Talk:1945 United Kingdom general election/Archive 1

Untitled
The MPs elected in the UK general election, 1945 doesn't match this document - it falls quite a few short, and most of the party totals don't match. sjorford mmmmm  14:04, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Why are the changes from previous seat totals missing? Ewan 16:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

The article states that "The single greatest factor in Labour's dramatic win appeared to be the policy of social reform." substantiating this through their support of the proposals in the Beveridge Report. During the Election, the author of the report, Sir William Beveridge was to be frequently seen campaigning the length and breadth of the country not just in support of his proposals, but also in support of a party willing to impliment them. The party was NOT the Labour party but the Liberal party. He was significantly committed to this party's cause that he also stood at the election as a Liberal candidate. The fact that the Liberal and Labour parties more or less shared the same social reform policies combined with the fact that Labour did very well in the elections and the Liberals did very poorly should point any analyst to the conslusion that Labour's social reform policies could not have been a factor, let alone 'the single greatest factor' in their win. (Graemp 10:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC))

Maybe, but the Liberal Party was in no position to win the 1945 election, having firmly become the 'third party' earlier in the 20th Century. 155.136.80.171 11:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Continuing the reason's for Labour's victory the article states "With the war drawing to an end by 1945, the National Government sought to call an election in a bid to return to a two party system." This statement is incorrect. Churchill hoped to continue the Coalition government after the war but Labour and the Liberals wished to return to a party system. Their may be some value in the statement of Churchill's intentions if you accept that he would have been happy to continue with a Coalition government if only one of either the Labour or Liberal parties had decided to remain as this would have in effect produced an essentially two-party system. The statement makes no contribution to an explanation of why Labour won. Conversely their is evidence that the decision by the Labour party to leave the coalition was unpopular and may have detracted from their victory. (Graemp) —The preceding  signed but undated. Dave is foreign — Preceding unsigned comment added by 185.99.167.178 (talk) 12:14, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Reason election was called
"With the Second World War coming to an end in Europe, the Labour Party decided to pull out of the wartime national government, necessitating a new election set for July of 1945.

Is this strictly true? The Tories had more than enough MPs to sustain an administration. I'd say it's more the case that after ten years without an election and the war all but won, the case for the continuance of a non-coalition administration could not be made. A fine distinction, I know, but I think it holds up. Anybody else got a view? BTLizard (talk) 14:19, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's true that it wasn't technically necessary if the government could have held majorities in both the Commons and the Lords, in addition to gaining the support of the King, which would have been entirely feasible. But if so, they would probably have seen the trend of by-election losses accelerate as the mood in the country was generally in favour of a timely election, and with every reason to believe they would win the election, there was little reason to. Warofdreams talk 20:41, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked it slightly. Essentially I've substituted "precipitating" for "necessitating". As I say, it's a fine distinction but I think the one is just a shade more accurate than the other. BTLizard (talk) 13:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's a good choice of words. Warofdreams talk 17:18, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The Parliament Act mandated an election every 5 years and this was only put into suspension for the period of the war. By 1945 there had not been an election for 10 years. Of course, in theory, any parliament could vote itself into permanent existence but I'm sure the thought of doing so wouldn't have crossed Churchill's mind once it was clear the coalition had broken up.

Exile (talk) 21:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Churchill would have had memories of the circumstances in which the Parliament Act came about, having been in parliament and in (a Liberal) government 35 years earlier when his colleagues were locking horns with the House of Lords over Lloyd George's budget.Cloptonson (talk) 20:51, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

