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Y113: Britain 1930–1997

Conservative domination 1951–1964: leaders from Churchill to Douglas-Home, scandals and Labour in opposition

  • 2 things to know
  • Unit group 1

Overview

Recall questions on the Treasury resignations of 1958, the premierships of Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Douglas-Home, the Vassall, Philby, Argyll and Profumo affairs, Conservative decline by 1964 and Labour’s divisions and defeats.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Numbers

Why was Macmillan such a formidable party leader between 1957 and 1962?

Numbers

What was the Argyll scandal, and why did it matter politically?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Why did Chancellor Thorneycroft and his Treasury ministers resign in 1958?

    Model answer

    They demanded cuts in public spending to control inflation and Macmillan refused, and he brushed the resignations aside as a little local difficulty before leaving on a Commonwealth tour.

  2. 2

    How would you characterise Churchill's peacetime premiership from 1951 to 1955?

    Model answer

    He was old and, after a stroke in 1953 concealed from the public, largely detached from domestic policy, which he left to ministers such as Butler and Macmillan while he pursued summit diplomacy until retiring in April 1955.

  3. 3

    What did Eden bring to the premiership in 1955, and how did it end?

    Model answer

    He was a hugely experienced and popular foreign-affairs specialist who at once won an increased majority, but he proved indecisive on the economy, and the Suez debacle together with collapsing health forced his resignation in January 1957.

  4. 4

    Why was Macmillan such a formidable party leader between 1957 and 1962?

    Model answer

    He restored confidence after Suez, presided over rising prosperity and won the 1959 election with a majority of about a hundred, projecting the unflappable Supermac image that mocking cartoonists had intended as an insult.

  5. 5

    Explain how Sir Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963 and why the manner of it damaged the party.

    Model answer

    He emerged through private soundings among senior Conservatives rather than a ballot of MPs and had to disclaim his earldom to sit in the Commons; the process looked archaic, Macleod and Powell refused to serve under him, and he was easily painted as a grouse-moor aristocrat out of touch with a modern country.

  6. 6

    Outline the Vassall affair.

    Model answer

    John Vassall, a clerk in the Admiralty, was blackmailed over his homosexuality into spying for the Soviet Union and was jailed in 1962, and the tribunal that followed imprisoned journalists who would not name their sources, souring the government's relations with the press.

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