Conservative Dominance, 1951-1964 (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

The Conservative return to power, 1951

How did the Conservatives win in 1951?

• The Conservatives returned to power in the October 1951 general election

  • They won 321 seats to Labour's 295

    • This gave them a working majority of 17 seats

• The first-past-the-post (FPTP) system worked against Labour

  • Labour actually polled more votes than the Conservatives

  • However, the FPTP system converted these votes into fewer seats

    • This was partly due to Labour gaining large majorities in safe industrial seats

  • The collapse of the Liberal vote helped the Conservatives win in key marginal seats

• Labour was tired after six years in office

  • The 1945–51 governments had faced austerity, rationing and the 1949 devaluation

  • The 1951 resignations of Aneurin (Nye) Bevan and Harold Wilson exposed splits that ran through the decade

Conservative leaders: Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Home

• Four prime ministers led the Conservatives across this period

  • They each shaped the party's image differently

Winston Churchill (1951–1955)

• Concentrated on foreign affairs

  • He pushed for summit talks with the USSR after Stalin's death in 1953

• Left domestic policy to ministers, including Macmillan's house-building drive

Anthony Eden (1955–1957)

• Won the 1955 general election soon after succeeding Churchill

• His premiership was dominated and then ended by the 1956 Suez Crisis

Harold Macmillan (1957–1963)

• Rebuilt the party's standing after Suez and won the 1959 election on rising affluence

• Accepted decolonisation in the 1960 'Wind of Change' speech

• He opened the first bid to join the European Economic Community (EEC)

Alec Douglas-Home (1963–1964)

• Chosen as a compromise successor to Macmillan in 1963 without a party leadership election

• Led the Conservatives to a narrow defeat by Harold Wilson's Labour in 1964

Conservative domestic policies

Governing from the centre ground

• The Conservatives accepted the main features of the post-war consensus

  • They kept the National Health Service (NHS), the welfare state and full employment

    • This overlap with Labour policy became known as Butskellism, after R.A. Butler and Hugh Gaitskell

• They reversed only a small part of Labour's programme

  • Iron, steel and road haulage were returned to private ownership (denationalisation)

Housing and living standards

• House-building was one of the party's main domestic policies

  • Macmillan, as Housing Minister, passed the target of 300,000 new homes a year

• Everyday restrictions lifted

  • Rationing, introduced during the Second World War, was finally ended in 1954

  • The Rent Act (1957) freed many rents from wartime controls

• Growing prosperity fed into Conservative support

  • Wages, home ownership and consumer goods all rose

Education

• The Conservatives kept Labour's school settlement

• Some of the first purpose-built comprehensive schools, such as Kidbrooke (1954), opened under the Conservatives

• They continued the tripartite system set up by the Butler Act (1944)

  • This divided state pupils between grammar, technical and secondary modern schools

Social reforms

• The governments passed a series of practical social reforms

  • The Clean Air Act of 1956 followed the deadly London smog

  • The Homicide Act (1957) limited the death penalty to certain murders

  • The Factories Act (1959) improved workplace safety

• The Wolfenden Report (1957) recommended decriminalising homosexuality

  • The government did not act on it; homosexuality was partly decriminalised in 1967

Approach: This was the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the 1959 general election. It was written to persuade voters that Conservative government had brought economic security and improved living standards

The source is useful for showing how the party presented its record, especially through claims about the economy, new homes, school places and the cost of living. However, it was a campaign document, so its claims should be checked against economic figures and evidence about living standards

Internal Labour divisions: Bevanites and Gaitskellites

A party split in two

• Labour spent the 1950s divided between a left and a right wing

  • The Bevanites, led by Nye Bevan, sat on the left

  • The Gaitskellites, led by Hugh Gaitskell, sat on the right

• When Attlee retired in 1955, Gaitskell defeated Bevan for the party leadership

  • This deepened the feud between the two wings

• Certain issues divided the Labour Party along these lines

Issue one: Prescription charges

Bevanites (left)

• Insisted that treatment remain free for everyone using the NHS

Gaitskellites (right)

• Believed charges should be introduced as a way of easing pressure on public finances

Outcome

• Opened a rift in Attlee's government in 1951, when Bevan resigned over Gaitskell's charges, which grew into the Bevan–Gaitskell feud

