CONSERVATIVES 1951-64 CHAPTER 1

Question 1

1951 ELECTION –

DEFINE first past the post election system

Answer 1

a voting system where the candidate with the most votes in each constituency win a seat in parliament.

Question 2

1951 ELECTION –

labour won more votes than the conservatives but the first past the post-election system meant the conservative party

Answer 2

won more seats in the general election and Churchill became the prime minister.

Question 3

1951 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

how many seats did the conservatives and labour win?

Answer 3

CONSERVATIVES 321
LABOUR 295

Question 4

1951 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

how many votes did the conservatives and labour get?

Answer 4

cons: 48.0
lab: 48.8

Question 5

harold macmillan was a one-nation conservatism, which meant he

Answer 5

believes all classes in society have obligations to one another and those who are well off have a responsibility to ensure those who are worse off.

Question 6

churchill personal qualities strength/weakness

3 points

Answer 6

CHURCHILL
* Was not a great post-war PM  old with many serious ailments: suffered a stroke in 1953 that left him with impaired speech.
* Inactive in domestic politics  thought of himself as an international statesman and spent more time abroad meeting world leaders.
* Day to day government was left to acting PM Eden and key ministers R.A. Butler (chancellor of the exchequer) and Macmillan, although they did not get on well.

Question 7

EDEN

what were the results of his general election result?

seats and chancellor

Answer 7

• Called a general election in 1955 and increased conservative majority from 17 to 60.
• Butler became chancellor and Macmillan became foreign secretary.

Question 8

1955 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS
seats and votes for cons and labour?

Answer 8

CONSERVATIVES 345, 49.7
LABOUR 277, 46.4

Question 9

EDEN negatives / impacts

4 points

Answer 9

• Lack of experience and disinterest in domestic affairs.
• Anxious about making decisions, lack of knowledge on economic issues.
• His decision to take military action during the Suez Crisis of 1956 ended in disaster -> accused of lying to the house of commons, badly damaging his reputation. 40 MPs rebelled, and the pressure from the US had exposed Britain’s financial weakness.
• Eden never recovered from the crisis and resigned in 1957 due to ill health.

Question 10

• The conservative party was not damaged by Suez and Macmillan succeeded Eden as prime minister. Macmillan’s main rival was Butler, who was not as popular within the party as he was in the country
  WHY????

Answer 10

his reputation had been damaged by introducing tax cuts before the 1955 election which had to be reversed after the election as the economy overheated.

Question 11

• Most of Eden’s cabinet preferred Macmillan so he emerged as the leader - he had few enemies and disagreed with the government over the policy of appeasement, which was what and how did it effect butler?

Answer 11

a policy of making concessions in order to avoid conflict; in 1930s the government aimed to prevent a war with Nazi Germany through this policy but failed
Butler was closely linked to the policy of appeasement.

Question 12

MACMILLAN strengths

Answer 12

• Restored party unity.
• Economic prosperity continued and gained approval from voters.
• Butler became home secretary.
• 1959 - Macmillan called a general election, leading conservatives to a comfortable victory, pushing majority up to 100 seats.

Question 13

OCTOBER 1959 GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

seats and votes for cons and labour?

Answer 13

CONSERVATIVES 365, 48.8
LABOUR 258, 44.6

Question 14

why did macmillan stay in power for so long?

3 points

Answer 14

• The post war economic boom was continuing.
• Labour party in disarray, increasingly preoccupied by internal battles.
• Macmillan used the new opportunities provided by television and media.
  *

Question 15

Macmillan - DOMESTIC POLICIES

Most conservatives accepted the reforms of the previous labour government = accepted the post war consensus:
An understanding after WW2 between main political parties on major issues:

4 pillars of PWC

Answer 15

• A belief in a mixed economy – involvement by the state as well as private enterprise.
• Support for the NHS and the welfare state.
• A wish to ensure full employment and to avoid the mass unemployment of the 1930s.
• Working with both trade unions and employers.

Question 16

REASONS FOR POWER: DOMESTIC POLICIES

HOUSING: 1951 conservative manifesto promised to

Answer 16

build 300,000 hours a year to rebuild the housing stock destroyed during the war. Macmillan, as the housing minister oversaw the success of this.

Question 17

REASONS FOR POWER: DOMESTIC POLICIES

EDUCATION: the conservatives continued the tripartite system in education developed after the Butler Act of 1944. Three kinds of schools emerged;

Answer 17

the grammar school for intellectually gifted, the technical school which concentrated on practical and vocational skills, and the secondary modern which would give basic education to the majority. Children would take an 11+ exam to determine where they would go.
By the beginning of the 1960s people started to question whether this system was fair.

Question 18

REASONS FOR POWER: DOMESTIC POLICIES

SOCIAL REFORMS:

NAME 3 IMPORTANT ACTS AND THEIR EFFECT

Answer 18

• Clean Air Act (1956) aimed to prevent smog of the early 1950s and the Housing and Factory Acts aimed to improve working and living conditions.
• Butler started to take action on homosexuality and the death penalty - Homicide Act (1957) restricted when the death penalty would be used and
• the Wolfenden Commission (1957) recommended homosexuality should no longer be a criminal act.

