Abstract
If the First World War hastened Labour’s progress in becoming the second party in the state, then the Second World War undoubtedly speeded the party’s opportunity of competing with the Conservatives on equal, or even superior, terms. In 1939 Labour looked like losing yet another general election, probably by quite a margin. Six years later it was to win what remains its greatest electoral victory.
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Notes
J. Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), p. 84; Estorick, Cripps p. 326.
W. Citrine, My Finnish Diary (Harmondsworth, 1940), p. 5.
A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, Volume 2: Minister of Labour, 1940–1945 (1967), pp. 14–15.
T. D. Burridge, British Labour and Hitler’s War (1976), pp. 16, 123–4.
P. Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1975), p. 200.
R Summerfield, Women Workers in the Second World War: Production and Patriarchy in Conflict (1984), p. 157.
R. P. Hastings, ‘The Birmingham Labour Movement, 1918–1945’, Midland History, 5 (1980), p. 88;
A. Thorpe, ‘The Consolidation of a Labour Stronghold, 1926–1951’, in C. Binfield et al. (eds.), The History of the City of Sheffield, Volume 1: Politics (Sheffield, 1993 ), p. 110.
B. Pimlott (ed.), The Second World War Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1940–1945 (1986), pp. 657–9, 725–6, 858, 823–4;
D. Healey, The Time of My Life (1989), pp. 69–71.
W. Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society (1944), p. 128; Jefferys, Churchill Coalition p. 171.
H. Jones, Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (1994), pp. 108–12.
K. Jefferys, ‘British Politics and Social Policy during the Second World War’, Historical Journal, 30 (1987), p. 140.
L. Johnman, ‘The Labour Party and Industrial Policy, 1940–1945’, in N. Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (1991), pp. 42, 47.
See e.g. A. Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace and Social Change, 1900–1967 (1968), p. 328.
H. Pelling, ‘The Impact of the War on the Labour Party’, in H. L. Smith (ed.), War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War (Manchester, 1986 ), pp. 142–3.
S. Fielding, ‘What did “The People” Want? The Meaning of the 1945 General Election’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), pp. 623–39.
S. Fielding, R. Thompson and N. Tiratsoo, ‘England Arise!’ The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester, 1995), pp. 58, 68; Hastings, ‘Birmingham Labour Movement’, p. 87.
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© 1997 Andrew Thorpe
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Thorpe, A. (1997). The Impact of the Second World War, 1939–45. In: A History of the British Labour Party. British Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0_6
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