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Aneurin Bevan: 1955 – 1959 (Labour)

In contrast to his predecessor Aneurin “Nye” Bevan constantly ranks as one of the greatest of the post-war Prime Ministers, though how much that has to do with how his term ended is a constant matter of discussion among political historians.

However not only was Bevan very different compared to Oliver Lyttelton, he also bore very little resemblance to the previous Labour Prime Minister, Herbert Morrison. Morrison had continued on as Leader of the Opposition into 1953, before being finally persuaded to retire. In the bruising leadership election that followed Bevan won out over the Morrisonian candidate Hugh Gaitskell and immediately began putting his own stamp upon the party.

While both of them came from working class backgrounds, (Morrison was the son of a police constable) Bevan’s background was by far the more impoverished being one of ten children of a Welsh miner. While Morrison came to parliament through local government, Bevan (who had begun work in the colliery at the age of thirteen) came to politics through the trade union movement and always had a stronger belief in Labour’s nationalisation program than Morrison. At one point during the Morrison government he had almost been tempted to resign over its views on prescription charges, but was persuaded by Clem Attlee to stay and wait for his moment.

Winning the 1955 election, with a twenty five seat majority over the Tories, Bevan’s first task was to correct most of the mistakes of the Lyttelton period, those that he had not corrected himself. Restoring power to the unions, Bevan (aware as only a former union official could be of the terrifying power of the unions when they were roused and angry) next set about setting up arbitration boards, which the trade unions and employers were required by law to sit down with, for a minimum of one month before any strikes could be called. Attempts to convince the trade union leaders to outlaw wild cat strikes and implement a voting threshold to for strike votes however came to naught.

Forced to shelve his desire to nationalise the health service, due to the popularity of LHS, Bevan instead focused on two other pillars of the Labour manifesto, infrastructure and economic planning. With regards to infrastructure, Bevan focused not only on the need to build more houses (which had begun under Morrison but had slowed during Lyttelton’s tenure) but also to build up the surrounding areas. Bevan understood that houses alone did not make a community, but that houses and shops were important too. During Bevan’s time in office an ambitious town building program was begun that under his two successors saw at least fifty small towns spring up around the country, (though of course plenty of land was saved for conservation, not to mention many public parks founded).

On top of the town building program, Bevan also initiated a long term travel plan, funding the construction of a whole spate of new motorways to ferry people back and forth across the country, while at the same time diverting money to the railways, saving many of the smaller local railways from falling into disrepair.

Bevan also resurrected Morrison’s plans for a Department of Economic Affairs. The responsibilities of the Treasury split in two the DEA was given the responsibility for long term economic planning, including all that related to industry. George Brown was moved from his position at the Home Office to head up the DEA, while Hugh Gaitskell, remained Chancellor of the Exchequer. Members of the Tory backbenches referred to the DEA derisively as the “Department for the Five Year Plan” but Bevan who always delighted in parliamentary discourse, argued that “a five year plan was better than planning to set the country back ten years.”

Following Lyttelton’s lack of interest in the international scene, Bevan (who had spent a brief period as Shadow Foreign Secretary) decided to make it his job to take Britain back out into the world. One of the first acts of his premiership however was actually to defund Lyttelton’s nuclear deterrent program. Bevan had no time for nuclear weapons and preferred that the countries money be spent on something that would benefit the country at large. He did however agree to start development of a joint Anglo-American deterrent.

When it comes to foreign affairs Bevan is principle remembered for two things. Firstly Bevan as a man solidly of the left was able to improve the UK’s relationship with the Soviets. While the relationship between Bevan and Khrushchev were far from friendly, they were at least cordial and the UK became a significant go-between in American-Soviet relations. Secondly and most importantly Bevan is remembered as the man who reformed the Empire. Realising that it was no longer practical for the UK to possess an empire, but aware that simple independence could cause more harm than good, he called a one week conference of all empire heads of state. Alongside his foreign secretary, Harold Wilson, through cajoling and a good cop, bad cop routine, Bevan reformed the Empire into the Commonwealth Federation we had today. Independence would be slow and moderated by the Commonwealth Commission which would be comprised of commissioners comprised of every member state. This would also allow the former empire to speak with one voice through the commission, though separate seats were maintained on bodies such as the UN. The creation of the Federation is widely and correctly recognised as the crowning achievement of Bevan’s premiership.