Issue two: Clause IV (public ownership)

• Clause IV was the section of the Labour Party's constitution (1918) that committed the party to public ownership of industry

Bevanites (left)

• Committed fully to the nationalisation of major industries

Gaitskellites (right)

• Saw nationalisation as one tool to be used selectively, not a goal in itself

Outcome

• Trade unions feared Labour would abandon public ownership altogether

• At the 1959 conference, Gaitskell attempted to amend the clause

  • He was blocked by opposition from the left

Issue three: Nuclear weapons

Bevanites (left)

• Many on the left wanted Britain to give up its nuclear weapons unilaterally

  • Bevan himself broke with them in 1957, warning that unilateralism would send a Labour foreign secretary "naked into the conference chamber"

• Many joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

Gaitskellites (right)

• Rejected giving up nuclear weapons

Outcome

• At the 1960 Labour Party Conference, trade union votes passed a motion supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament

  • Frank Cousins, leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), led union support for unilateralism

  • This was reversed at the Labour Party Conference in 1961 by Gaitskell

Why did this matter to the Conservatives?

• A divided opposition made the Conservatives look stable by comparison

  • Labour's public infighting weakened its challenge in the 1955 and 1959 elections

Reasons for the Conservatives' fall from power, 1964

• By 1964, the Conservatives had held power for 13 years

• The general election of 1964 was close, but Labour won with a majority of four seats

  • Several linked pressures explain the result

Appearing "out of touch"

• The party's image aged badly

  • Douglas-Home, an aristocrat chosen without a party leadership election, seemed out of touch with voters

  • A satire boom mocked the governing class; examples include the television show That Was The Week That Was and the magazine Private Eye

  • This was part of the wider decline of deference

Various scandals

• Scandals damaged people's trust in the government

  • The 1963 Profumo Affair was the most damaging

  • Spy scandals added to the sense of crisis, including the conviction of the Soviet spy George Blake in 1961 and of the Admiralty clerk John Vassall in 1962

Approach: Profumo made this statement to the House of Commons on 22nd March 1963, while denying an improper relationship with Christine Keeler

The source is useful for showing how a senior minister publicly responded when the scandal first emerged. However, his denial was later shown to be false, so it is not reliable evidence about the relationship itself. Its main value is in showing how the Establishment initially tried to contain the affair

Approach: These confidential Cabinet minutes were written on 13th June 1963, after Profumo had admitted that his earlier statement was untrue. As a private government record, they were not written to influence the public

The source is useful for showing how ministers discussed the affair within government. However, the minutes focus on the political damage and Profumo's resignation, and reveal little about the wider damage to public trust. They should therefore be compared with public and press reactions

Labour uniting

• Labour became a stronger opponent

  • The deaths of Bevan in 1960 and Gaitskell in 1963 ended the personal feud that had split the party

  • Harold Wilson emerged as a unifying leader with a modern, classless image

Failures of the Conservatives

• Other problems built up under Macmillan

  • The 1962 "Night of the Long Knives", in which a third of the Cabinet were sacked, was widely seen as a sign of weakness

  • Macmillan resigned due to ill health in 1963

    • The appointment of Douglas-Home divided the Conservative Party

  • Britain faced growing economic problems, including stop-go policies and pressure on the balance of payments

  • Wider social changes, including the growth of youth culture and increased immigration, created new political challenges

How far did the Conservatives dominate politics, 1951–1964?

• A question along these lines weighs the strength of Conservative control against the signs that it was limited or short-lived

  • Evidence that you could use for each side is outlined below

The Conservatives dominated

• They won three general elections in a row with rising majorities: 17 seats in 1951, 60 in 1955 and 100 in 1959

• They held office for 13 unbroken years under four leaders

• Strong leadership kept the party popular

• Rising affluence and house-building were linked to Conservative rule

• Labour's public divisions left little effective opposition

Conservative dominance was limited or fragile

• In 1951, they won fewer votes than Labour and took power on a small majority

• Election margins depended heavily on Labour's weakness rather than Conservative strength

• Suez, the 1962 "Night of the Long Knives" and the 1963 Profumo Affair damaged the government

• The decline of deference turned opinion against the Establishment

• Labour revived under Wilson and won in 1964, ending Conservative rule