0. Introduction
With the results of the 1976 General Election still resounding across the country ending 31 continuous years of Labour government, there has been much recall of the spirit of 1945 and the monumental victory of Clement Attlee which brought Labour into power for such a lengthy period. However, the authors of this monograph consider not the original landslide 1945 to be the pivotal election; nor 1959 where Anthony Wedgwood Benn's carefully produced television performances turned what looked like an inevitable defeat into an another very slightly increased majority; or even the much discussed 1968 near-debacle after the Sterling Crisis and the resignation of Chancellor Harold Wilson. To us the pivotal election was 1950 because whichever party won the 1950 election was bound to benefit from the steady growth of the economy throughout the rest of the 1950's and the early 1960's.
1950 also set one record which will probably never be surpassed, a turnout of just under 85% of the electorate. It was seen as being a close election, with Sir Winston Churchill's Conservatives on the rebound as part of the inevitable affects of five years of enforced Labour austerity after the peace in Europe. There was a fear within the Labour party that they would lose or be returned with an unworkably small majority, leaving it at the mercy of the fates as to when the next election would be.
Obviously, whilst there was some very basic opinion polling for the 1950 election, it was not widely used by the political parties, nor did it feature greatly in the newspapers. The victory of President Truman in 1948 despite the predictions had left a negative impression of polling on the political parties. Feedback was gained from the extensive team of agents in the field for each party and was generally giving the impression of being a close race. Most of the marginal seats were known quantities, but the boundary changes and in some cases local issues affecting the campaign did throw up some surprises.
It is difficult to tell what actually tipped the scales in favour of the slender but workable Labour majority, at the time much credence was given to the increased number of Liberal candidates. Over 530 Liberals stood in the election - up from 309 at the 1945 election and whilst the party had no great success, it was felt that the Liberals impacted the Conservative vote to a greater extent than the Labour vote. Whilst they only polled just over 13% in the end, the doyen of psephologists, Dr Butler, believes their improved performance may have cost the Conservatives up to 15 seats.
Others look at the results of the Boundary Commission, whilst the 1945 election had seen Labour triumph in places in had never even considered such as Taunton or Spelithorne, a large number of seats had been won in the cities which had now been abolished due to massive depopulation since 1918. The reduction in Southwark's seats from six to three, took three seats away from Labour and there were similar losses in the rest of London and the great provincial cities. Similarly, the larger provincial and suburban seats some of which had swollen to over 100,000 voters split usually from one solidly Conservative seat to two solidly Conservative seats. The boundaries may have looked better for the Conservatives than they actually were, leading to complacency in seats like Spelthorne, Bromsgrove and Bexley where the Conservative campaign was felt to be weak. The boundaries did not end up being changed substantially again until the 1976 election which led to a growing bias in favour of Labour.
However, we contend that those three experimental Television Party Political Broadcasts were actually what may have finally sent the election Mr Attlee's way. It had been touch or go whether to do them, the Conservatives were certainly strongly against the idea, but with no BBC reporting of the campaign at all, on either television or radio, because of a very legalistic interpretation of the Representation of the People Act 1948, a single broadcast for each party was finally decided upon. Whilst the television audience was not large in 1950, television only became popular after the Coronation in 1953, it was available to an influential group of people. The broadcasts were sufficiently novel to mean that small broadcast watching parties were organised, therefore giving them a wider circulation than had been previously imagined.
The first broadcast was by the Conservatives, did not feature Winston Churchill, which was widely talked about at the time. The decision had been Mr Churchill's who did not like television and the broadcast was done very competently in an staged interview format by Anthony Eden, however, the talk was that Churchill had been too ill to perform. The Labour broadcast did feature Mr Attlee, but only in a very short shot to camera at the end, most of it featured Hartley Shawcross and Christopher Mayhew again in an interview format - interestingly using the same figures as Mr Eden but demonstrating a different conclusion to them. This counter-attack was again a big talking point during the campaign. The final broadcast was by the Liberals, they had originally planned a speech read by the octogenarian Lord Samuel, but the trial run of it was a disaster and it was replaced by a shorter punchy piece featuring Liberal candidates Mark Bonham-Carter and Jo Grimond interviewing "ordinary people" in their homes.
The reaction to the broadcasts according to various mass observation exercises were three-fold, there was a great deal of concern about why Mr Churchill had not appeared in the broadcasts, there was a considerable debate over whether the Conservatives or Labour were telling the truth of the matter of the economic statistics and the Liberal party gained a lot more public attention than they would have normally expected during the campaign.
