BBC - History - World Wars: Why Churchill Lost in 1945 Why Churchill Lost in 1945 By Dr Paul Addison Last updated 2011-02-17 Labour's landslide in the 1945 general election remains one of the greatest shocks in British political history. How did Winston Churchill, a hugely popular national hero, fail to win? On this page Print this page Politics in peacetime Between 1940 and 1945 Winston Churchill was probably the most popular British prime minister of all time. In May 1945 his approval rating in the opinion polls, which had never fallen below 78 per cent, stood at 83 per cent. With few exceptions, politicians and commentators confidently predicted that he would lead the Conservatives to victory at the forthcoming general election. ... it is hard to imagine anyone who could have played the role of national leader with greater success than Churchill ... In the event, he led them to one of their greatest ever defeats. It was also one for which he was partly responsible, because the very qualities that had made him a great leader in war were ill-suited to domestic politics in peacetime.

Politicians are often rejected by voters because they have failed in office. But one of the reasons why Churchill lost the general election in 1945 was because he had succeeded in completing the almost superhuman task he had taken on in 1940, and in a way this made him redundant. His first act as prime minister in 1940 was to invite the leaders of the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties - Attlee, Sinclair and Chamberlain - to serve in a Coalition Government. This became the administration, robustly surviving external shocks and internal quarrels, that mobilised the British for total war, and it is hard to imagine anyone who could have played the role of national leader with greater success than Churchill did at that time. The conduct of the war, however, was his overriding passion, and military victory was by far the most important of his goals - thus everything else, including party politics, was secondary. As a result, when the war came to an end and party politics resumed, Churchill suddenly found himself without a clear sense of purpose or direction.

Top Competing claims Winston Churchill addressing crowd during General Election, July 1945 © It was not from a commitment to party, but in order to consolidate his authority as a war leader, that Churchill had assumed the leadership of the Conservatives in succession to Neville Chamberlain in October 1940. He thought of the party much as a knight in medieval times thought of his horse, as a mount on which to go into battle. Never was a party so leaderless as the Conservative Party is today ... This single-mindedness could, of course, be seen as a great asset in a period of national emergency, but there is no doubt that Churchill neglected Conservative interests during the war years. 'Never was a party so leaderless as the Conservative Party is today', wrote one Conservative backbench MP in October 1944. Meanwhile the Labour Party and its allies in the media ran an effective propaganda war on the home front. They vilified members of the pre-war Conservative party as having been appeasers of Hitler, and of having been responsible for the failure to re-arm Britain. And they painted the 1930s in dismal colours as an era of poverty and mass unemployment.

At the same time, they held out the prospect of a new social order that would ensure better housing, free medical services and employment for all. Top Beveridge and reform Holloway County School, London, 1945 - woman voting by proxy for husband stationed overseas © The movement for social reform reached a climax in December 1942, with the publication of the Beveridge Report. The author of this, Sir William Beveridge, was an ambitious man, whose report went far beyond the terms of reference he had been given by the government. He produced what amounted to a comprehensive manifesto of social reform, including social security, a National Health Service, a full employment policy and other advances. In his early years as a politician Churchill had been a Liberal and a social reformer. The report achieved instant fame and approval, and the political agenda was transformed. Henceforth until the end of the war, British politics were dominated by questions of social reform. Though Labour ministers were constrained by the need to maintain the unity of the wartime coalition, Labour politicians - and sympathisers outside the government - campaigned vociferously for the adoption of the Beveridge Report. This was in opposition to the Conservatives, who were accused with some justice of delaying and obstructing it.

In his early years as a politician Churchill had been a Liberal and a social reformer. He had worked with the young Beveridge in introducing labour exchanges, and the Beveridge Report itself could be construed as an extension of reforms that Churchill himself had introduced between 1908 and 1911. The Beveridge Report, therefore, presented the Prime Minister with a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as the leader of a party seriously concerned with social questions. What was more, acceptance of the report was not the only option - the party could have decided to devise and publicise an alternative prospectus. Churchill, however, completely missed the opportunity. Absorbed in the conduct of the war he was resentful of what he thought of as distractions, and especially of the raising of issues likely to cause disputes within the coalition. Besides, his radical days were far behind him, and he spoke of Beveridge in private as 'a windbag and a dreamer'. He therefore ruled that while preparations for social reform could be made in wartime, decisions must await the outcome of the first post-war general election. The outcome was that the coalition government issued a series of White Papers on post-war policy, but put through very little legislation.

Top Public opinion It seems likely that the result of the 1945 general election could have been predicted long in advance. During the opening months of World War Two the opinion polls showed a Conservative lead. But when polling was resumed in June 1943, Labour were ahead of the Conservatives by 10 per cent. ... it was generally believed that Churchill the war hero would be unbeatable ... By February 1945, the Labour lead was 18 per cent. Opinion polls, however, were a novelty which had yet to prove their value, and it was generally believed that Churchill the war hero would be unbeatable - as David Lloyd George had been in 1918, following his leadership of the country through World War One. World War Two in Europe ended on 8 May 1945. On 23 May the parliamentary wartime coalition broke up, and Churchill returned at the head of a predominantly Conservative 'caretaker' government for the duration of the election campaign. Polling took place on 5 July, but in order to allow time for the ballot boxes to be collected from servicemen overseas - by RAF Transport Command - the count did not begin until 25 July.