However no record of Bevan’s time in office is complete without discussion of how it ended. While preparing to campaign for re-election in 1959, Bevan checked himself into hospital with severe stomach pains. An exploratory operation revealed malignant stomach cancer. Aware how rigorous and exhausting treatment would be, he immediately tendered his resignation to the Queen, Labour’s deputy leader quickly being elected to succeed him. Bevan also resigned from the House of Commons retiring to his home in Chesham where he died the following year.
 
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George Brown: 1959 – 1965 (Labour)

Thrust into office a scant few months before the 1960 election, George Brown, former Secretary of State for the Department of Economic Affairs and former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was never as popular as his immediate predecessor. Never the less he still triumphed over RA Butler’s Tories with a twenty seat majority (unchanged from the previous election), though there were whispers both inside the party and out, that that might not have been the case had the ailing Nye Bevan not raised himself from his sick bed to appear on the campaign trail. However considering Brown’s abilities as a campaigner, many consider this unfair. Brown also found himself saddled with a manifesto not of his own making, it mostly having been put together before Bevan resigned.

Still, Brown had won an mandate of his own and so set about enacting the parties manifesto. One of his first acts was to finish enacting the work of the Local Government Boundary Commission which had been formed under Morrison and whose work had been begun under Bevan. The brainchild of local government enthusiast Morrison the Commission had been set up in order to review – as the name suggests – local government boundaries outside of greater London. The report having been buried under the Lyttelton administration, Brown bought it out of mothballs and decided to enact it.

The commission’s report recommended the creation of a selection of one tier, two tier and most county boundaries. While this would involve the alteration and merging of various local government boundaries, the commission felt that this new administrations would more effectively discharge the duties of local government. The Brown government (recognising the potential of local government) agreed and by 1963, the new boundaries were in place and the first elections to the new local governments had been held.

One reason for Brown’s keenness to get effective local government in place was that he saw it as key to the plans he had been formulating while at the DEA. During Brown’s time the DEA had come up with a two pronged approach for economic prosperity in the future. The first was to invest in new industries that were popping up, ones which would supplement or even replace existing British industry. These included the growing computer industry and various other technology developments. However Brown also believed that it was important to invest in education and training for the future. Not only would children need to be prepared to work in these new fields, but as other industries closed workers would need to be retrained to work in new fields. Therefore Brown proposed diverting money to local authorities for them to fund the setting up of new technical schools and colleges and the expansion of other schools.

This tied into the work of his Education Secretary Tony Crosland. Crosland while a supporter of the National Education Service which bought the responsibility for supervising and administrating education under the purview of local government, was still unhappy about both the existence of grammar schools and how the public schools still operated independently. Crosland issued the famous circular 10/64 which not only converted all grammar schools to comprehensives and abolished the eleven plus, but also brought all public schools under the control of the NES. While compromises were needed to make this happen – they were still allowed to set their own fees and be a little more selective about who they took – Crosland was happy with the result.

Brown’s government was also one of the most liberal of its time, abolishing the death penalty, as well as relaxing the rules on divorce, though all of this met with some resistance from his more conservative backbenches. On the international front, Brown rebuilt the UK’s relationship with the US, feeling a certain kinship with President Johnson (who had similarly been elected in 1960), both rough and tumble politicians from humble backgrounds.

