which he'd never dream of doing there had been over 200 brandes because labor won over 200 seats the turnout was 73% higher than in 2010 when it was 65% and remarkable since the register was out of date very out of date and of course many people had been displaced by bombing it was a pretty chaotic situation it was not as high as the peak turnout in 1950 of 84% nor of course the recent Scottish referendum of 85% but it was pretty good 73% now the swing differed very greatly in different parts of the country and this gives us a clue I think as to why labor one there was a very low swing perhaps surprisingly in Glasgow it was just 2% the largest swings were in the suburbs of London and Birmingham where they were around 23% now these of course were middle class eras it was those erors which were swinging to labor the workingclass seats had already been labor in 1935 they gave labor a plateau of 40% what was remarkable about this election was the swing in Suburban seats of London and Birmingham it was a larger swing than 1931 larger than in 1997 a larger I think than any election in the 20th century except possibly 196 or 1918 the average swing was 133% and remarkably Churchill himself attracted considerable opposition personal opposition the labor and liberal parties agreed not to put up a candidate against him in his Woodford constituency but an unknown independent came to stand against him and won over 10,000 votes so Churchill's majority was actually reduced in 1935 he'd fought the Liberals and labor and had a majority of over 20,000 in 1945 against an unknown independent it was reduced to 177,000 a remarkable sign uh of the absence of personal popularity if you like chill's wife attempted to soften the blow by saying to him it may well be a blessing in disguise and Churchill said at the moment it seems quite effectively disguised his doctor said this showed in gratitude on the part of the British people he said no I wouldn't call it that they've had a very hard time and he told his military adant they are perfectly entit to vote as they please this is democracy this is what we've been fighting for he went to the cabinet room and said to his closest colleague mistakenly he said to Anthony Eden he said 30 years of my life have been past in this room I shall never sit in it again you will but I shall not prove to be a false forecast he wrote to his cousin I must confess I found the event of Thursday rather odd and queer especially after the wonderful welcomes I had from all classes there was something pent up in the British people after 20 years which required relief it is like 196 all over again and in the visitor's book at Checkers he wrote pH he went see the king to resign and the King offered in the order of the G which Churchill declined he said he could not accept the order of the gter when the voters are just given him the order of the boot and Anthony Eden also refused the gter for a similar reason so meanwhile of course the focus came to the labor party now in the early afternoon of the 26th of July as results were coming in there was a meeting of the labor leaders Atley bevon and Morris and the Secretary General secret of the labor party and a message arrived from Churchill saying that he was conceding defeat and resigning and Herbert Morrison said that Atley should not go to the Palace until the Parliamentary labor party had had the opportunity of electing a leader and he was supported uh in that by new people who were coming in a Crips an iron Bavon and Dalton and Ernest Bevin asked he said do you think if I stood for the leadership that I would get it and the general secret of lab said well you might on a split vote and he said Clem you go to the Palace right away and Atley then said you cannot win an election and then say the question of the Premiership is open if you are invited by the king to form a government you don't say you can't reply 48 Hours you accept the commissioner and you either bring it off successfully or you don't and if you don't you go back and say you can't and advise the king to send for someone else he had after all campaign as the head of his party and the majority had voted from his leader after all voters were not NE voting for shall we say Herbert Morrison or Ernest Bevin as prime minister however that wasn't the end of a move against Atley there was a victory meeting in the evening at the central Hall in Westminster and at that meeting Herbert Morrison approached two colleagues and said there is a chance I shall be offered the Premiership I'm not sure I'm big enough to do it what do you think he approached another labor MP in the gents and said we cannot have this man as our leader the MP said it was too late to change and Atley arrived saying he had just been to the palace and accept accepted the king's commission even so the next day at a meeting of the Parliamentary labor party Administration committee Morris again raised the question of electing a new leader of the labor party but got nowhere the meeting between Atley and the King was rather difficult because they were both shy men and at the beginning none of them knew what to say or said anything and the silence was apparently broken by Atley saying I won the election and the and the King apparently replied I know I heard it on the 6:00 news and after Atley left the king who was fairly shy himself said that Atley ought to be called not CLM Atley but clam Atley because he was so silent now uh why did labor win the election I think first one's got to destroy some myths and the the first is that the Gestapo speech cost the conservatives the election polls showed that 84% had made up their minds before the election campaign began and that as you will seen labor was 20% ahead in February so sorry the so that the conservatives actually gained support in the election period the polls showed the conservatives had no chance of winning they gained during the election campaign and without Churchill the conservatives might have done even worse and had a defeat like 196 so you can't blame the campaign or Churchill speech whatever you think of it the second myth was it was a vote for revolution or a socialist um transformation on the 2nd of August a week after the election President Truman of America arrived in Britain on board a steamer at Portsmouth and the King met him and Truman said to the king I hear you've had a Revolution and the King replied oh no we don't have those here it was a vote for social reform and rather limited social