The Conservative campaign was built around the personality of Churchill, on whom there fell almost the entire responsibility of presenting the Conservative case. Here was a last opportunity to get across the message that the prime minister was not only a warlord, but also a constructive peacetime statesman. Top Campaigning It was all the more important that he should do this, since the Labour Party was fighting a strong campaign, hammering home its policies on the nationalisation of industry, full employment, social security and the issue which, according to the opinion polls, was most important in the minds of voters - housing. Churchill, however, decided that scare tactics would be more effective. I've tried them with pep and I've tried them with pap ... In the opening broadcast of the campaign, on 4 June, he warned that the introduction of Socialism into Britain would require '... some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.' This preposterous allegation, apparently inspired by Friedrich Hayek's book Road to Serfdom (1944), was likely to impress no one except the most loyal and unquestioning of Tories.

There is no evidence, however, to suggest that it cost Churchill many votes, still less that it cost him the election. In a second broadcast he emphasised improvements in health and nutrition, and extolled the coalition government's plans for social insurance. But after this he reverted to negative tactics by exploiting the 'Laski affair'. In a statesmanlike gesture, Churchill had invited Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, to accompany him to the Potsdam Conference (held to discuss international policy following the defeat of Germany), which was taking place at the same time as the British election campaign. He did this to ensure continuity in the event of a change of government half way through the conference. But the chairman of the Labour party's National Executive, Harold Laski, put out a statement declaring that Attlee's presence at Potsdam could not bind the party to any decisions reached there. Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook - the newspaper owner and one-time minister in Churchill's cabinet - played on this embarassing rift for all it was worth, with allegations that the Labour Party was run by a sinister body, the National Executive, which claimed the right to dictate to Parliament. Churchill, however, sensed that he was out of his depth.

At one point during the campaign he gave Attlee a lift in his car and, speaking of his electoral tactics, confessed: 'I've tried them with pep and I've tried them with pap, and I still don't know what they want.' Top Defeat Churchill's fame as a war leader was now a very mixed blessing. The repeated emphasis he gave to the need to finish the war against Japan suggested once more that war was his only real interest. The East End of London was flooded with rumours that he was planning a war against Russia. The result plunged him into depression ... but it was not quite as bad as it seemed. After polling on 5 July, Churchill and Attlee returned to Potsdam while the service vote was collected. On 25 July they returned home to await the results, which began to come in the following morning. By the afternoon it was apparent that Labour had won by a landslide - with 393 seats and an overall majority of 183 in the House of Commons.

The notion that the Conservatives were defeated by 'the forces vote' is mistaken - as the opinion polls showed, the civilian vote was strongly pro-Labour - but war weariness was probably a factor against Churchill among civilians and servicemen alike. The result plunged him into depression and his party into shock, but it was not quite as bad as it seemed. The first-past-the-post system gave an exaggerated picture of Labour's triumph, disguising the fact that just over half the electorate had voted against them. Churchill soon recovered his spirits. He reinvented himself as a global statesman, doggedly retained the leadership of the Conservative Party, and confidently awaited what he saw as the inevitable reaction against Socialism. He had, in fact, performed one great service for Conservatism. After the failure of appeasement and the disrepute into which the pre-war leaders of the Conservative party had fallen, he had restored the party's patriotic credentials and saved it from the possibility of a defeat far worse than it in fact suffered in 1945.

Find out more Books The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War by Paul Addison (Pimlico, 1992) Labour's War: The Labour Party during the Second World War by Stephen Brooke (Oxford University Press, 1992) The People's War by Angus Calder (Cape, 1969) The British Army and the People's War by Jeremy Crang (Manchester University Press, 2000) 'England Arise': The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain by Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo (Manchester University Press, 1995) Never Again: Britain 1945-1951 by Peter Hennessy (Cape, 1992) The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics by Kevin Jefferys (Manchester University Press, 1991) The British General Election of 1945 by RB McCallum and Alison Readman (Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947) The Age of Churchill and Eden 1940-1957 by John Ramsden (Long

man, 1995) London 1945: Life in the Debris of War by Maureen Waller (John Murray, 2004) Churchill: The Unexpected Hero by Paul Addison (Oxford University Press, 2005) Top About the author Paul Addison is director of the Centre for Second World War Studies at Edinburgh University.

His most recent book is Churchill the Unexpected Hero (Oxford University Press, 2005), and he is currently editing, with Jeremy Crang, a volume on the bombing of Dresden. BBC Politics 97 Background Barbara Castle at her selection as a Labour candidate in 1945 The national government set up by Winston Churchill in 1940 to see Britain through the Second World War came to an end on 23 May 1945. With the Allied victory in Europe only two weeks old, the Labour Party was anxious to return to politics as usual and fight a general election. Churchill was unwilling to dissolve Parliament before the close of the war in the Pacific, but he had little choice when his coalition partners made clear their intentions to go to the country as soon as possible. The 1945 election was the first to be fought in Britain for ten years. The previous decade had seen massive change and during the war a new left-leaning consensus had gradually developed within Britain, with the Beveridge report at its heart. The report, published in December 1942, recommended a comprehensive welfare state and National Health Service.