Question 19

REASONS FOR POWER: INTERNAL LABOUR DIVISIONS

The great wartime generation of labour leaders were aging and often in poor health.
There was a growing split in the party, both in ideology and personalities.
The key figures in this split were

Answer 19

Aneurin Bevan and Hugh Gaitskell.

Question 20

REASONS FOR POWER: INTERNAL LABOUR DIVISIONS

• The left wingers wanted the Labour Party to be

Answer 20

more socialist.

Question 21

REASONS FOR POWER: INTERNAL LABOUR DIVISIONS

• There was growing opposition to the party leadership from the trade unions and divisions over Britain’s nuclear weapons.

what were the nature of divisions like in the terms of unilateral disarmament?

bevan’s change in ideology, the labour left, CND

Answer 21

• Initially Bevan opposed Britain developing nuclear weapons but in 1957 he announced his opposition to unilateral nuclear disarmament (the policy of renouncing use and possession of nuclear weapons without waiting for any international agreement), arguing it would send a British foreign secretary naked into the conference chamber.
• However, many Labour left wingers joined the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) and the links between the CND and labour left may have turned some voters away from labour.

Question 22

• Until the late 1950s, the trade unions had been happy with full employment and their leaders were essentially moderates.
• In 1956 - something significant happened, which was???

what did it mean for nuclear weapons

Answer 22

Frank Cousins, a left winger became the leader of one of the most powerful unions, the TGWU, who led fierce union opposition to Gaitskell over Britain’s nuclear weapons.
Cousins led an unsuccessful bus strike against the Macmillan government in 1958.
In the 1960 labour party conference, he opposed Gaitskell’s leadership over nuclear weapons.
He had led the unions into taking left-wing positions hostile to party leadership.

Question 23

• The extent of the defeat in 1959 for Labour was a genuine surprise as well as a disappointment.
  what happened after this?

Answer 23

• After this defeat, the divisions became even more apparent and battles over the future direction of the party were fought out at the annual party conferences in 1959 and 1960.

Question 24

what did the clause IV mean

Answer 24

party constitution which committed the party to nationalisation.

Question 25

• At the 1959 conference, just held before the general election, Gaitskell put forward the idea of abolishing Clause IV of the party constitution.

what did he then do ???

clause iv and UND

Answer 25

• He then backed down without putting it to vote as opposition from the left wing and trade unions was too fierce.
• He also tried to convince the party to reject unilateral disarmament at the 1960 party conference and lost the vote.

Question 26

• Labour’s political position improved after 1960

why?

2 reasons

Answer 26

• Cultural shifts in the country made the public more critical of the conservative government by the beginning of the 1960s.
• It appeared more united – the death of Gaitskell in 1963 opened the way for labour to elect Harold Wilson as leader.

Question 27

REASONS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE’S FALL FROM POWER

• In 1961 to 1963, numerous events came together to weaken Macmillan’s grip on the government, finally leading to his resignation as PM in October 1963.

how did the economy affect this? think EEC

Answer 27

• By the early 1960s there were growing concerns over the economy –> Britain made an application to join the EEC in 1961, and the application was rejected in 1963.

Question 28

REASONS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE’S FALL FROM POWER

• Macmillan himself seemed to have lost his political touch - in response to the problems his government was facing, Macmillan radically

what did he do and what was its impact - this is really important

Answer 28

reshuffled his cabinet in July 1962, sacking a third of it. This became known as the Night of the Long Knives.
* It was intended to rejuvenate the conservative party, but it actually weakened it - Macmillan was made to seem clumsy and appeared increasingly out of touch.

Question 28

REASONS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE’S FALL FROM POWER

• In the early 1960s came a series of spy scandals:

3 prominent scandals, name each, date and briefly explain what they were

Answer 28

• 1961: George Blake was convicted of being a soviet double agent.
• 1962: John Vassal, a civil servant, was blackmailed on the basis of his homosexuality to pass information onto the Soviet Union.
• 1963: the PROFUMO AFFAIR – Macmillan’s Secretary of State for War, John Profumo had a brief relationship with Christine Keeler, who was also sleeping with a soviet spy called Ivanov  raised questions about possible leaks of cold war secrets, Profumo forced to resign in disgrace.

Question 29

REASONS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE’S FALL FROM POWER

• Profumo lied about is actions.
• Although the political impact of the Profumo Affair was short,
  what was its impact?

Answer 29

the image of Macmillan and the Conservatives as old and out of touch was reinforced.

Question 30

REASONS FOR THE CONSERVATIVE’S FALL FROM POWER

• Macmillan’s position was finally undermined by a serious illness - a major abdominal operation kept him in the hospital for weeks.
• He had not prepared the way for anyone to succeed him

what did this lead to and how was it solved?

Answer 30

the party faced a divisive power struggle: there was strong opposition to the most obvious candidates - Butler and Hailsham.
* In the end a compromise candidate, Lord Alec Douglas Home, a peer, emerged as the leader.

This whole business made the conservative party seem trapped in a bygone age.