Why Did The Labour Party Lose

Keir Hardie founded the labour party in 1900. After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." On the 26th of July 1945, the Labour government won the general election with the labour party wining 393 seats, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat (also called The Coalition: Our Programme for Government) won 210 seats, the Liberals won 12 seats and the Communist won 2 seats. The Labour party had an overall majority of 147 making Clement Attlee the prime minister for the
Although the Labour party lost the 1951 general election, the Attlee government prior to the loss made some significant changes that still benefit the UK in present day. The Labour party had held office just twice in previous years, in 1924 and in 1929-31, however throughout the time of the war years its authority in the UK had gathered both experience and trust. Like most governments, they had their positive and negative aspects. The Labour government inherited the severe economic problems of the pre-war period with the added burden of the economic destabilisation of war. British exports in 1945 stood at a third of their already low 1939 level. A flurry of legislation covered three main areas - nationalisation and economic planning, social welfare and trade union law. The Atlee government started by nationalising the Bank of England who was previously a private bank that lent money it created out of nothing to the English government and was paid back with interest. The Coal
One of them was the recovery of the Conservative party from the loss they experienced in 1945 when Winston Churchill re-ran for a second term. The conservatives campaigned more thoroughly than the last general election in 1945. This was rather important to the Tories as they were expecting a victory in the last election considering Britain had just been brought out of the war with Churchill and were rather baffled they had lost. In the 1951 election, they were more prepared to fight for seats in the House of Commons. Historian, AJP Taylor found that the 1950 general election saw a flood of brilliant new moderate members of parliament; this was critical as they were prepared to fight and old and tiring Attlee government, in this manner seeming more appealing to the electorate. After their defeat in 1945, the Conservative party also had a new chairman, Lord Woolton and had younger members of parliament such as Richard Austen Butler who brought innovative ideas to the party. The nationalisation act also gave the Tories something they could use to attack the labour party when it came to the 1951 general election. “Under the direction of the dynamic Lord Woolton, ‘a cheerful cove’ as a colleage put it, the conservative party had reformed its finances and constituency organisation and was much better positioned to fight for seats and votes in