Its proposals enjoyed widespread support throughout the country but received only lukewarm support from Churchill and the Conservative Party. The nation had undergone the horrors of war and expected to enjoy the fruits of victory. The position of the Labour Party changed dramatically during the war. Churchill had given Labour several key ministries within the national government, including the Ministry of Labour (Ernest Bevin) and the Home Office (Herbert Morrison). Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, was made Churchill's Deputy Prime Minister. The effect was to give Labour a wealth of experience in office which was to prove invaluable when the party went to the country. Campaign Conservative election poster 1945 Most observers, including the Soviet leader Stalin, believed the Tories would win, despite the publication of opinion polls that showed Labour six points ahead of the Conservatives. Churchill had been an incredibly popular and successful war leader and few could imagine that the electorate would turn against him. Although the Conservatives appeared to be in a very strong position as they entered the election campaign, to many voters they remained the party of appeasement, unemployment and the means test.

The Conservatives' appeal to the nation under the slogan "Vote National - Help him finish the job" was based around Churchill's personal popularity and as such found itself out of step with the public's new mood. Churchill and Tory media mogul Lord Beaverbrook based much of their campaign rhetoric on the dangers posed to democratic institutions by Labour's proposals for a welfare state and the nationalisation of key industries. Churchill even went as far as to stay that if Labour were elected it would need to "fall back on some kind of Gestapo" to implement its policies. Ironically the Conservative manifesto A Declaration of Policy to the Electors offered many policies similar to those of Labour. The Result When Labour's victory was announced on 26 July 1945 (three weeks after polling day to enable those overseas in the forces to vote) it took the country, Attlee included, by surprise. With 48 per cent of the vote, Labour gained a Parliamentary majority of 146 seats, the largest in post-war British history. The swing of 12 points to Labour was unprecedented (and remains a record swing at post-war elections). The vote represented more a rejection of the Conservative Party than of Winston Churchill's performance as a war-leader.

(Churchill was another astounded at the result). The forces vote required extensive organisation... Many first-time voters voted Labour as did those in the forces. Labour's success was down to its ability to persuade the voters that only it was capable of building the post-war world that the majority of the population desired. Churchill's refusal to embrace the Beveridge Report whole-heartedly cost him dearly as did the public's perception that he was a "man of war" and not a suitable peacetime leader. Conservative numbers in the House of Commons dropped from 387 to 197. The Liberal Party too fared badly. The Liberal leader, Sir Archibald Sinclair, lost his seat and the Liberal Party was reduced to just 12 seats. Several Government ministers lost their seats, including Leo Amery and the future Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Barbara Castle, Denis Healey, George Thomas and Michael Foot were all among the mass of new Labour faces entering Parliament for the first time.

History of Sir Winston Churchill - GOV.UK GOV.UK Sir Winston Churchill Conservative 1951 to 1955, 1940 to 1945 Born 30 November 1874, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire Died 1951 to 1955, 1940 to 1945 Political party Education Act 1944: raised the school leavers age to 14; introduction of the 11+. Interesting facts Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his many published works. More information including archive footage can be found at the Churchill War Rooms. Winston Churchill was an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader who led Britain to victory in the Second World War. He served as Conservative Prime Minister twice - from 1940 to 1945 (before being defeated in the 1945 general election by the Labour leader Clement Attlee) and from 1951 to 1955.

David Cameron’s Favourite Past Prime Minister Winston Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire and was of rich, aristocratic ancestry. Although achieving poor grades at school, his early fascination with militarism saw him join the Royal Cavalry in 1895. As a soldier and part-time journalist, Churchill travelled widely, including trips to Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt and South Africa. Churchill was elected as Conservative MP for Oldham in 1900, before defecting to the Liberal Party in 1904 and spending the next decade climbing the ranks of the Liberal government. He was First Lord of the Admiralty (the civil/political head of the Royal Navy) by the time of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which he created. Heavily criticised for this error, he resigned from this position and travelled to the Western Front to fight himself. The interwar years saw Churchill again ‘cross the floor’ from the Liberals, back to the Conservative Party. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924, when he controversially opted for Britain to re-join the Gold Standard.

Following the Tory electoral defeat in 1929, Churchill lost his seat and spent much of the next 11 years out of office, mainly writing and making speeches. Although he was alone in his firm opposition to Indian Independence, his warnings against the Appeasement of Nazi Germany were proven correct when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Following Neville Chamberlain ’s resignation in 1940, Churchill was chosen to succeed him as Prime Minister of an all-party coalition government. Churchill, who also adopted the self-created position of Minister for Defence, was active both in administrative and diplomatic functions in prosecuting the British war effort. Some of his most memorable speeches were given in this period, and are credited with stimulating British morale during periods of great hardship. However, Labour leader Clement Attlee ’s unexpected General Election victory in 1945 saw Churchill out of office and once again concentrating on public speaking. In his 1946 speech in the USA, the instinctive pro-American famously declared that “an iron curtain has descended across the Continent”, and warned of the continued danger from a powerful Soviet Russia.

