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This year is the 60th anniversary of the first landslide election victory of the Labour Party
'The past week will live in history for two things', announced the Sunday Times of 29 July 1945, 'first the return of a Labour majority to Parliament and the end of Churchill's great war Premiership.' Most other newspapers concurred. The Daily Mirror, of 27 July, proclaimed that the 1945 general election 'is an historic moment in British politics. The Labour Party, which has in the past held office without power, now finds itself in possession of a decisive majority.' The 1945 general election victory was indeed an historic moment for the Labour Party, which had formed two minority governments during the inter-war years, was now in power with a landslide victory which the main national newspapers, despite the omens for the Conservative Party, had failed to predict. Why had this occurred? What were the reasons for Labour's victory? These, and related questions, have been asked by both contemporary writers and recent historians. Was it simply that wartime socialism favoured Labour's success or that the previous track record of the Conservatives told against them? It seems likely that both of these factors were important and that Labour was neither ahead of nor behind the British electorate but in tune with its prevailing mood, which favoured the wide-ranging reforms which might produce the 'New Jerusalem' of social reform, welfare provision and an improved life for all, even if it was more Liberalism than socialism.
The British electors went to the polls on 5 July 1945 to elect a new post-war government. The ballot boxes were then promptly sealed for three weeks to allow the Services vote to be collected , and the count did not finally occur until the 25 and 26 July. The result was one of the great turning points of British history for it brought to power Clement Attlee's Labour government, the first majority Labour government in British history which went on to introduce the basis of the modern welfare state. Labour won what the Daily Herald, on 27 July, referred to as a 'People's Victory'. Winning 48.8 per cent of the poll to the Conservatives 39.8 per cent, it secured 393 seats, giving it a landslide...