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| The election which changed the
course of British history |
The General election of 1945 marked a watershed
in British politics and a turning point in the history of the Labour
Party, writes Illytd Harrington
A New Dawn by Norman Howard
Politics 2005, £18.99
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Clement Attlee receives warm applause at Labour Party headquarters
when it became clear Labour had won the election
A Labour Party poster used in the 1945 campaign which is deliberately
linked to the service vote |
IN a moment of revolutionary fervour, the poet William Wordsworth
wrote: “Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, But to be young
was very
heaven”
His passion had been fired by the French Revolution of 1789
– sadly, his rapture, like so many others, was short-lived.
On the morning of May 2, 1997 as dawn broke, Tony Blair hand in
hand with Cherie, told an ecstatic crowd outside County Hall: “There
is work to be done is there not?” At the end of 2005, this
most parsonic of Prime Ministers leads a fractured party and a government
hedging their individual bets with his obvious successor.
All a far cry from those exultant days of July 1945 when Labour
swept to power pushing aside the Tory Party.
Churchill, who cast himself as a national saviour, won the acclamation
of vast crowds on his nationwide election tour, but not their votes.
In desperation, on June 4 1945, he warned that a Labour government
would introduce a political police force. A Gestapo, not very likely
under the moderate leadership of Labour’s leader Major Clement
Atlee MC.
Norman Howard captures the enthusiasm and excitement not just of
the armed forces yearning for a better life but the men women even
children that’s aspirations were laid out in Labour’s
manifesto, “Let us face the future” – A document
which would cause collective nervous breakdown within Labour’s
current ruling elite.
The Tory party simply published ‘Churchill’s declaration
of policy to the electors’ – a significant title. The
Liberals seemed on the way to terminal decline. Incidentally, someone
forgot to put Churchill’s name on the electoral register.
Hard to understand in these days of political indifference and cynicism,
how profound is the significance of political education. The Beveridge
report was the template of the Welfare State, a clarion call to
attack the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and
idleness. It postulated the NHS, full employment and family allowances.
Michael Foot, then editor of the Standard, scooped it. Whitehall
tried to bury it. Of Course, the Daily Telegraph said it was “Half
way down the road to Moscow.
Perhaps Professor Alan Bullock summed up Labour’s sensational
victory best. He said: “the war has stirred up a conservative
nation into one of its rare bouts of radicalism.”
Come 1951, Labour in an 82 per cent turnout increased its votes
from 12 to 14 million. But won only 295 seats. The Tories with slightly
less, captured 321.
Churchill, the old war-horse, was back in Number 10, due to the
vagaries of our election system. It had been a momentous six years.
There are a couple of good human insights. One is where Churchill
is tasting defeat in 1945. His wife, Clementine, consoles him. “It
may well be a blessing in disguise,” she said His wit seldom
fails “At the moment, it seems effectively disguised,”
he sighed.
And can anyone match the Foot family’s record in 1945? The
patriarch Isaac fought Tavistock as a Liberal, as did his two sons
John in Bodmin and Dingle at Dundee, but only Michael got elected
for Labour in Devonport. What a time that was. I remember it with
a benign glow. |
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