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Y112: Britain 1900–1951

Domestic politics 1940–1951: the 1945 election, the Attlee governments and the elections of 1950 and 1951

  • 3 things to know
  • Unit group 1

Overview

Recall questions on Labour’s 1945 victory, national insurance and the NHS, nationalisation, housing, the balance of payments, austerity, Attlee’s leadership and challenges to it, the Labour split of 1951 and the elections of 1950 and 1951.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Evaluation

Why did Labour win in 1945?

Numbers

What did austerity mean in practice after 1945?

Key term

What was the result of the 1945 election?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was the result of the 1945 election?

    Model answer

    Labour won 393 seats to the Conservatives' 213, a majority of 146, and formed a majority government for the first time.

  2. 2

    Why did Labour win in 1945?

    Model answer

    Voters associated the Conservatives with unemployment and appeasement in the 1930s, Labour ministers had governed the home front competently, the electorate wanted the Beveridge plan carried out and Labour was trusted to do it, and Churchill's warning that socialism would need a Gestapo struck people as absurd.

  3. 3

    What did the National Insurance Act of 1946 and the National Assistance Act of 1948 provide?

    Model answer

    The first created a universal contributory scheme paying benefits for sickness, unemployment, maternity, widowhood and retirement; the second swept away the last of the Poor Law and gave a means-tested safety net to anyone the insurance scheme did not reach.

  4. 4

    How was the National Health Service created, and what strain did it come under?

    Model answer

    Bevan's Act took effect on 5 July 1948, bringing the voluntary and municipal hospitals under regional boards and making treatment by doctor, dentist and optician free at the point of use, the doctors' resistance being bought off with private practice and pay beds; demand far outran the estimates, and the charges for spectacles and dentures imposed in 1951 drove Bevan and Wilson to resign.

  5. 5

    Which industries did Labour nationalise, and on what model?

    Model answer

    The Bank of England, coal, civil aviation, cables, electricity, gas, inland transport and finally iron and steel — about a fifth of the economy — were vested in public corporations run by appointed boards on the Morrisonian model, with compensation paid to the former owners.

  6. 6

    What was Labour's record on housing and schooling after 1945?

    Model answer

    Bevan gave priority to generously built council houses and about a million homes went up by 1951, four fifths of them municipal, supported by the New Towns Act of 1946 and the planning act of 1947, while the Butler Act was carried into effect by raising the school leaving age to fifteen in 1947.

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