Brown was also the PM responsible for first attempting to take the UK into Europe. Convinced like Bevan had been before him that the only future for the UK was not as a singular nation but as part of a bigger alliance, Brown scheduled several clandestine meetings with President De Gaulle. However these meetings met with little support either from the French or from members of his own government (though when revealed it did receive the endorsement of Shadow Chancellor Edward Heath), so Brown sadly shelved the plan for another year.

By the time 1965 came around however Brown’s numbers were starting to slip. While still rather popular rumours had begun to circulate in the press of Brown’s relationship with alcohol and a picture of him stumbling after a night at the French embassy was actually printed in one tabloid. The Tories (who had reformed their leadership rules) had elected a leader who many members of the public felt related more to their wants and needs than the Christian socialist Brown. With the economy booming again, the Conservatives offered to return that money back to the people. In the words of the Leader of the Opposition “if the Conservatives are elected, the people of Great Britain will have never had it so good”.

The campaign worked. The Tories swept to victory in the 1965 election with a thirty five seat majority and in a final humiliation, Brown was defeated in his constituency of Belper. Taking up a position in the House of Lords as Lord George-Brown, he continued to advocate for membership of the EEC.
 
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A double whammy today.

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Reginald Maudling: 1965 – 1971 (Conservative)
Reginald Maudling was exactly the type of leader the Conservatives had been looking for. The first to be formally elected (all be it by the parliamentary party) rather than simply to emerge from the magic circle and the first to come from a less than aristocratic background, it was the hope of the party grandees that Maudling would be able to connect with the average voter, that the Tories needed to win.

He did the job excellently.

Despite a thirty five seat majority and Brown’s scalp under their belt, the Maudling government decided that it wasn’t worth their while to try and overturn the governing consensus, having seen what had happened to the Lyttelton administration. Instead they focused on working within the rules and altering them in their favour.

Maudling had actually been in favour of much of the liberalisation of social policy that had come about during Brown’s tenure in Number 10 and so refused to reverse most of it. In fact he went about extending it. Concerned about the effects of incarceration on recidivism rates, Maudling along with his home secretary Peter Walker set about coming up with alternatives to simple prison sentences. Instead they set up a system of community service and community works. In exchange for being able undertake their sentence at home, the person was required to for lesser offences undertake several hours of community service – for example tidying the local park alongside paid employment. In more serious cases they were required to work on community projects – usually aiding with a building project – instead of paid work. This system meant that prison became the preserve of the serious criminal rather than the white collar one.

One area where Maudling was more conservative than his predecessor was on the subject of immigration. While he did not agree with Education Secretary Enoch Powell who was separated from his portfolio for his Rivers of Blood speech in 1968, Maudling did believe that rules regarding immigration needed to be tightened. While he did not want to restrict immigration entirely – especially from the Commonwealth Federation who in later years would operate a freedom of movement policy – he did set up a points system in order to ensure that those who moved to the UK would bring skills that the UK needed.

When it came to the industrial policy, Maudling took a softly softly approach. While he believed in the need to de-regulate the economy – one of his first acts upon taking office was once again to fold the DEA into the Treasury and restore power to the Chancellor – had learnt from the mistakes of the previous Conservative administration and decided not to be too hasty. Instead he decided to set up a non-governmental ombudsman rather than the government backed arbitration boards and extended the minimum sit down time before strikes from one month to two. However like Bevan before him an attempt to legally impose a minimum fifty percent voting threshold for strikes failed.

However in reality Maudling mostly took a back seat when it came to industrial policy leaving it largely up to his Chancellor and President of the Board of Trade. In fact one of the most consistent criticisms of Maudling himself was the number of executive directorships he held. Maudling always replied to the claims of bias by arguing that provided he did his job to the best of his ability, it didn’t really matter what he did with the little free time he had.

Foreign policy was one area he did engage with however. While like Bevan and Brown before him he refused to send soldiers to assist with the war in Vietnam, he did provide naval assistance to the US patrols of Cuba, which President Kennedy had instituted shortly after his election in 1968. Maudling also provided members of the Commonwealth to aid in the patrols as well, and also put together the first mutual Commonwealth defence treaty.

