Attlee doesn't call an election in 1951

cumbria

Banned
Attlee had decided to call the election after the King's concerns over leaving the country to go on his Commonwealth tour in 1952 with a government that had such a slim majority.

What if he refused the Kings advice?

What would be Britains future?
 

cumbria

Banned
Here are some of the Labour party plans of the time that did not get enacted.

The private sugar monopoly was buttressed by Conservative legislation which is due to expire early in the next Parliament. We propose that beet sugar manufacture and sugar refining shall be transferred to national ownership for the benefit of the consumer. Fair compensation will be paid in this as in the other cases where it is proposed that an industry should be transferred from private to public ownership.

The cement industry is controlled by a tightly organised private monopoly which allows high profits to be made. Labour will convert this essential industry to public ownership.

One industry which will be carefully examined is the chemical industry. If necessary to assure vital national interests, Labour will transfer to public ownership any appropriate sections of this vital industry.
 

cumbria

Banned
Fruit and Vegetables. More wholesale and retail markets under municipal or other public ownership, together with improved storage facilities, will reduce the present waste in marketing.
Cold Stores. The development of cold storage, an essential service in food distribution, will be effected through public ownership.
Meat Trade. The nation needs larger supplies of better quality meat. Since the Ministry of Food took over the importing and wholesaling of meat ten years ago, the job has been done efficiently and economically. The present system of distribution should be come a permanent public service.
Public Buying. Labour proposes to extend buying by public bodies so that well-made goods can be supplied to the housewife through the ordinary distributors at reasonable prices. This will benefit the public and the retailers, and also maintain the supply of Utility goods.
Retailing. Competition among private retailers will be encouraged. Subject only to the needs of town planning, any citizen should be able to open a shop. Anti-social private agreements to keep prices too high will be dealt with.
Value for Money. An independent Consumer Advice Centre will be set up to test and report on the various consumer goods on the market. Good manufacturers will be protected and unscrupulous advertising exposed.
 
I wonder how long Churchill can hang on for. If he's still opposition leader and Attlees socialist reforms bring the success they promised he might be able to increase his majority in 1955.
 

cumbria

Banned
I think had Labour not held the election they would have won again in 1955 and 1959 as long as the Conservatives have not played the race card.
We would have then seen a Britain with more nationalised industry than any country outside the communist world.
 
Labour had a majority of 5 over all other parties and a majority of 17 over the Tories. The Conservatives basically forced Labour into an election with all night-sittings, constant votes of confidence and the ever-present fear that any one division could go the way of the Opposition and bring the government down - it exhausted and wore out the Attlee administration. Not to mention potential by-election losses Key ministers were falling ill or dying. The Government couldn't have taken an awful lot more of this and it would have almost certainly fallen within the next year or two - and the early fifties were not a particularly healthy period for the British economy.
 

cumbria

Banned
Labour had a majority of 5 over all other parties and a majority of 17 over the Tories. The Conservatives basically forced Labour into an election with all night-sittings, constant votes of confidence and the ever-present fear that any one division could go the way of the Opposition and bring the government down - it exhausted and wore out the Attlee administration. Not to mention potential by-election losses Key ministers were falling ill or dying. The Government couldn't have taken an awful lot more of this and it would have almost certainly fallen within the next year or two - and the early fifties were not a particularly healthy period for the British economy.

If Labour could have held on a few more years as rationing ended and things picked up I think they could have gone on.
Ive checked the by-election records of the time and few seats changed hands.
 
But they couldn't have lasted a few more years. That's the point. The government had run out of steam and was almost literally dying on its feet. Attlee didn't just ask for a dissolution because the King wanted one, he did so because the Labour Party had had enough and because the Gaitskellite/Bevanite split was just beginning to come to fruition. For most Labour MPs the election came as a relief.
 

cumbria

Banned
But they couldn't have lasted a few more years. That's the point. The government had run out of steam and was almost literally dying on its feet. Attlee didn't just ask for a dissolution because the King wanted one, he did so because the Labour Party had had enough and because the Gaitskellite/Bevanite split was just beginning to come to fruition. For most Labour MPs the election came as a relief.

The Labour government had been in power 18 months since the 1950 election.
During this time it had not lost a single by-election.
The party also had plans for further nationalisation and healthcare reforms (in particular when the war in Korea was no longer a drain).
The longer the Labour party held on would allow the Liberal party to build up its war chest to fight the majority of seats instead of around a 100 as in 1950.
This would likely mean the Liberals would take votes from the Conservative party.
 
Yes, and the longer it held out the more likely it was that the Opposition would defeat the Government in the Commons and force an election. The two sides were fighting a war of attrition and the Government was losing. Also the feeling was that the longer Labour held out, the more likely it was that the Tories would replace Churchill with Eden, who was seen as more of an electoral asset for the party.

Attlee staggering through without an election isn't ASB, but it is unlikely. At most the government will survive for a few years, going to full term is improbable given the state of the economy in the early 50s and the developing warfare within the Labour Party between the right and left. Try and imagine John Major winning the election in 1992 with a majority of 5 and managing to keep going until 1997. It wouldn't happen.
 

cumbria

Banned
Yes, and the longer it held out the more likely it was that the Opposition would defeat the Government in the Commons and force an election. The two sides were fighting a war of attrition and the Government was losing. Also the feeling was that the longer Labour held out, the more likely it was that the Tories would replace Churchill with Eden, who was seen as more of an electoral asset for the party.

Attlee staggering through without an election isn't ASB, but it is unlikely. At most the government will survive for a few years, going to full term is improbable given the state of the economy in the early 50s and the developing warfare within the Labour Party between the right and left. Try and imagine John Major winning the election in 1992 with a majority of 5 and managing to keep going until 1997. It wouldn't happen.

The Labour government of the time was far more popular than Majors.
Between 1950-55 Labour did not lose one single seat in a by-election.
 
The Labour government of the time was far more popular than Majors.
Between 1950-55 Labour did not lose one single seat in a by-election.

But for most of that time they were in opposition and benefitted from protest votes in by-elections. It's extremely rare for a governing party to gain a seat in a by-election, IIRC the last time it happened was Mitcham and Morden in June 1982 and that was down to some freak circumstances. The Labour incumbent had defected to the SDP and stood down to seek a fresh mandate as an SDP candidate, this split the left wing vote allowing the Tories, aided by the Falklands Factor, to come through and win the seat.

Labour's 1951 manifesto sounds like something Hugo Chavez would do today!
 
Labour's 1951 manifesto sounds like something Hugo Chavez would do today!

Except, you know, Labour wasn't hell bent on destroying free speech and silencing the opposition. There's a distinct difference between democratic socialism and authoritarian populism.
 
I think that provided he could hold his party together until after the end of the Korean War, Attlee would win a subsequent election although with a slender although bigger majority. The relaxtion of wartime controls would have been slower i.e rationing and there would not have been as much affluence in the fifties. We may have had a future a bit like Nevil Shute's In the Wet. Churchill would have been eased out an replaced by Eden. Suez? Would Suez have been the downfall of the government for not launching an invasion or would they have negotiated an agreement with Nasser denounced by Eden but leaving Britain rather better off than we were?
 
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