Zusammenfassung der Ressource
(1) Why the Conservatives win the 1951 General Election
- What problems are facing
Britain in the summer of 1949
- Labour loss control of London
County Council in 1949
- "House wives leage"
complaing about rationing
- Popular films celebrate the triumph of the individual and
their illegal appetites over the all- controlling state
- Resignation threates
- Alexander will resigns if there
were cuts to defence
- Bevin will resigns if there
were cuts in social servics
- Crips, has nerves frayed by
insomnia "ready to resign
about anything"
- Bevan spoke of resigning if
defence suffered damage
- Labour problems
- Economic and financial
difficulties of Britain
- Divisions in the party over economy,
welfare and foreign policy e.g. Bevan and
Wilson resigned over the ’51 Budget
- Unpopular ministers such
as Stafford Cripps and
Manning Shinwell
- “Age of austerity” image
- Britain’s entry into the Korean War angered
Labour’s left-wing (highlighting wider Cold War
issues: should the UK support Russia or the USA?)
- A decrease in the Parliamentary
majority made it difficult for
Labour to govern after 1950
- Conservative structural
re-organisation and recovery
- In 1945 General Election, the Conservatives had almost
no professional staff; between 1945-7, they constructed a
list of members, and handbooks for party workers
- 1945-50: 300 people
qualified as constituency
agents for the Conservatives
- The Conservative Party attempted to project a
more youthful image, e.g. Young Conservatives
got underway in 1946 – social and political!
- Membership and fundraising meant that
the Conservatives had a membership of
nearly 3m – the biggest of its kind
- Just under a million in 1945 to
2,250,000 by june 1948
- Democratisation of the Party was important,
e.g. as a result of the Maxwell-Fyfe report of
1949 on selection procedures
- Lord Wootton’s “Fighting
Fund” enabled expansion of
Conservative staff and PR
- Lord Woolton wanted to make the
party more dependent on a large
number of small subscription
- Candidates were forbidden to contribute
more than £25. this was an attempt to
encouage less-wealty applicants
- Woolton toyed with the idea of changing the name
of the party but instead decided that the
Conservatives should refer to the Labour party as
the Socialist Party
- This tactic was followed until 1959 when it was
discovered that a large number of the electorate thought
that labour and the socialstic were two different parties
- development
policy Conservative
- Policy phrases such as
“property-owning democracy”
became well-known
- Crucial documents as such The “ Industrial Charter
” (1947) were produced as acoherent responce to
Labour’s policies popular on the welfare state. It:
- Argued for a decrease in
taxation and expenditure
- Placed great emphasis on the need
for co-operation within industry
- Acknowledged the role of Trade
Unions in a democratic society
- Attacked monopolies
- The “Industrial Charter” was followed up by charters on
other policies, including women and agriculture. The
Right Road for Britain set out general party policy
- In 1950, the Conservatives agreed to
build 300,000 houses a year, a powerful
weapon with voters wanting new houses
- The fall of the Labour
government 1950-51
- The events of 1950 were to show
how fragile the British economy was
- The year started well with
dramatic improvmentsin
exports, followering devalution
- By the end of the year the
new winter of gloom
approached
- The outbreak of the korean war in june 1950 pushed up
the cost of commodity prices world wide, producing a
new balance of payments crisis in britain, parly due to
re-armament programme
- The trade union were increasingly impatient of wage restriant.
In the summer of 1950 the TUC conference, rejected further
wage restraint and it appeared that the good industrial relations
of the post-war years were about to come to an end
- Gaitskell 1951 Budget causted a row in the cabinet.
Bevan and Wilson hotly contested Gaitskell's proposals,
they resigned. This wealened the government
- Bevan argued against the imposition of
prescription charges as striking a blow
against the principles of an NHS, free at
the point of delivery
- Wilson opposed the
scale of re-armament