By his re-election in 1951, Churchill was, in the words of Roy Jenkins, “gloriously unfit for office”. Ageing and increasingly unwell, he often conducted business from his bedside, and while his powerful personality and oratory ability endured, the Prime Minister’s leadership was less decisive than during the war. His second term was most notable for the Conservative Party’s acceptance of Labour’s newly created Welfare State, and Churchill’s effect on domestic policy was limited. His later attempts at decreasing the developing Cold War through personal diplomacy failed to produce significant results, and poor health forced him to resign in 1955, making way for his Foreign Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, Anthony Eden . Churchill died in 1965, and was honoured with a state funeral. Written by Ben Draper and Jak Brown, Mile End Group Help us improve GOV.UK Why Churchill Lost the 1945 Election Why Churchill Lost the 1945 Election Why Churchill Lost the 1945 Election Winston Churchill. Wikimedia Commons By Robert Wilde Updated October 09, 2016.

In Britain in 1945 an event occurred which still causes shocked questions from around the world: how did Winston Churchill, the man who had led Britain to victory in the Second World War , get voted out of office at the moment of his greatest success, and by such an apparently large margin. To many it looks like Britain was supremely ungrateful, but push deeper and you find that Churchill’s total focus on the war allowed he, and his political party, to take their eyes off the mood of the British People, allowing their pre-war reputations to weigh them down. Churchill and the Wartime Consensus In 1940 Winston Churchill was appointed Prime Minister of a Britain who appeared to be losing the Second World War against Germany. Having been in and out of favor over a long career, having been ousted from one government in World War One only to return later to great effect, and as a long standing critic of Hitler , he was an interesting choice. He created a coalition drawing on the three main parties of Britain – Labour, Liberal and Conservative – and turned all his attention on fighting the war.

continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World As he masterfully kept the coalition together, kept the military together, kept international alliances between capitalist and communist together, so he rejected pursuing party politics, refusing to aggrandize his Conservative party with the successes he and Britain began to experience. For many modern viewers, it might seem that handling the war would merit re-election, but when the war was coming to a conclusion, and when Britain divided back into party politics for the election of 1945, Churchill found himself at a disadvantage as his grasp of what people wanted, or at least what to offer them, had not developed. Churchill had passed through several political parties in his career, and had led the Conservatives in the early war in order to press his ideas for the war. Some fellow conservatives, this time of a far longer tenure, began to worry during the war that while Labour and other parties were still campaigning – attacking the Tories for appeasement, unemployment, economic disarray – Churchill was not doing the same for them, focusing instead on unity and victory. Churchill Misses Reform One area where the Labour party were having success campaigning during the war was reform.

Welfare reforms and other social measures had been developing before World War 2, but in the early years of his government Churchill had been induced into commissioning a report on how Britain could rebuild after it. The report had been chaired by William Beveridge, and would take his name. Churchill, and others, were surprised that the findings went beyond the rebuilding they’d envisioned, and presented nothing less than a social and welfare revolution. But the hopes of Britain were growing as the war seemed to be turning, and there was vast support for Beveridge’s report to be turned into a reality, a great new dawn. Social issues now dominated the part of British political life that was not taken up with the war, and Churchill and the Tories slipped back in the public’s mind. Churchill, a one-time reformer, wished to avoid anything which might fracture the coalition and didn’t back the report as much as he might; he was also dismissive of Beveridge, the man and his ideas. Churchill thus made it clear he was putting off the issue of social reform until after the elections, while Labour did as much as they could to demand it being put into practice sooner, and then promised it after the election.

Labour became associated with the reforms, and the Tories were accused of being against them. In addition, Labour’s contribution to the coalition government had earned them respect: people who had doubted them before began to believe Labour could run a reforming administration. The Date is Set, the Campaign Fought World War 2 in Europe was declared over on May 8th 1945, the coalition ended on May 23rd, and the elections were set for July 5th, although there would have to be extra time to gather the votes of the troops. Labour began a powerful campaign aimed at reform, and made sure to take their message to both those in Britain and those who had been forced abroad. Years later, soldiers reported being made aware of Labour’s goals, but not hearing anything from the Tories. In contrast, Churchill’s campaign seemed to be more about re-electing him, built around his personality and what he’d achieved in the war. For once, he got the thoughts of the British public every wrong: there was still the war in the East to finish, so Churchill seemed distracted by that..

The electorate were more open to the promises of Labour and the changes of the future, not the paranoia about socialism that the Tories tried to spread; they weren’t open to the actions of a man who had won the war, but whose party had not been forgiven for the years before it, and a man who had never seemed – up to now – entirely comfortable with peace. When he compared a Labour run Britain to the Nazis and claimed Labour would need a Gestapo, people were not impressed, and memories of the Conservative inter war failures, and even of Lloyd George’s failure to deliver post World War 1 , were strong. Labour Win The results began coming in on July 25th, and soon revealed Labour winning 393 seats, which gave them a dominant majority. Attlee was Prime Minister, they could carry out the reforms they wished, and Churchill seemed to have been defeated in a landslide, although the overall voting percentages were much closer. Labour won nearly twelve million votes, to nearly ten million Tory, and so the nation wasn’t quite as united in its mindset as it might appear.

