This is a photograph of the big three at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.
The Allies had defeated Nazi Germany just two months previously and Japan too was
very close to collapse. In this photograph you can see Soviet leader
Joseph Stalin U.S. President Harry. S. Truman and of course Britain's Prime
Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill had led Britain through its darkest hour in
1940 all the way to victory over Nazi Germany. He was a very popular leader
whose approval rating never dropped below 78%, yet just a few days later
someone else was sitting in his chair. On the 26th of July
Churchill learned that his Conservative Party had suffered a crushing general
election defeat to the Labour Party. Now Britain's new Prime Minister Clement
Attlee took Churchill's place at the Potsdam Conference table. So what
happened? How did Britain's greatest wartime leader lose the 1945 general
election? I think the key reason for Churchill's defeat is that he's seen above
all as war leader. That's James Taylor - Assistant Director of Narrative and
Content at Imperial War Museums. Churchill's overriding priority was victory over
Nazi Germany and then Japan. But British voters wanted real social change as well,
they wanted a leader who would win the peace and they did not see Churchill as
that leader. Others were upset that fighting happened in the first place
many people in Britain blame the Conservatives for not standing up to
Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, and his territorial demands before the
war - a policy known as appeasement. Churchill had been appeasement loudest
and most outspoken opponent but in 1945 even if people admired Churchill they
were still angry at Neville Chamberlain and the guilty men of the Conservative
Party in the 1930s. Unlike Churchill's Conservatives the
Labour Party seemed to offer a vision of a new social order in Britain. Labour
promised better housing, full employment and free health care. The British people
wanted real change when the war was over and the blueprint for that change came
in the form of a 300-page government document written by the economist Sir
William Beveridge. The report had the rather dry title of Social Insurance and
Allied Services, but it became known as the Beverage Report. Its author
recommended huge, radical social reforms that would take care of citizens from
the cradle to the grave, including the creation of a Welfare State and National
Health Service. Well the beverage report went as close
to viral as anything could those days and it really inspired the press and
the public. I mean people actually queued to buy this, you know, rather dry document
which is incredible to us today. People had been at war for over three years now and
Beveridge offered a picture of real hope for Britain. The Labour Party
enthusiastically supported Beveridge's ideas and that made them look like the
party of the future, the Conservative Party was less enthusiastic and that made
them look like the party of the past.
If we focus in on the two parties campaign strategies you can clearly see
the differences between them. Labour's whole manifesto emphasised public
ownership, the nationalisation of industry, as the way to prosperity and a
better future. The war had been fought by the people and the people would now
fight for the peace. Churchill was no fan of this scheme of
public ownership and in a speech in June during his election campaign he said
that in order to implement their policies Labour would have to "fall back
on some kind of Gestapo" so a reference to the Nazi secret police and that kind
of scare mongering did not go down well at all with voters. The Conservatives took a very
different tact in their campaign. They focused on Churchill's personal appeal
as you can see from this poster, it implores people to help Churchill finish
the job by winning the war against Japan. The campaign's emphasis on the war just
seemed to emphasise that Churchill's only interest was, well, war. So while
people celebrated Churchill's efforts in winning the war in Europe they saw him
as a prime minister for wartime and not for peacetime. On the 5th of July 1945
the big day finally arrived and the people of Britain went to vote. The
results were delayed until July 26th to allow votes to come in from those
servicemen and women who were still overseas. Churchill expected to win, the
Conservatives expected to win, but they were to receive a huge shock. It was a
landslide victory for Labour, who had won nearly twice as many seats as the
Conservatives. I'd say that it wasn't so much Churchill himself, but the
Conservative Party that lost the 1945 General Election. He was still very
popular, but he became the victim of a new dawn for British politics. If you
think about it, this new Labour Government in 1935 created much of the
social fabric of the Britain that we know today. So, from the National Health
Service to National Insurance, it changed Britain forever.