There was a lot of debate internally and next to nobody wanted an election so soon. Churchill initially proposed maintaining the coalition until the defeat of Japan (which came much sooner than expected) or for eighteen months, whichever was sooner, with perhaps a referendum to ratify the existing parliament. Labour wanted to leave the coalition in preparation for an autumn election and called Churchill's bluff of a snap poll. A lot of people, including many in Labour, believed Churchill would win regardless. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:53, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Majority
British general elections says that the majority for Atlee was 146; this article says 145. Which is correct? 86.134.117.1 (talk) 10:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Navigational issue
How do I get from this article to the article that describes what this Parliament did while it was in power? Perhaps a link to the relevant article should be added to the infobox? &mdash; Brent Dax 00:06, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Percentages are wrong
Not only do, if you crunch the numbers in this article, Labour's votes add up to 48.9%, the figure I have seen everywhere else is 47.8%.87.112.85.31 (talk) 13:12, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I just noticed this too. The 49.7% figure isn't referenced or repeated elsewhere. Prokhorovka (talk) 15:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah wait, the figures are correct but for Great Britain not the UK. Northern Ireland is the key. Prokhorovka (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I just got my spreadsheet to add up the votes cast, and the total comes to 24,482,950, and not the 24,073,025 quoted below the table. In either case, all the percentages given are incorrect. As the table covers all 640 seats, the explanation for the discrepancy is not inclusion/exclusion of the Northern Ireland figures. If the percentages are correct, then the stats of votes cast for individual parties must be incorrect. I can't actually see what the source of the voting figures is! Sasha (talk) 10:45, 3 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I have found another source, UK General Election results July 1945, which includes data about the 15 two member constituencies, and the university constituencies which used STV. Also, the turnout rates do not reflect three constituencies where the members were returned unopposed. This is proving to be a more complex problem than I anticipated. Sasha (talk) 11:19, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

There are some problems with the figures here, as others have noted. Summarising what follows:

1. The total Labour vote was 11,967,746 as shown on Wikipedia.

2. The total votes cast were as in (A) or (B) or (C) below, that is about 25,100,000. Using that the Labour percentage of the vote is 47.7% as shown on Wikipedia.

3. There are about 610,000 votes missing from the Wikpedia table of votes cast, and about 1,020,000 votes missing from the Wikipedia 24,073,025 summary figure.

Finding exact figures seems problematic, so for now I suggest that the Wikipedia article is amended to note these discrepancies.

I've used these resources: (A) http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP12-43/RP12-43.pdf (B) http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/ge45/results.htm (C) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge45.shtml

The total votes cast in the UK: (A) 25,100,000 (B) 25,092,126 (C) 25,095,195 Note that although (B) and (C) give different exact figures, they are in good agreement with the House of Commons approximate figure.

Wikipedia Party           Elected   Votes%       Votes  implied Total Votes Labour             393      47.7   11,967,746  25,100,000 +/-26,000, in good agreement with (A), (B), (C) Conservative       197      36.2    8,716,211  24,100,000 +/-33,000 Liberal National    11       2.9      686,652 National             2       0.5      130,513 total Conservative 210      39.6    9,533,376 ... [Totals             640     100.0   24,482,950 as noted by [Sasha] ] Total votes cast: 24,073,025 (410,000 smaller than table total). Turnout 72.8%

Comparing (C) and (A) with Wikipedia Total     MPs (C)    votes (C)    votes (A)   votes (Wikipedia) Labour        393   11,967,746   11,970,000   11,967,746 Conservative  210    9,972,010    9,970,000    9,533,376 about -440,000 Liberal        12    2,252,430    2,250,000    2,177,938 about -70,000 PC/SNP                               50,000 Other          25      903,009      860,000 Total         640   25,095,195   25,100,000   24,482,950 about -610,000 \         but 24,073,025 (about -1,020,000) is given under the table

For the Wikipedia figure for Conservative I've added Conservative + Liberal National + National because this gives a total of 210 MPs.

Colinwb8 (talk) 01:35, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Removed information
User:Mwhite148 has twice removed information on polling dates from the article, including a reference. On the second occasion, the explanation given was "Don't see why the fact that a single constituency polled later than others is relevant in the first sentence". That would be fine if the information was being moved elsewhere in the article, but it's simply being removed, leaving the remaining information on polling dates - in the lead - unreferenced! I've no objection to rewording and moving the information further down the article, but please don't remove information like this, and, in particular, the supporting reference. Warofdreams talk 09:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