A war weary Britain with one eye on the future had rejected a party which had been complacent and a man who had focused entirely on the nation’s good, to his own detriment. However, Churchill had been rejected before, and he had one last comeback to make. He spent the next few years reinventing himself once more, and was able to resume power as a peacetime Prime Minister in 1951. The British General Election, 1945 | History Today The British General Election, 1945 Paul Adelman explains a major turning point in modern British history. Clement Attlee meeting King George VI after Labour's 1945 election victory. There are some British general elections in the 20th century whose results seem so extraordinary and profound that the elections appear as major turning points in our political history and indeed in the life of the nation. Such was the general election of 1906, when the Liberals won an overwhelming victory and brought to an end a long period of Conservative rule. So too was the general election of 1979, when Mrs Thatcher won her remarkable victory and began a long period of personal political domination.

It is true also of the general election of 1945 when, for the first time in its history, the Labour Party won an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons. As a result the Labour government of Clement Attlee, up to 1951, was able to introduce a major programme of reforms which, for good or ill, shaped the character of British society in the early post-war period. In this article I intend to concentrate on the reasons why Labour won the general election of 1945. It must be said that despite many indications that support for Labour was growing during the Second World War most Labour leaders were pessimistic about their chances of an electoral victory in 1945. This was not only because in Winston Churchill they had a formidable opponent whose fame and prestige as a successful War Leader was then at its height, but because Labour's pre-war record had been weak and undistinguished. Before the war Labour had formed two short-lived minority governments in 1924 and 1929.

In the election of 1931 the Labour Party, divided and unpopular, had been reduced to 52 seats, compared with the enormous majority obtained by the National Government, now led by the party's old leader, Ramsay MacDonald. It is true that in the election of 1935 Labour regained many of the seats it had lost earlier and ended up with 154 MPs; but this did little to undermine the National Government's majority. In the later 1930s too there still remained important divisions within the Labour Party, especially over foreign policy and rearmament. Unlike the situation in the summer of 1914, the Labour Party was united and determined in its support for the declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939. Owing to their distrust of the Prime Minister, however, the Labour leaders refused to join Neville Chamberlain's government. The latter's poor war leadership (following the failure of the government's Norwegian Campaign) culminated in the historic debate in the House of Commons on 7-8 May 1940.

The temper of the House of Commons at this moment was summed up by the Cromwellian outburst of Leo Amery, the Tory anti-appeaser, directed against the Prime Minister: 'In the name of God, go!' In the vote that followed the ending of the debate it became clear that Chamberlain had lost the support of an important section of the Conservative Party. A coalition government was now inevitable. But when Attlee made it clear that the Labour Party would not join any government led by Chamberlain, the latter resigned as Prime Minister on 10 May. Winston Churchill then became Prime Minister with Labour support. The Context of War As a result of Labour's indispensable support for his premiership and Churchill's determination to provide a powerful government of national unity to prosecute the war, the Labour Party obtained key positions in the new War Cabinet established by the Prime Minister. Attlee soon became Deputy Prime Minister and in effect supervised the Home Front, while Herbert Morrison became Home Secretary and Ernest Bevin Minister of Labour and National Service. Arthur Greenwood, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, was also, briefly, a member of the Cabinet. Other leading Labour men, such as Hugh Dalton and Stafford Cripps, were also eventually given important posts in the new government.

On 10 May, 1940, the very day on which Churchill became Prime Minister, the Germans began their onslaught on the Low Countries, and this was soon followed by the defeat and surrender of France, and the retreat of the British forces to the coast and their embarkation at Dunkirk. These events are of key importance in understanding Labour's eventual success in the general election of 1945. '1940', writes Paul Addison in his brilliant account of wartime politics, The Road to 1945, 'was the year when the foundations of political power shifted decisively leftwards for a decade … By the autumn of 1942 a major upheaval in public opinion had taken place.' Why was this? In the first place, 'Dunkirk' and all that it symbolised made many British people blame the Conservative Party and its former leaders, Baldwin, Chamberlain and their henchmen, for the pre-war failure to rearm, for appeasement, and - by association - for unemployment and the other social evils of the period.

The reality of these latter problems was driven home to all classes of society by the conditions of life of many evacuees, largely drawn from the working-class areas of the great cities, who were sent to the country at the beginning of the war. The year 1940 also saw, secondly, the total mobilisation of the whole nation for the war effort, and this involved a new emphasis on 'planning' and 'equality'. These were ideas which were supported and promoted by important sections of the media, largely dominated by leftist writers and intellectuals such as J.B. Priestley (whose Sunday evening 'Postscripts' were heard by millions on the wireless in the summer of 1940), George Orwell and Michael Foot. An important influence here too was the lavish admiration for Russia - seemingly an example of a successful planned economy - which followed her invasion by Germany in June 1941. It was the Labour Party which gained most from this change in the public mood, especially as the party had always seen the war as a struggle not only against Germany but in favour of a better post-war Britain.

As early as 1940, at that year's Labour Party Conference, Attlee had stated: 'I am quite certain that the world that must emerge from this war must be a world attuned to our ideals'. Reconstruction After 1942 with the turn of the tide in favour of the Allies - the military successes in North Africa, the Russian counter-attack against the German invaders - it was the character of the post-war world, dubbed 'Reconstruction', that the British people were particularly concerned with. Here too Labour gained since Churchill concentrated on 'Grand Strategy' and was not very interested in Reconstruction, and the Home Front was dominated by Labour Ministers. It was Arthur Greenwood, for example, who was originally responsible for appointing Sir William Beveridge to inquire into the whole field of the social services and suggest reforms. This led eventually to the publication in December 1942 of the Beveridge Report - the key document in the Coalition government's reconstruction plans. There was enormous public enthusiasm for the principles of the Report (635,000 copies were sold during the war); but whereas the Labour Party was strongly in favour, the Conservative response was lukewarm.