reform as long as it did not harm the middle classes too much it was the middle classes who were the source of Labor's large majority because in a sense the revolution or the transformation of opinion had already occurred during the war and the election validated it because the aim of the election was to preserve it and not to lose it so in that sense it was a conservative vote with a small all see and I think this chose two important features which are fundamental in most if not every British election the first is that voters vote on concrete issues and not on ideology and the second is that fear plays usually a larger role than hope now um seems to me that far from 1945 being a radical upsurge the labor government was probably to the left of most of those who voted for it um those who voted for it showed the British voter was deeply conservative with a small C and that labor could only win if it dispelled fears about what it might do now in 1945 the fear factor helped labor because people feared that if the conservatives were returned we'd go back to the Britain of the inter War years of high unemployment so the fear was of what the conservatives might do not of what labor might do there was no fear that labor might do something extreme or Wild because it had shown its respectability during the war the fear was the gains promised during the war would not be delivered as voters believed it happened after the first world war and the main change in the climate of opinion in my view was amongst sections of the middle class um and that perhaps explains why the labor majority disappeared so quickly because the labor policies of austerity and high taxation made life for the middle class classes much more difficult than for the working classes and so the lab most of the labor majority had already gone by 1950 and there was an analogy between 1945 and 1918 but most contemporary commentators missed it the analogy was this that in both cases people were voting against a government which allegedly had not prepared Britain properly for war in 1914 that was a liberal a government of the left so the reaction in 1918 was to a government of the right in 19 1930s it was a government of the right and the reaction was then a government of the left you may say in the 1930s the electorate not the government were ready to blame because they hadn't wanted drastic rearmament but they did in fact blame the government whether rightly or wrongly and Harold McMillan rather summed it up when he said the electors were voting not against Churchill but against the ghost of Neville Chamberlain there's a further myth that it was the vote from the servicemen that got labor in and these servicemen were influenced by leftwing Propaganda uh although there was an electoral truth during the war there wasn't a political truth and uh there was a body called the Army Bureau for current affairs which gave lectures on current affairs to servicemen to educate them in politics and they tended to be perhaps this is often the nature with those lectures they Veer to the left they tend to be leftwing and the so it's true that the service vote was predominantly labor but you would expect that because the young tend to be rather more left-wing than older people more leftwing than their elders but turnout amongst soldiers was lower than amongst the population at large only 59% and indeed only 2third of servicemen eligible to vote registered so I don't think you can attribute the outcome to the servicemen's vote but one does have to remember the electorate of 1945 of course was not the same as that of 1935 there was a generational factor with 10 years and those leaving the electorate because through death would mostly have been born at a time before the labor party began in 1900 now given that political views are formed in late adolescence and for the majority of people remain fixed there wouldn't be many labor voters amongst the cohort which died but the new cohort entering the electorate would have grown up at a time when labor was a major party and the main opposition party so the generational effect almost certainly helped the labor party also people believed that Russia had shown the state could plan things better and that was well summed up by one commentator who said we've shown in this war that we British don't always muddle through we've shown we can organize superbly look at these invasions of the the continent which have gone like clockwork look at the harbors we built on those beaches no excuse anymore for unemployment and slums and underfeeding using even half the energy and invention and pulling together what we've done in this war what is there we cannot do we virtually exploded the arguments of old fogis and better Nots who said we can't afford this and we mustn't do that if we can do it in war why can't we do it in peace and Churchill did not understand that feeling uh he summed up a sense of purpose in war but not in peace and the main Cry of the conservatives was support Churchill but voters remember the conservative party had opposed Churchill before the war they were now trying to use him to get another large majority so you can see why a great reforming government led by an uncharismatic leader wased Ed in 1945 and why it led to Rapid disillusion and in 1950 one labor backbencher Richard Crossman said in a faban lecture all the obvious things have been done which were fought for and argued about and yet mysteriously enough the ideal the pattern of values has not been achieved we have done them we have created the means to the good life which they all laid down and said if you do all these things after that there'll be a classless society well there isn't and throughout the postwar period labor desperately tried to recover mostly unavailingly the spirit of 1945 and one may say that 1945 was a great victory for which the labor party has never recovered thank you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: gresham lecture, gresham, gresham college, gresham college lecture, free, free lecture, talk, free talk, politics, british politics, post war politics, conservatives, attlee, clement attlee, winston churchill, churchill, general elections, general election, election, 1945, 1935, history, british history, modern history, labour, labor, conservative politics, political history, british political history, labour history, labour party history

Id: KJe3OJJ7At8

Length: 59min 11sec (3551 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 26 2014