2. The Rest of the Results
The majority of seats declared on the Friday, up and down the country, teams of people assembled in Town Halls to spend the morning counting. There was little media coverage, there was no special programme on the Home Service and the Television remained off-air until lunchtime when the nearly finalised result of the election was covered on the One O'Clock News. The evening newspapers were the best source of results, although most of them covered their local cities in their first edition.
There were a few hopes in Conservative Central Office that there might be some form of miracle on the Friday and that the suburbs and the market towns which had voted Labour in 1945 might swing strongly back to the Conservatives and save the day. No-one had done more than very rough estimates on the new seats, the days of carefully calculated predictions would have to wait for the 1976 election, although there were "calls" by experienced agents.
Also Labour were undoubtedly losing seats, the boundary changes had probably removed 30 seats from them and Labour MP's were often standing in hopeless successor seats which were frequently misreported by local newspapers as a Conservative gain.
However, the overnight pattern lay against them, Labour had held on to every seat in London, in Birmingham they had 9 out of 13 despite their hopes for the Yardley, Northfield and Erdington divisions. In Glasgow, Labour won the Govan and Scotstoun divisions against the odds, giving them 10 out of the 15 seats in the Second City of the Empire. Only two of the great cities produced a majority of seats for the Conservatives - Edinburgh which returned 4 out of 7 and Liverpool which returned 5 out of 9 despite a strong campaign in Liverpool, Kirkdale.
However, the suburbs and the market towns did not yield the results that the Conservatives had hoped for, Spelthorne was retained by Labour, then Bedford and Peterborough. However, the real shocks were to come from the West Country, whilst the great 1945 surprise of Taunton was regained by the Conservatives due to the addition of a large block of hunting country, it was only by 470 votes on a 91% turnout. The agents of both parties had been predicting a 3,000 Conservative lead. But Taunton wasn't that indicative, North Somerset (a greatly changed Frome) was held by Labour where a 5,000 Conservative majority had been the estimate; Exeter fell to the Labour party despite its controversial candidate, but the most unexpected result of all was from Devizes which was narrowly carried by Labour.
Nor were these results because the West Country Liberal vote had collapsed, it had not in most seats, the Liberals had held North Dorset and despite the defection of their MP to Labour held the new North Cornwall as well. They added to their pleasure by gaining the new Torrington division with the young Mark Bonham-Carter who along with the new MP for Orkney and Zetland Jo Grimond - became one of the few distinctive Liberal voices in the parliament. In fact the Liberal vote had held up well throughout the UK, it was noticeable even on the day that in the two party contests between the Conservatives and Labour that the Conservatives were getting their better results.
By noon, it was clear that Mr Attlee had been comfortably returned to office, the high turnout meant that the counts took a little longer than previously but the majority result was reached with Sowerby just before the 1 O'Clock News. The final seat to declare was Basingstoke just after 5pm, where Labour scored an unexpected victory after 2 recounts by 25 votes on a lower than average turnout.
Labour 13,072,957 votes 45.6% 336 seats
Conservative* 11,423,843 votes 39.85% 272 seats
Liberal 3,977,195 votes 13,87% 14 seats
Communist 91,180 no seats
Others 100,554 votes 3 seats
* Includes Ulster Unionist for seat count only.
