Victory at Home: The 1945 General Election
In September 1944, just as news arrived that the Allies had liberated Paris and were advancing through the South of France, a young colonel was sitting at a desk in Delhi serving as the assistant director of military intelligence in British India when a surprising note passed across his desk. The British government had authorised a secret delegation of leading Tories to travel to India with instructions to meet with the highest-ranking British officials within British India, and with representatives of the Indian independence movements, to ascertain what the postwar position of British India would be. Chief among these Tories was the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Thomas Lionel Dugdale. The young colonel would be tasked with briefing Mr. Dugdale on the military situation in British India when he arrived in Delhi in just five days’ time.
Mr. Dugdale arrived and greeted the young intelligence warmly, “My dear Colonel Powell, what have you to tell me?” The young intelligence officer treated the Chairman with the utmost respect. However, the conversation soon drifted away from the official business for which he had been tasked. Accustomed to sitting in a damp and dark office in London, Mr. Dugdale steered the conversation towards politics. Although immensely courteous and tactful, the young Colonel Enoch Powell was not one to hold his tongue, and proceeded to dress down the Chairman on virtually every Tory policy since 1935.
Although it could have been with all reason considered relatively uneventful, this meeting was to change the course of British history. Two days later, the young colonel found himself again in a meeting with Mr. Dugdale, this time accompanied by Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command. An opportunity had arisen for Mr. Powell to take his services back to London, his commanding officer said, where he “would best serve his country.” Conveniently, he would also be able to serve the Conservative Party, if he so desired. Mr. Powell accepted the invitation, and left India for London on 1 October 1944.
Initially a researcher within the Conservative Research Department advising on Indian affairs, and still harbouring an ambition to serve as Viceroy of India, Enoch Powell began to find himself noticed for his thoughts on returning British soldiers from the war. His cornerstone idea was a housing policy which differed markedly from the Labour proposal of a massive State building programme.
His proposal included:
- A new Servicemen’s Home Lending Authority, which would guarantee low-cost home mortgages for all returning British servicemen from the war, with no deposit required.
- A new National Housing Authority, which would insure home mortgages for those who had served on the British home front during the war, publish guidelines for property developers, work with private developers to plan “New Towns” across the UK, and establish planning regulations across the whole of the United Kingdom to ensure a speedy building of homes
- Within the National Housing Authority, a Servicemen’s Temporary Housing Authority, which would pay for rent or lodging expenses, for up to one year, for returning British servicemen
Enoch’s plan met with the enthusiastic approval of the Conservative Party, not least his new friend Mr. Dugdale, just as it was becoming increasingly clear that the wartime coalition would not be continued after the war, and the prospect of a general election before the war had entirely finished became a much greater possibility. This willingness to deviate from the specific recommendations of the Beveridge Report, but not necessarily the goals that had been embraced by Prime Minister Churchill on housing led a massive rethink in what Tory Party policy should be in this election.
Partially inspired by the bold vision Enoch had created, in forging an alternative to the political vision of the Labour Party for a centrally planned economy following the end of the war, the Conservative Party began to develop more distinct policies on many areas:
- A National Servicemen’s Act:
- Guaranteeing unemployment benefit equal to 100% of the average weekly wage up to 1 year following the date the serviceman was demobilised
- Granting returning servicemen the full cost of tuition for any course of study to which they were accepted by any university or trade school, plus a stipend to live on
- Establishing a Servicemen’s Business Loan Authority to grant low-cost loans to returning servicemen to establish new businesses
- A National Railways Act, which would leave the railways in private hands, but would establish a National Railways Authority to guarantee loans to the railways to expand services
- A new National Highways Act which would radically increase spending on road infrastructure within the UK
- An Industrial Adjustment Act, which would provide grants to businesses to rebuild property damaged or destroyed during the war, and underwrite low-cost loans to transition from wartime production
- A National Education Act, which would:
- Establish two new degree-granting universities from the University Colleges in Nottingham and Southampton
- Create four new “Technical Colleges” (in Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, and London) which would grant technical certifications
- Establish a new means-tested bursary system
In February 1945, a new public opinion poll for the evermore-likely upcoming general election was released which was initially barely noticed within the Conservative Research Department. The poll showed the Labour Party on course for a massive win in the upcoming general election. However, when young Enoch Powell saw this poll, he identified the grave risk that it posed not only to continued leadership by Churchill and the Tories, but to the implementation of his own carefully crafted policy proposals. He urged Dugdale to immediately begin to build a ground campaign out in the country to counter what had clearly been an incredibly successful campaign by Labour.