By the time the 1971 general election came around, Maudling was more popular than ever and the Conservatives were riding high. With the economy on the up and the Labour party once again split between its left and right factions the Tories walked the election, Maudling becoming the first PM to be re-elected since the war. Everything looked set for another five years in government.

That is until the stories started to leak out.

The public had accepted the idea that Maudling served as a non-executive director on several company boards but when the tales emerged alleging that government contracts had been issued to companies that Maudling had done business with, they started to take notice. By the time the stories of money that had been paid to the Prime Minister for “services rendered” came out, the vultures had begun to circle.

With the accusations piling up and the subpoenas starting to appear, the PM announced that he would resign as soon as his successor had been elected.

That successor would not last long.
 
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Edward Heath: 1971 – 1971 (Conservative)

Having spent the majority of his political career in opposition Edward Heath had very specific ideas on how the country should be run. Unfortunately he never got the chance to implement any of them.

Elected unchallenged following Reginald Maudling’s resignation, it looked at first as if the long-time Chancellor would have a chance to put his own stamp on British politics, with the government still having four years until the next election. However with Maudling having left Number 10 under a cloud, Heath decided it would be best to call a snap election, in order to “restore faith in the government.”

This would prove to be a mistake.

With Labour picking up steam under a new Bevanite leader, the election of 1971 – coming just over a year after the last one – would see Conservatives judged not on what Heath offered but on what Maudling had done. While sympathy over the way – in some people’s opinion – Maudling had been hounded from Number 10 prevented Labour from gaining an overall majority, Heath still found himself occupying the office of Leader of the Opposition only four months after becoming Prime Minister.

One thing that Heath did manage to do during his short time in office was re-open negotiations over the UK’s entry to the EEC, something that would be continued under his successor. However mostly he is still remembered simply for being the shortest serving PM since the war.
 

RyanF

Banned
Community sentences and house arrest? How very Scandinavian, I like it.

Rivers of Blood speech still happens the same as OTL? I've no doubt Powell is as likely to give a controversial speech on immigration in most post-war TLs, but even if it has the same notoriety why not mix it up a bit by having him make another classics reference at the end?
 
Community sentences and house arrest? How very Scandinavian, I like it.

Rivers of Blood speech still happens the same as OTL? I've no doubt Powell is as likely to give a controversial speech on immigration in most post-war TLs, but even if it has the same notoriety why not mix it up a bit by having him make another classics reference at the end?
That's a good point. I shall keep it in mind for the future.

Thanks for the like.
 
Enjoying the timeline but two problems for me. Firstly, don't think a Lyttleton premiership would have gone like you suggest, he was more adroit in his understanding (and hopefully handling) of foreign affairs than your timeline indicates and well aware of the need to keep the US on side (his US visit went reasonably well). On that front, any Conservative who wins in the early fifties and gets rid of rationing is virtually guaranteed a decade/decade and a half of solid economic growth as pent up wartime and Austerity domestic demand is gratified and the economy is in a "sweet spot" where new electronics, plastics and synthetic fibres are beginning to create new employment but not yet dominant enough to displace traditional textile and metalwork industries. A Lyttleton premiership would probably have given us a "Roaring Fifties" as opposed to "Never had it so good".

Secondly, what about Suez? Nasser made his move when neither Britain's nor Eden's weakness was obvious and Churchill's number two had a solid parliamentary majority. To butterfly it away would have needed someone much more frightening than Nye Bevan in number 10!

I think you got George Brown and Maudling about right though.
But what is with the NES? My understanding was that Labour left education alone because the Butler reforms had multipartisan support and were accepted by the Churches (still important up to at least 1960) and didn't see the area as in serious need of reform until Crossman started pushing the comprehensive ideal.
 
I get that this is meant to be a left wing wank but a bit of plausibility on the economics would be nice, see my earlier comment.
 
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