National
Should Churchill's party be listed as 'National' rather than 'Conservative'? From a look at '45 election literature (eg http://shibleyrahman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/450705-Help-Him-Finish-Poster.jpg), the Conservatives campaigned as 'National' during this election. 90.219.201.45 (talk) 11:34, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No. There was no such party as the National Party. The Conservatives fought the election in alliance with the Liberal Nationals and a handful of other candidates who described themselves as National. If this is not clear enough from the article, then perhaps it could be made clearer. Graemp (talk) 12:06, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
 * My grandfather was a returning serviceman when he saw posters sloganned 'Vote National - help him [Churchill} finish the job!' in Newhaven, Sussex. Thinking it might mean he might be called out on service again, he asked a local resident what 'the job' meant - he was told jingoistically, 'Oh, haven't you heard? Churchill won the war!' To which grandfather replied, 'I thought WE [the servicemen] won the war!'Cloptonson (talk) 20:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Result detail part - "Standing"
I have to assume most British understands what "Standing" means in this context. But although I watched most of BBC's recent Election Night (through Danish DR2) just last week, I can't be certain of its meaning here. I might guess though, perhaps not all parties participated in all constituencies. But this doesn't really explain why the largest parties, Labour and Tories not even have a candidate in every constituency. However hopeless result the party in question made in the previous election. So I'm back to uncertainty, and would very much get some help regarding the word "standing" in this context. Boeing720 (talk) 21:36, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Standing is short for candidates nominated. Running could equally be used. The word Standing will be widely understood in the UK in this context. The Conservatives contested the election in alliance with others including the Liberal Nationals. There was also some electoral arrangements between the left of centre parties to not run against each other. This explains why no party ran a full slate. Graemp (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2015 (UTC)


 * This was still an era when parties did not stand everywhere - in some cases parties either had no local organisation (there's a tale of how a father and son held a two person meeting in the Western Isles creating a Conservative Association and appointing themselves as chairman and candidate respectively) or had pacts with another party (there were stll some areas with pacts between Conservatives and Sinclairite Liberals) or found the local MP sufficiently agreeable to not oppose them. Additionally the Labour Party wasn't organised in Northern Ireland at this time. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:51, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The Conservative Party didn't organise in Northern Ireland either, while in Churchill's own Woodford seat Labour and Liberal parties abstained from contesting, leaving one independent candidate opposing Churchill.Cloptonson (talk) 19:14, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

National Liberals
In my view, the infobox on this article ought to contain the National Liberals: for one thing, they had only one fewer MP than the Sinclairite Liberals; for another, they had more MPs than the Sinclairite Liberals in 1945 (edit - I mean 1935); for another, their MPs are counted as a part of the Tory party in the 1950 infobox because they had, by that point, merged with the Conservatives at constituency level (if I remember correctly); for another, they had 11 MPs, which is more than many parties that are included in election infoboxes, such as the Lib Dems at the 2015 election. However, 86.184.5.236 removed them in January, and when I reinstated them the other day, 86.152.221.76 has twice reverted my edits. I have explained my rationale (which I have outlined again here) in the edit summaries, whereas 86.152.221.76 has left their summaries blank.

I do not wish to engage in an WP:edit war. Could 86.152.221.76 explain themself, please, and could anyone else who has an opinion comment, so that we can have a consensus on this rather trivial, and rather obvious, point? If no other comments, I will revert again in two days. Dionysodorus (talk) 14:30, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * It was 1947 that the Conservatives and Liberal Nationals agreed an effective merger of organisations, so that from 1950 onwards they should be regarded as one and the same (even though a variety of party labels continued to be used at election time). As far as Wikipedia's General Election pages are concerned, this provides a reason why we may want to treat the Liberal Nationals of 1945 differently from the National Liberals of 1950. I can see no logical reason to treat the 1945 Liberal Nationals any differently from the 1935 Liberal Nationals. Therefore, in my view, there is a case for continuing to include the Liberal Nationals in the infobox for 1945 but probably not thereafter. Hence Dionysodorus is right to restore. Graemp (talk) 15:47, 17 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Right, well, I will restore then. Thanks Graemp. Dionysodorus (talk) 23:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

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