Delhi as the last viceroy to India on 22 March
- On 14 and 15 August India and Pakistan
gained their independence. Partition had proved
unavoidable, and the tragedy of communal vio-
lence and murders marred Britain’s wise decision
to give up willingly the ‘jewel’ of its empire.
The first important post-war decision to be taken
was a political one – who was to govern Britain?
The election in July 1945 took place while the
war was still continuing in the Pacific. British
troops were fighting in Burma and the Japanese
were fanatically resisting the advance of the
Americans on the island approaches to their
homeland. The war was expected to last many
more months, until the atomic bomb revealed its
awesome power and unexpectedly ended the
fighting. But in the weeks following Germany’s
surrender all this was momentarily put aside. VE
Day, victory in Europe, was celebrated. There
were parties in every street. Burma was far away
except for those with relatives still fighting there
or whose next of kin were starving in Japanese
prisoner-of-war camps. The great majority of
people in Britain were now hopefully anticipating
the rewards of peace. Churchill wanted the coali-
tion with Labour to continue until the defeat of
Japan; when the Labour ministers in his govern-
ment rejected this proposal, he fought the elec-
tion in July on the appeal that he should be given
the mandate to ‘finish the job’.
Outside Britain it seemed incredible that the
British people, who owed so much to Churchill,
should now with apparent ingratitude turn him
out of office. Even in his own constituency the
Labour candidate attracted substantial support.
But the election was not about the conduct of the
war. Indeed, Churchill’s electoral tour was a per-
sonal triumph, with ordinary people everywhere
mobbing him to express their gratitude and
genuine affection. The Labour leader Clement
Attlee appeared a colourless little man by com-
parison. Yet it was Attlee not Churchill who
entered 10 Downing Street after the biggest land-
slide since the election of 1906, which had given
the Liberals victory. However much the British
‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system might exag-
gerate the disparity of the parties’ fortunes, it was
a striking turnaround from the last election, held
in 1935, when the Conservatives and their sup-
porters had returned 432 members and the oppo-
sition parties could muster only 180.
Why was the swing of votes to Labour so large,
especially among the servicemen? Churchill him-
self, as the electoral asset on which the Tory Party
managers were banking, proved insufficient to
turn the tide. Conservative promises of a new
deal based on the Beveridge Report of 1942 were
not so very different from those of the Labour
Party, but the electorate doubted whether the
Conservative heart was really in reform. It is
also true that Churchill mishandled the electoral
campaign by overdoing his condemnation of
‘socialism’ as embodied in the Labour Party’s
programme. He denounced Labour as setting out
on a path to totalitarian rule that would lead to
a British Gestapo. He derided Attlee as a ‘sheep
in wolf’s clothing’. It was impossible to persuade
a sophisticated British electorate that Attlee,
Bevin and Morrison were now not to be trusted
despite their outstanding accomplishments as
ministers in Churchill’s all-party War Cabinet.
The Gestapo jibe badly misfired.
But probably none of this explained the mag-
nitude of the Conservative defeat. There was one
factor more powerful than any other: the mem-
ories of the bitter hardship of unemployment
during the 1930s, of slums, of ill health and of a
society that had failed to provide fair opportuni-
ties to the majority of the British people. In July
1945 millions of troops faced imminent demo-
bilisation. Were the Conservatives likely to have
their interests at heart? Would the government
ensure that worthwhile work was found for every-
one or would the employers be allowed to pick
and choose, to depress wages in free-market style,
1
BRITAIN AND THE WORLD 329
Parliamentary election, 1945
Seats Votes
Labour 393 11,995,152
Conservative 213 9,988,306
Liberal 12 2,248,226
Communist 2 102,780
