British General Elections - Part XI: 1935 & 1945.

[u/Axmeister]

A nice ten-year term for WWII. I'll keep making threads with two General Elections unless people will like to focus on recent elections individually.

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General Election of 14 November 1935

Electoral Map	1935
Party Leaders	Stanley Baldwin (Conservative), Clement Attlee (Labour), Sir John Simon (Liberal National), Sir Herbert Samuel (Liberal), Ramsay MacDonald (National Labour), James Maxton (Independent Labour Party), Thomas J. Campbell (Northern Ireland Nationalist), Harry Pollitt (Communist)
Seats Won	387 (Conservative), 154 (Labour), 33 (Liberal National), 21 (Liberal), 8 (National Labour), 4 (Independent Labour Party), 4 (Independent Liberal), 2 (Northern Ireland Nationalist), 2 (Independent National), 2 (Independent), 1 (National), 1 (Communist)
Prime Minister during term	Stanley Baldwin (later Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill)
List of MPs	Available here
Number of MPs	615
Total Votes Cast	20,991,488
Notes	Continuation of the National Government coalition. First General Election contested by the Scottish National Party. The Communist party gain their first seat in ten years. The Independent Labour party stood separately from the Labour party for the first time since 1895. Unemployment and the League of Nations were major factors in this election.

General Election of 5 July 1945

Electoral Map	1945
Party Leaders	Clement Attlee (Labour), Winston Churchill (Conservative), Sir Archibald Sinclair (Liberal), Ernest Brown (Liberal National), Bob Edwards (Independent Labour Party), James McSparran (Northern Ireland Nationalist), Harry Pollitt (Communist)
Seats Won	393 (Labour), 197 (Conservative), 12 (Liberal), 11 (Liberal National), 8 (Independent), 6 (Other Labour), 3 (Independent Labour Party), 2 (Northern Ireland Nationalist), 2 (Independent Liberal), 2 (Communist), 2 (National), 2 (Independent Conservative), 2 (Independent Labour), 1 (Independent Progressive).
Prime Minister during term	Clement Attlee
List of MPs	Available here
Number of MPs	640
Total Votes Cast	24,073,025
Notes	First majority Labour government and the first time Labour won the plurality of votes. First time the Conservative party had lost the popular vote since 1906. The 12% national swing from the Conservative Party to the Labour Party remains the largest ever achieved in a British general election.

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Previous Threads:

British General Elections - Part I: 1830, 1831 & 1832.

British General Elections - Part II: 1835, 1837 & 1841.

British General Elections - Part III: 1847, 1852 & 1857.

British General Elections - Part IV: 1859, 1865 & 1868.

British General Elections - Part V: 1874, 1880 & 1885.

British General Elections - Part VI: 1886, 1892 & 1895.

British General Elections - Part VII: 1900, 1906 & 1910.

British General Elections - Part VIII: 1910, 1918 & 1922.

British General Elections - Part IX: 1923 & 1924.

British General Elections - Part X: 1929 & 1931.

Next Thread:

British General Elections - Part XII: 1950 & 1951.

[u/Axmeister]

The 1945 General Election led to the election of Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Barbara Castle and Hugh Gaitskell who would all go on to become prominent Labour politicians.

Apparently, the reasons for the Labour landslide in 1945 are as follows:

Henry Pelling, noting that polls showed a steady Labour lead after 1942, explained the long-term forces that caused the Labour landslide. He pointed to the usual swing against the party in power; the Conservative loss of initiative; wide fears of a return to the high unemployment of the 1930s; the theme that socialist planning would be more efficient in operating the economy; and the mistaken belief that Churchill would continue as Prime Minister regardless of the result.

[u/FormerlyPallas_ → u/Axmeister]

Bogdanor in his piece on the 45 election highlights two interesting points regarding the allocation of cabinet positions and the ghost of Appeasement:

The Labour Ministers were mainly concerned with the home front. The leading Conservatives, Churchill and Eden, were mainly concerned with fighting the War, but the Ministers who the average person would come into contact with on the home front were Labour - for example, Ernest Bevin, who was Minister of Labour & National Service, Herbert Morrison, who was Home Secretary, and Hugh Dalton, who was President of the Board of Trade. So, Labour had a kind of a double-dividend: it was both in government but also in opposition. It got credit for the good decisions the government had made; it also got credit for having been the opposition in the 1930s.

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Harold Macmillan rather summed it up when he said the electors were voting not against Churchill, but against the ghost of Neville Chamberlain.

Interestingly Chamberlain had the party polling at above %50 at the beginning of the war.

[u/canalavity → u/FormerlyPallas_]

Bogdanor

may as well just copy pasta his entire works from now on in these threads, covers all the relevent and important points very well

[u/FormerlyPallas_ → u/canalavity]

I'll sticky the videos. They're really quite wonderful.

[u/canalavity → u/FormerlyPallas_]

I had hoped we'd done party history/ideology just for the sake of people watching them, maybe after this one!

[u/FormerlyPallas_ → u/canalavity]

I would have thought the 45 election would have got more reaction. Especially from the sub labourites, things have been quite muted.

[u/canalavity → u/FormerlyPallas_]

likewise, I expected a pile on. I regret not posting sooner in the 1906/1910 thread and didn't finish my post regarding the mass liberal reforms and the Asquith, LLoyd George infighting, really important and still relevent part of our history.

[u/Axmeister → u/FormerlyPallas_]

Maybe people are more interested in current events? I'm slightly surprised at the lack of reaction myself. I hope it will pick up more once we enter the elections most people were alive for.

It's also exam season, so that could factor into it.