With the results of the 1976 General Election still resounding across the country ending 31 continuous years of Labour government, there has been much recall of the spirit of 1945 and the monumental victory of Clement Attlee which brought Labour into power for such a lengthy period. However, the authors of this monograph consider not the original landslide 1945 to be the pivotal election; nor 1959 where Anthony Wedgwood Benn's carefully produced television performances turned what looked like an inevitable defeat into an another very slightly increased majority; or even the much discussed 1968 near-debacle after the Sterling Crisis and the resignation of Chancellor Harold Wilson. To us the pivotal election was 1950 because whichever party won the 1950 election was bound to benefit from the steady growth of the economy throughout the rest of the 1950's and the early 1960's.
1950 also set one record which will probably never be surpassed, a turnout of just under 85% of the electorate. It was seen as being a close election, with Sir Winston Churchill's Conservatives on the rebound as part of the inevitable affects of five years of enforced Labour austerity after the peace in Europe. There was a fear within the Labour party that they would lose or be returned with an unworkably small majority, leaving it at the mercy of the fates as to when the next election would be.
Obviously, whilst there was some very basic opinion polling for the 1950 election, it was not widely used by the political parties, nor did it feature greatly in the newspapers. The victory of President Truman in 1948 despite the predictions had left a negative impression of polling on the political parties. Feedback was gained from the extensive team of agents in the field for each party and was generally giving the impression of being a close race. Most of the marginal seats were known quantities, but the boundary changes and in some cases local issues affecting the campaign did throw up some surprises.
It is difficult to tell what actually tipped the scales in favour of the slender but workable Labour majority, at the time much credence was given to the increased number of Liberal candidates. Over 530 Liberals stood in the election - up from 309 at the 1945 election and whilst the party had no great success, it was felt that the Liberals impacted the Conservative vote to a greater extent than the Labour vote. Whilst they only polled just over 13% in the end, the doyen of psephologists, Dr Butler, believes their improved performance may have cost the Conservatives up to 15 seats.
Others look at the results of the Boundary Commission, whilst the 1945 election had seen Labour triumph in places in had never even considered such as Taunton or Spelithorne, a large number of seats had been won in the cities which had now been abolished due to massive depopulation since 1918. The reduction in Southwark's seats from six to three, took three seats away from Labour and there were similar losses in the rest of London and the great provincial cities. Similarly, the larger provincial and suburban seats some of which had swollen to over 100,000 voters split usually from one solidly Conservative seat to two solidly Conservative seats. The boundaries may have looked better for the Conservatives than they actually were, leading to complacency in seats like Spelthorne, Bromsgrove and Bexley where the Conservative campaign was felt to be weak. The boundaries did not end up being changed substantially again until the 1976 election which led to a growing bias in favour of Labour.
However, we contend that those three experimental Television Party Political Broadcasts were actually what may have finally sent the election Mr Attlee's way. It had been touch or go whether to do them, the Conservatives were certainly strongly against the idea, but with no BBC reporting of the campaign at all, on either television or radio, because of a very legalistic interpretation of the Representation of the People Act 1948, a single broadcast for each party was finally decided upon. Whilst the television audience was not large in 1950, television only became popular after the Coronation in 1953, it was available to an influential group of people. The broadcasts were sufficiently novel to mean that small broadcast watching parties were organised, therefore giving them a wider circulation than had been previously imagined.
The first broadcast was by the Conservatives, did not feature Winston Churchill, which was widely talked about at the time. The decision had been Mr Churchill's who did not like television and the broadcast was done very competently in an staged interview format by Anthony Eden, however, the talk was that Churchill had been too ill to perform. The Labour broadcast did feature Mr Attlee, but only in a very short shot to camera at the end, most of it featured Hartley Shawcross and Christopher Mayhew again in an interview format - interestingly using the same figures as Mr Eden but demonstrating a different conclusion to them. This counter-attack was again a big talking point during the campaign. The final broadcast was by the Liberals, they had originally planned a speech read by the octogenarian Lord Samuel, but the trial run of it was a disaster and it was replaced by a shorter punchy piece featuring Liberal candidates Mark Bonham-Carter and Jo Grimond interviewing "ordinary people" in their homes.
The reaction to the broadcasts according to various mass observation exercises were three-fold, there was a great deal of concern about why Mr Churchill had not appeared in the broadcasts, there was a considerable debate over whether the Conservatives or Labour were telling the truth of the matter of the economic statistics and the Liberal party gained a lot more public attention than they would have normally expected during the campaign.