Abstract
The Coalition started to break up in mid-1945; even Bevin, who had previously argued for its continuation, rebuffed an overture that Churchill made to the Labour Party during the Conservative Conference in April. At a crucial National Executive Council meeting on 18–20 May, Attlee, Bevin and Dalton found themselves in a minority in wishing even to prolong its life a little and Labour Ministers immediately resigned. The General Election gave Labour the second overwhelming majority of the century: 393 seats, with 47.8 per cent of the vote, as against the Conservatives’ 210 seats and 39.6 per cent. The results showed a switch of perhaps two million middle-class votes and confirmed that a complete change had taken place in the geography of Labour’s electorate. Change at the top, however, proved far less dramatic.
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Notes and References
cf. Arthur Deakin’s speech demanding ‘an effective place in the control and management of industry’ (TGWU Record, vol. XXIV, no. 279, pp. 118–20, December 1944 and Biennial Delegate Conference 1945 minutes, pp. 16–29.)
Three substantial studies of the Labour government are now available: Roger Eatwell, The 1945–51 Labour Governments (1979)
Henry Pelling, The Labour Governments 1945–51 (1984)
Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–51 (1984)
also Kenneth Harris, Attlee (1982)
P. Addison, ‘Attlee’, New Statesman, 17.12.82.
H. Dalton, Memoirs 1945–60 (1962), p. 157.
This dualism can be seen clearly in Harold Wilson’s A New Deal for Coal, written in association with the party and the NUM while he was still a civil servant. He proposed that the NCB should own the mines and work them in the national interest without specifying how that interest would fit in with his aims of a board composed of men of ‘administrative and technical ability’. See the Jay-Attlee correspondence, PREM 8/293, March 1946.
See also Max Nicholson to Bridges (CAB 134/503, MEP (46) 4, 17.4.46). For a full discussion of the uses of propaganda in this period, see A. Lawrence, ‘Propaganda, Planning and the Economy’ (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, Leeds 1982) and A. Wildy, ‘Propaganda and Social Policy in Britain 1945–51’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, Leeds 1985).
T. Brett, S. Gilliatt, A. Pople: ‘Planned Trade, Labour Party Policy and US Intervention’, History Workshop Journal, vol. 13, 1982.
Walter Lipgens, A History of European Integration, vol. I (1945–47)
Alan Milward, in The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945–51, gives a more significant role to nationalistic reconstruction of capital goods industries than to the European Recovery Programme
A. A. Rogow and P. Shore, The Labour Government and British Industry 1945–51 (1955) p. 44.
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© 1986 Keith Middlemas
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Middlemas, K. (1986). Managing Austerity 1945–47. In: Power, Competition and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10956-2_5
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