On 23 March 1945, Allied troops crossed the Rhine and it became abundantly clear that the war in Europe was rapidly drawing to a close. Although the coalition was still technically in force, the ground campaign suggested by Enoch, manned, uniquely, primarily by the housewives of servicemen, got well underway and Mr. Powell’s proposals became the crux of what was quickly becoming an unofficial election manifesto. Given the dual focus on servicemen and housing in the policy platform now being put forward in this quasi-manifesto, it was frequently summed up as a campaign for “Homes for Heroes”.
In May 1945, as Victory in Europe was declared by a triumphant Winston Churchill and the nation celebrated, the new ground campaign received a further boost as any remaining doubt was removed that a general election would very soon be held and Winston Churchill prepared to lead the Conservative Party into the election. However, this soon brought controversy within the highest echelons of the Tory leadership. Churchill remained completely focused on both the war and foreign affairs and was convinced that the British people would share his concerns. Recalling the dire warnings of Mr. Powell, his newfound friend Thomas Dugdale, Chairman of the Tory Party, requested a dinner with the Prime Minister to discuss electoral strategy. He brought Mr. Powell with him to Chequers on the night of 27 May.
Telling both Mr. Dugdale and Mr. Powell of his intention to address the nation on 4 June, he said he intended to draw a comparison between the horrors of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule even now still being uncovered and the Labour manifesto. Horrified, Mr. Powell implored the Prime Minister to reconsider this and to instead focus on domestic policies. The servicemen did not want to hear the Prime Minister attack his erstwhile government partners for seeking to provide them a better life, and instead wanted to the Prime Minister’s own plans. Mr. Dugdale provided the Prime Minister with a draft manifesto, the three discussed potential talking points to draw from it for his upcoming speech. Impressed with Mr. Powell’s apparent deep connection to the “man at the front” but still unconvinced, the Prime Minister promised to reflect upon these points in the coming days.
On 4 June, Winston Churchill, the man who had shepherded Britain through its darkest hour, addressed the British people with the following speech:
“The British nation have performed yet another of the great feats which have long characterised our people. We have, with the help of our brothers in the Empire, in the United States of America, and across the whole of the European continent, defeated the most pernicious force we have ever seen. It has taken much sacrifice. It has taken much toil.
The Socialists are fighting in this campaign, no doubt in good faith, with proposals which they say will ensure that the British people who have made this possible will enjoy the fruits of this victory. I tell you that they will not. They will, in trying to secure the fruits of this victory, poison the roots of the tree that provides the fruits.
Now, I tell you, I will not suggest that my party has an unblemished record. But I will promise you that under my leadership our proposals are the right ones. We shall ensure that the servicemen who won us this Victory Abroad shall also find Victory at Home. We shall fight this battle with as much vigour as we fought abroad. We shall ensure that our servicemen are able to live like free men, with homes to call their own, taking an education, or starting a business, with all the assistance that His Majesty’s Government can possibly provide.
We have won Victory in Europe. I promise you, from the bottom of my heart, we will win Victory in Britain, with the right policies.”
Nearly exactly one month later, on 5 July 1945, the British people returned Mr. Churchill, the wartime hero, the man who many credited with nearly singlehandedly saving democracy in Europe, to power, albeit with a much-reduced majority.