The Beveridge Report was followed up in 1944 by two more key documents: the White Paper on Employment Policy, with its commitment to a 'high and stable level of employment' after the war; and the White Paper in support of a National Health Service. The year 1944 also saw the passage of the Butler Education Act, which introduced a free national school system and planned a reconstructed state secondary school system. Yet little was done immediately by the Coalition government to introduce other reforms. This increased the impatience of backbench Labour MPs and hastened their demand for an end to the Coalition as soon as possible, especially after the invasion of Europe by Allied forces in 1944. The surrender of Germany in May 1945 and the end of the war in Europe raised immediately the question of the Coalition's future. Churchill would have liked to continue the Coalition until the end of the war with Japan, though his advisers favoured an early election, hoping to cash in on Winston's wartime popularity. In the end Churchill faced Attlee, as Labour leader, with two alternatives: either an immediate election or an election at the end of the war with Japan.

Attlee personally favoured the latter course; but the Labour Party Conference, then meeting at Blackpool, suspicious of Conservative attitudes towards reform, plumped for an immediate election, and Attlee acquiesced. On 23 May 1945, Churchill therefore resigned as head of the Coalition and formed a Caretaker Government until the result of the general election, to be held on 5 July, was known. The Campaign The Conservative electoral campaign was centred almost entirely on Winston Churchill as the man who had won the war. The party's Manifesto was called Mr Churchill's Declaration of Policy to the Electorate, and it expounded the need for stability in government under Churchill's dynamic leadership. The Manifesto stressed international affairs, though it did accept the major domestic reforms agreed to by the previous Coalition government. Churchill, and his chief electoral adviser, Lord Beaverbrook, considered that attack was the best policy as far as the electoral campaign was concerned. In his first broadcast to the nation on 4 June, Churchill argued that the return of a Labour government would mean a Gestapo-like state: 'Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state'.

He also argued, owing to some indiscreet words by the Labour Party chairman, Professor Harold Laski, that the Parliamentary Labour Party would not be responsible to the electorate but would be under the thumb of the Labour Party Executive. Attlee replied firmly and sensibly to all this rhetoric. In Labour's campaign there was no emphasis on personalities. The party's Manifesto, Let Us Face the Future (mainly the work of Herbert Morrison), set out clearly and precisely the party's programme of reform if elected: the emphasis was on public ownership and improved social services. As one Labour candidate commented on the electoral campaign in his constituency: 'Abstract questions such as controls versus freedom and sophisticated stories like the Attlee-Laski incident seem terribly far away in the streets and factories here. What people want to talk about is redundancy, housing, pensions and what will happen to ex-servicemen after the war.' The electorate was thus quiet and serious: 76 per cent of the civilian electorate voted on 5 July, though out of the three million service voters only about 60 per cent did so. Churchill told the King that he expected a majority of between 30 and 50; the Labour leaders remained pessimistic.

In the event the election was a Labour landslide, as became clear when the results flowed in on the night of 25 July (the delay was due to collecting and counting the service vote). J. Chuter Ede, the successful candidate for South Shields (and later the Home Secretary in the Attlee Government) recorded his impressions in his Diary on the following day. The Results Labour ended up with 393 MPs (with a total share of the vote of 47.8 per cent); the Conservatives obtained 213 seats (with 39.8 per cent); there were 12 Liberals and 22 'others' (including two Communists). Labour thus had an overall majority in the House of Commons of 146. On 26 July Churchill resigned and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister as the head of a Labour government with, for the first time, a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Why then did Labour win the general election of 1945? As most historians now agree, the verdict turned very much on the electorate's reading of the past.

Support for Labour in 1945 represented above all a reaction against pre-war Conservatism, which in the minds of many voters, rightly or wrongly, was associated with the failure to rearm, with appeasement and unemployment. Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and company were (in Michael Foot's phrase) the 'Guilty Men'. In the eyes of most voters, even Labour ones, Churchill himself, who had been out of government in the 1930s, was dissociated from the pre-war leaders and policies of the Conservative Party which he now led. Not that this helped him very much in the election. As Harold Macmillan, who lost his seat at Stockton as Conservative candidate, commented on the election in the third volume of his Memoirs, published in 1969: 'As soon as electioneering began in earnest I knew what the result would be … I had little hope of success … The election in my view was lost before it started. Vast crowds turned out in flocks to see and applaud him [Churchill]. They wanted to thank him for what he had done for them.

