1951 United Kingdom general election

The 1951 United Kingdom general election was held twenty months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Party had won with a slim majority of just five seats. The Labour government called a snap election for Thursday 25 October 1951 in the hope of increasing its parliamentary majority.

This election is remarkable for the fact that despite the Labour Party winning the popular vote (48.8%) and achieving the highest-ever total vote (13,948,385) at the time, the Conservative Party won a majority of 17 seats. This unusual phenomenon can be attributed to the collapse of the Liberal vote, which enabled the Conservatives to win seats by default.

The Labour Party would never go on to equal or surpass the voteshare or the total vote that it acquired in this election. On the other hands, the Conservatives would break the record of the highest votes in 1992 and again in 2019. It would also exceed the 48.8% voteshare won by the Labour Party, in the 1955 and 1959 elections winning over 49% in each case.

The election marked the return of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister and the beginning of Labour's 13-year spell in opposition. It was the third and final general election to be held during the reign of King George VI, as he died the following year on 6 February and was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II. It was the last election in which the Conservatives did better in Scotland than in England.

The 1951 election was the second one to be covered on BBC Television. On election night, the results were televised from the BBC Alexandra Palace studio in London. Graham Hutton, David Butler and H. G. Nicholas headed the election night coverage from 10.15pm to 4.00am on the television service. On the following day, television coverage started at 10.00am and continued throughout the day until 5.00pm.

Background
King George VI feared since that the government had such a slim majority, and he was to leave the country to go on his planned Commonwealth tour in early 1952, there was a possibility of a change of government in his absence. Clement Attlee decided to call the election to assuage that concern. (In the event, the King became too ill to travel and delegated the tour to his daughter Princess Elizabeth shortly before his death in February 1952.) Parliament was dissolved on 5 October 1951.

The Labour government, which had implemented most of its manifesto from the 1945 election, was beginning to lose cabinet ministers, such as Ernest Bevin (death) and Stafford Cripps (health issues). The Conservative Party, however, had more MPs since the 1950 general election.

Campaign
The Labour Party entered the election by being weakened by the emerging schism between Gaitskellites, on the right of the party, and the Bevanites, on its left. The party's manifesto stated that the party "proud of its record, sure in its policies—confidently asks the electors to renew its mandate". It identified four key tasks facing the United Kingdom that it would tackle: the need to work for peace, the need to work to "maintain full employment and to increase production", the need to reduce cost of living and the need to "build a just society". The manifesto argued that only a Labour government could achieve those tasks. It also contrasted the Britain of 1951 with that of the interwar years in which there had been largely Conservative-led governments by noting that the interwar period had seen "mass-unemployment; mass fear; mass misery". It did not promise more nationalisations, unlike in the previous year's election, and instead focused on offering more council housing and a pledge to "associate the workers more closely with the administration of public industries and services". However, it remained opposed to full workers' control of industries.

While Labour began to have some policy divisions during the election campaign, the Conservatives ran an efficient campaign, which was well-funded and orchestrated. Their manifesto, Britain Strong and Free, stressed that safeguarding "our traditional way of life" was integral to the Conservative purpose. Significantly, they did not propose to dismantle the British welfare state or the National Health Service which the Labour government had established. The manifesto, however, promised to "stop all further nationalisation" and to repeal the Steel Act, which had been introduced by the Labour government and was being implemented during the election season. The Conservatives also attacked Labour for ending wartime rationing and price controls too slowly and for the rise of industrial conflicts after the end of the wartime wage freeze and the Defence Regulations bans on strike actions.

As for the Liberal Party, its poor election result in 1950 only worsened this time. Unable to get the same insurance against losses of deposits of the previous year, it fielded only 109 candidates, as opposed to 478 in 1950, and thus posted the worst general election result in the party's history by getting just 2.5% of the vote and winning only six seats. The popular vote of the Liberals and later the Liberal Democrats has not fallen so low since, but their lowest number of six seats would be matched in several future elections. The Liberal Party's growing irrelevance weakened the Labour Party since two thirds of potential Liberal voters supported the Conservatives.

Four candidates were returned unopposed, all of them Ulster Unionists in Northern Ireland. It is the most recent general election in which any candidates have been returned unopposed although there have been later unopposed by-elections.

The subsequent Labour defeat was significant for several reasons. The party polled almost a quarter-million votes more than the Conservative Party and its National Liberal Party ally combined; won the most votes that Labour has ever won (as of 2019); and won the most votes of any political party in any election in British political history, a number that would not be surpassed until the Conservative Party's victory in 1992.

However, the Conservative Party formed the next government with a majority of 17 seats. It performed much better with male working-class voters than in the elections of 1945 or 1950 and tipped the vote away from Labour in Lancashire, the Home Counties and East Anglia. Under the first-past-the-post electoral system, many Labour votes were "wasted" because they were included in large majorities for MPs in safe seats.

Results



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Total votes cast: 28,596,594.

Votes summary
Headline swing: 1.13% to Conservative.

Transfers of seats
All comparisons are with the 1950 election.

Manifestos

 * CONSERVATIVE PARTY: 1951, 1951 Conservative Party manifesto
 * Labour Party Election Manifesto, 1951 Labour Party manifesto
 * The Nation's Task, 1951 Liberal Party manifesto