How far do you agree that the ability of the conservatives to remain in office between 1951 and 1964 was because of the Labour party’s weakness?

Conservative governments between 1951 and 1964 have managed to achieve a lot and therefore gain the populations trust. But were the conservative candidates elected thanks to their achievements or due to the weakness of their main contender: the Labour party? We will therefore see in this essay what were their different achievements and weaknesses and their contenders own weaknesses.

During the thirteen years the Conservatives were in power after 1951, there were four leaders who held office as prime minister. The first one was Winston Churchill (1951-1955). During his time, there were many developments. First, rationing was ended: British finances were disastrously poor after World War 2 and a lot of Britain’s food was imported and Britain didn’t have any foreign currency to pay for the imports. Britain simply couldn’t afford food from abroad and had to ration the little food they had. The rationing ended in 1954. Nationalisation continued during these years, only steel and iron were denationalised because of many serious problems at the time such as obsolescent plants, outdated technology, lack of capital investment funds and plants operating under capacity and therefore at low efficiency. Denationalisation was the best solution for the industries. The Conservative Party also committed itself to building 300.000 houses a year (achieved in 1953). Britain also detonated its first atomic bomb under Churchill’s leadership in 1952, which places Britain higher in terms of strength. Britain’s forgotten war, the Korean War, also ended under Churchill’s leadership. No other country, except the US, had committed more troops than Britain and its armed forces contributed to some of the war’s bloodiest and strategically key battles. Butskellism was also a thing during Churchill’s time. Butler was the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1951 to 1955 and he continued Labour’s main aims such as trying to maintain full employment, trying to achieve economic growth, expanding welfare state, developing a nuclear weapons programme and keeping Britain’s heavily committed military defence programme.
The second Conservative leader who came to power was Anthony Eden (1955-1957) and had been long regarded as the heir-apparent to Churchill as Conservative leader. However, he did not manage to achieve a lot during his short administration. The election he called after becoming prime minister in 1955 increased Conservative majority. This was his only real success during his leadership. To silence criticisms, he wanted to achieve success in foreign affairs; however, his blind ambition took him in the Suez affair which destroyed his reputation. He is often forgotten about when people think of Conservative dominance in the post-World War 2 time.
Anthony Eden was followed by Harold MacMillan, who has been Britain’s prime minister from 1957 to 1963. Although Britain’s economy was back on tracks after the Churchill and Eden years, the British economy still appeared weak but MacMillan did not change its economic and financial policies and continued on Butler’s main lines of policy which were to operate a mixed economy and to follow a loose form of Keynesianism. This was put into place to avoid the extremes of inflation and deflation. The policies would be modified depending upon particular problems as they came along. It has been shown that budget policies were used as short term measures to buy votes in general elections (tax cuts just before elections etc.), Which created an increase in consumer spending which led to higher inflation. To counter this, the government rose tax and interest rates, cuts in public spending and a limit was put on wage increases. Popularity was beginning to decrease; therefore, to regain lost popularity MacMillan launched an expansionist policy with the lowering of tax and interest rates and consumer spending exploded. Because of this, Britain had a balance of payments deficit of over 800 million pounds. It had therefore been observed that Britain had no genuine economic policy. The strategy they led has been called “Stop-Go”. The achievement that stayed into minds by the Conservative Governments is the living standards rising. MacMillan’s sentence still remains memorable today as he stated that the British people had “never had it so good”. The rise of living standards was characterized by the rise in wages, even though there have been periods of difficulties, the broad picture is that the living standards have kept increasing and this is partly thanks to the rising wages. Income kept ahead of prices and people were able to buy more with their money. The greater availability of credit takes also an important part in the rise of living standards. People could borrow much more money than they would have got by saving their own and repayment was made easier with a loan repayment spread over many years. This enabled people to buy manufactured goods such as private cars (1.5 to 5.5 million sales between 1950 and 1965) and foreign holidays, clothing and much more finally reached ordinary people. People also started to buy more houses in that period and therefore, between 1951 and 1964 there have been 1.7 houses built. Although there was success in the increase of well being, there still remains close to half a million unemployed people in Britain between 1951 and 1964. Sometimes this number even rose up to 800.000. This is why there was a claim that it was not realistic to state that British people “never had it so good”. During MacMillan’s time, women have managed to acquire constitutional and legal rights as citizens on the same terms as men. This is a huge development during the Conservative dominance and modernises the British society a lot.
From 1963 to 1964, Alec Douglas-Home was nominated as the successor of Harold MacMillan. Conservatives were weakened and lost the general elections. After this, Conservatives changed their ways and adopted a democratic system involving the balloting of Conservatives MP’s.

From 1951 to 1964, the Labour Party experienced many problems and was weakened throughout the years which gave the ability to the Conservative Party to win the elections and impose their policies. During this period, the recurring disputes within the party are one explanation of the fact that the Conservatives stayed in office for so long. Hugh Gaitskell who succeeded Attlee in 1955 as party leader was one of the most gifted politicians of the day. Unfortunately, his early death in 1963 prevented him from being prime minister, which was a role for which his abilities appeared to make him especially fitted. He was unlucky to become the Labour Party’s leader when it was in one of its most disruptive periods. In 1959, it was stated that Labour Party had a huge chance of winning the general elections since the Suez crisis gave a chance to the population to punish the Conservative Party for its involvement. However the economic recovery led by the Conservatives was being held at that time. The elections therefore came at the wrong moment for Labour Party and the slogan Conservatives came up with: “Life is better with the Conservatives, don’t let Labour ruin it” had a huge impact. By trying to counter the impact of the slogan, Labour came up with promises that were too hurriedly drafted and raised questions within the population which embarrassed the Labour candidates rather than helped them. After that, a series of internal disagreements regarding the international policies came up and were definitely not a vote winner for Labour Party. Labour did not have a true character for their party, there were splits over unilateralism and uncertainty over whether Britain should join Common Market or not. This pushed Labour to its defeat at the 1959 general elections and Conservatives won a new round. After this third defeat in a row, anger rose within Labour Party and a series of accusations within the party disunited the party. Gaitskell accused the left of weakening the movement with their demands of unilateralism and they replied by accusing him of violating the party’s principle by dropping nationalisation as a primary goal. The problems of party unity, the internal opposition, the poor 1959 campaign and the internal struggles led the Labour Party to defeat between 1951 and 1964. The rising prosperity in the UK did not help them to turn the corner.

It is true that the Labour Party’s weaknesses have had a huge impact in their loss streak during the 1951-1964 time periods. However, meanwhile Conservatives have managed to achieve a lot and managed all these years to keep their status as favourites and to make Britain a better place to live in.