But this did not mean that they wanted to entrust him and his Tory colleagues with the conduct of their lives in the years that were to follow … Nor had they forgotten or been allowed to forget the years before the war … It was not Churchill who lost the 1945 election, it was the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.' The anti-Conservative mood had been perceptible during the war itself. In 1941-3, for example, the Conservative Party lost three safe seats at by-elections to independent socialist candidates. In 1943 the Gallup Poll (largely ignored though exceptionally accurate) gave Labour a 10 per cent lead in its opinion poll, a figure it reiterated on the eve of the 1945 election. In fact there was a 12 per cent swing in the general election from the Conservatives to Labour. The other major factor at work in the election was the general feeling that Labour had proved itself as a party of government. Bevin and Morrison were popular and effective Ministers, and Attlee's reputation rose during the 1945 electoral campaign.

People believed that Labour could and would deal effectively with the domestic issues now facing the country, on which the party had concentrated and in which the electorate was most interested. Finally the stigma that Labour was 'unfit to govern', which had affected earlier elections, had been given the lie, despite Churchill's Gestapo slur. There was little confidence that the Conservative Party - where the influence of right-wingers such as Lord Beaverbrook was so important - would carry out the reforms on which the Coalition Government had agreed. Nor was there any real anti-Conservative alternative to the Labour Party in 1945. The Liberals, with only 306 candidates in the field, had no possible chance of forming a government. In fact, with only 12 MPs in the House of Commons after 1945, the Liberals barely survived as a viable political party. Some historians have suggested that these major political reasons for Labour's victory in 1945 are a reflection of deeper social and intellectual trends within British society during the war, which helped to produce a profound change in ideas.

Robert Blake writes that the ultimate cause of Labour's victory was 'the conversion of the opinion-formers to collectivism and Keynesianism which dominated British politics for a quarter of a century after the end of the war'. The war brought about more support for collectivism, planning and egalitarianism. These were ideals which obviously appealed to the industrial working classes, but were now also accepted by important sections of the middle classes. And this is reflected in the voting patterns in 1945. For in the election of that year, Labour won a majority of seats (139 Labour to 100 Conservative) in southern England, the heartland of Conservative power, something which had never happened before, and which was not to be seen again until the general election of 1997. It was Labour's support among all classes that helped to produce its great victory in the general election of 1945. Further Reading: Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (Cape, 1985) Paul Adelman, The Rise of the Labour Party (3rd edition, Longman, 1996) R.B.

McCallum and Alison Readman, The British General Election of 1945 (OUP, 1947) Henry Pelling, 'The 1945 General Election Reconsidered', Historical Journal, vol 23, (1980) Paul Adelman was previously Reader in History at Kingston University. His books include, Britain: Domestic Politics, 1939-64 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1994). Winston Churchill - History Learning Site Winston Churchill Citation: C N Trueman "Winston Churchill" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 26 May 2015. 16 Aug 2016. Winston Churchill lead Great Britain for most of World War Two and Churchill’s ‘bulldog’ spirit seemed to summarise the mood of the British people even during the bad times, such as Dunkirk , and the inspirational victories, such as the Battle of Britain . Winston Churchill was born in 1874 into a wealthy and famous family. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill and he was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough.

Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He was schooled at Harrow where it is said that he only put his name on the exam entrance paper to get in. Churchill went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and gained a commission in the Fourth Hussars. He saw some military action and took part in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. During the Boer War, he was a war correspondent. Winston Churchill was captured, held a prisoner, escaped and took part in the relief of Ladysmith. After this, Winston Churchill went into politics. He had a chequered career up to World War Two and was seen as something of a maverick. In 1900, he was elected Conservative MP for Oldham but in 1904, he left the Conservative Party and joined the Liberal Party, which, he believed, better represented his economic views on free trade. From 1906 to 1908, he was a Liberal MP for northwest Manchester and from 1908 to 1922, he was MP for Dundee.

Between 1908 and 1910, Winston Churchill held a cabinet post when Herbert Asquith, leader of the Liberal Party, appointed him President of the Board of Trade. Winston Churchill’s major achievement in this post was to establish labour exchanges. In 1910, he was promoted to Home Secretary. As Home Secretary, Winston Churchill used troops to maintain law and order during a miners strike in South Wales. He also used a detachment of Scots Guards to assist police during a house siege in Sidney Street in East London in January 1911. Whilst such actions may have marked him down as a man who would do his utmost to maintain law and order, there were those who criticised his use of the military for issues that the police usually dealt with. From October 1911 to May 1915, Winston Churchill was made First Lord of the Admiralty. In this post, he did a great deal to ensure that the navy was in a state to fight a war. Winston Churchill put a strong emphasis on modernisation and he was an early supporter of using planes in combat.

However, Churchill was to pay the price for the bloody failure of the Dardanelles campaign in 1915 – it was Winston Churchill who proposed the expedition to the War Council and, as a result, he was held responsible for its failure. He was dismissed from his post at the Admiralty and he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Having been Home Secretary and First Lord at the Admiralty, this was seen by many, including Winston Churchill, to be a demotion and he left the post after just six months. Churchill rejoined the army. Here he commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front until May 1916. However, Winston Churchill quickly returned to government. In 1917 he was appointed Minister for Munitions – a post he held until 1918. In 1919, Winston Churchill was appointed Minister for War and Air – a post he held until 1920. In 1921, he was appointed Colonial Secretary – a post he held until he lost his seat for Dundee in the 1922 election.

