Britain was gripped by election fever 60 years ago. Illtyd Harrington recalls how war-weary voters’ hopes of a socialist Britain proved short-lived

"BLISS was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven,” so exclaimed the young poet William Wordsworth. He was talking about the French revolution. For those of us who were around in the summer of 1945 it remained an appropriate and powerful sentiment.
A terrible war had ended in Europe on May 8. Exhausted servicemen and women yearned to return home to rebuild their lives and start families. A long dark night was ending, a brave new world was waiting to be born.
A coalition government of Tories, Labour and Liberals, led by Winston Churchill and his Labour deputy Clement Attlee, had been in power since 1940. Around December 1944 it showed signs of unravelling amid mutual irritation.
Churchill was the triumphant war leader. He wanted his government of uneasy bedfellows to stay together until Japan was defeated. He suggested a plebiscite to sanction delaying the general election. After all, this parliament was 10 years old.
As late as May 18, 1945, Churchill did his best to maintain the status quo but Attlee wrote to him that “tolerable conditions under which we could work no longer exist”. On May 23 the coalition government resigned. Parliament dissolved on June 15 and a general election was fixed for July 5. There were 33 million people entitled to vote, including the important services vote. They were scattered across the world, all 2.8 million of them, of whom 1.8 million opted for a proxy vote. This key element would be decisive. Their votes were to be counted on July 25 and declared on July 27. Many of the servicemen and women had become highly political through education courses.
Churchill began a regal tour around the country. Vast crowds greeted him in noisy gratitude. Labour called for a “Straight Left” programme and its manifesto was called “Let us face the future.”
The Communist Party was effectively organised and popular. It stood for a weekly minimum wage of £4.50, 14 days’ holiday a year and an old age pension of £1.50 a week. Two Communist candidates had won belts of honour at Sandhurst, the elite military academy for officers.
Fighting to hold his seat in Holborn, Group Captain Max Aitken, the son of Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Daily Express, held on by just 925 votes. A Labour MP had a bet of 33-1 on a Labour victory. His £8,000 win, about £100,000 in today’s money, was spent on a lavish celebration at the Savoy Hotel.
On July 5, 1,683 candidates fought for 640 seats. Quickly the wartime political truce was shattered.
The Tories snarled at socialism and warned of red terror. Harold Laski, the London School of Economics professor, became their demon king.
They even took a swipe at Beveridge’s proposals for a welfare state. In a series of party political broadcasts, Churchill went over the top and warned of a Labour Gestapo.
A war-weary population was fired with passionate politics. Young Barbara Castle, a former St Pancras councillor, stood in Blackburn, Lancashire. She was astonished when 3,000 people turned up for an indoor public meeting. The Red Flag was not only sung with gusto but flown triumphantly.
The country waited for the declaration of the service vote and it proved overwhelmingly an endorsement of the Left when it came on July 27. Churchill resigned and mild-mannered Attlee went to see George VI and formed a government. Afterwards he took Churchill’s place at the Potsdam Big Four conference.
The final results were a ringing vote for change and a humiliating rejection of Churchill and the Tories. The wartime victor was vanquished.
Labour had won 393 seats. Two-thirds of them were new MPs. The Tories had 189. The Liberals were reduced to 12. Tory grandees were flung out. Harold Macmillan, the future Prime Minister, lost at Stockton-on-Tees. Across London, Labour enjoyed an 18 per cent swing.
In the aftermath, that arch-intriguer and Chancellor Hugh Dalton held a private party in the Saint Ermins Hotel. He quickly saw the talent among the new intake, such as Harold Wilson, from Hampstead Garden Suburb, the devious Richard Crossman and John Freeman and Hugh Gaitskell, both from Hampstead. There was also Kenneth Younger, of the Scottish brewing family. A future right-wing group was in the making.
Within five years, the brave and bold hopes for a socialist Britain were almost forgotten although Attlee had pushed through gigantic changes, not least the NHS.
In 1950 we marched behind our American ally into the Korean War. Gaitskell, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer, increased the Defence Budget and justified his proposals for prescription charges and not raising the school leaving age. Nye Bevan, architect of the NHS resigned from the government, along with Freeman and Wilson, over prescription charges. By 1951, Churchill was back in Number 10 Downing Street and 13 years of Tory government had begun, ending only in 1964 when Harold Wilson became the next Labour Prime Minister.