After his electoral defeat in 1922, Winston Churchill left the Liberal Party and became the MP for Epping in 1924 standing as a ‘constitutional anti-socialist’. Stanley Baldwin, leader of the Conservative Party, appointed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer (a post he held from 1924 to 1929) and Winston Churchill officially rejoined the Conservative Party in 1925. Churchill remained outside of government from 1929 to 1939 . He had spoken out against the government’s policy towards India and as Hitler became more and more aggressive in Europe, Winston Churchill became more and more concerned about the stance taken by the then leader of the government, Neville Chamberlain . From 1938 to the outbreak of war in September 1939, Churchill urged the government to be more pro-active against Hitler , including for an early call for conscription. On September 3rd, 1939 , Winston Churchill was back in the government when Chamberlain appointed him First Lord of the Admiralty.

The seeming failure of the government, including the military failure in Norway in 1940, meant that criticism of Chamberlain became more and more robust. On May 10th, 1940 , Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and during the war, he was the most dominant figure in British politics – a role that received huge praise once the war was over. To many people in Britain, Churchill’s stand against Nazism and all it stood for, summarised why the war was being fought. His speeches have become part of legend – be it ‘fighting on the beaches’ or his salute to the men from Fighter Command who took on the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain : “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” Churchill also remained in London during the Blitz and regularly visited areas bombed out by the Luftwaffe. To the people of London, he was one of them and a man who could have removed himself from the dangers of German bombers, but refused to – staying in bombed out London along with those who suffered. Churchill also took a role in military issues.

It was he who was the political force behind the creation of commando units that would be sent in to disrupt the German military. He was also scathing about military defeats, calling the defeat at Tobruk a “disgrace”. During the war, Winston Churchill also held a number of meetings with other wartime leaders . He met F D Roosevelt , the American president, on nine occasions between 1941 and 1945; he had five meetings with the Russian leader Stalin between 1942 and 1945 . “If Hitler invaded Hell I would at least make a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” “Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid.”“The Russian danger is our danger…..just as the cause of any Russian fighting for his hearth and home is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.”“We have but one aim and one irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us – nothing.

We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang.” For all his popularity as a war leader, Winston Churchill lost the 1945 general election to Labour’s Clement Atlee. His wife told him that it might be a ‘blessing in disguise’. Winston Churchill is said to have replied that it was ‘very well disguised’. In October 1951, he became Prime Minister once again. However, Churchill had suffered a stroke in August 1949 that had been kept secret from the public and his health was now a concern. Aged 77 in 1951, Winston Churchill was not in a fit enough state to involve himself in day-to-day politics as required from a Prime Minister. In April 1953, he was made a Knight of the Garter and he resigned from politics in 1955. However, few people could match his international status. Having won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, he became an honorary American citizen in 1963 – an honour confirmed by Congress.

Winston Churchill died in 1965 and was buried less than one mile from where he was born at Blenheim Palace. For many people, his stubborn refusal to admit defeat or a lost cause during World War Two has given him a reputation few other politicians have ever achieved. BBC ON THIS DAY | 26 | 1945: Churchill loses general election Search ON THIS DAY by date About This Site | Text Only 1945: Churchill loses general election Clement Attlee has been elected Britain's new prime minister after Labour won a sweeping victory in the general election. The outgoing prime minister and great wartime leader Winston Churchill tendered his resignation immediately. The landslide victory comes as a major shock to the Conservatives following Mr Churchill's hugely successful term as Britain's war-time coalition leader, during which he mobilised and inspired courage in an entire nation. People voted for Attlee, in spite of admiring Churchilll as a hero Out of 627 seats Labour increased its seats from 164 to 393, giving the party its first independent majority of 159 seats over all other parties. The Conservatives and their allies secured 213 seats, the Liberals 10 and other parties 11.

Following the announcement of the results this afternoon, Mr Churchill, who has held the positions of Prime Minister, First Lord of the Admiralty and Minister of Defence continuously since May 10, 1940, went to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation. Mr Attlee, 62, was welcomed by the King shortly afterwards and asked to form a new Government. Throughout the election campaign Mr Churchill had appealed to the country to give his new National Government - formed after the dissolution of the Coalition government in May - a good majority. But the appeal was rejected by the people of Britain, largely, it is thought, because they believed Labour's promises to implement the Beveridge Report and its plans for creating a welfare state. In a statement issued from 10 Downing Street tonight Mr Churchill expressed his "profound gratitude for the unflinching, unswerving support" given to him by the people of Britain during the war years. At a news conference this evening, Mr Attlee promised a new world order and an economic policy to raise the standards of life for people all over the world.

He said: "We are facing a new era and I believe that the voting at this election has shown that the people of Britain are facing that new era with the same courage as they faced the long years of war." The outgoing prime minister had broken off meetings with the leaders of America and Russia in Potsdam on Wednesday (July 25) to return to Britain for the election results. It was announced tonight that a proclamation giving Japan an ultimatum to surrender had been signed by Mr Churchill before his departure. The document, also signed by American President Harry Truman and General Chiang Kai-shek of China, called for the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces or the prospect of "prompt and utter destruction." The new prime minister, Mr Attlee, is expected to return to the three-Power conference in Berlin to resume diplomatic talks soon.

Question: Churchill went to the country in the summer of 1945 but was defeated by which Labour leader?
Answer: Clement Atlee