By Michael Burke
The 1951 general election ended Labour’s period in office. Those six years 1945-51 are generally regarded, including on the left as seminal ones for Labour, as the practical application of some of the main tenets of a left programme for Britain.
As a result, the successes of the Labour government have been widely discussed and even celebrated on film by Ken Loach. But there has been too little discussion of the international environment, the domestic political choices they led to and, ultimately, the causes of its defeat.
The most celebrated Labour government in history was voted out of office a few short years later. The reasons for that failure are worth examining now as they hold important lessons for the current period.
Clement Attlee’s government had delivered the National Health Service, major nationalisations such as coal, rail and steel, lad laid the foundations of the welfare state and had sustained a commitment to full-employment commitment. Yet it lost power.
A Tory party led by Churchill had vowed to undo Labour’s marquee reforms. They even referred to ‘gauleiters’ in attempting to equate Nazi apparatchiks to the local GP. They were unable to reverse the 1945 reforms then and have never yet been unable to undo some of the key Labour social reforms, although the economic changes are now long gone.
In the 1951 election itself Labour secured more votes than the Conservatives—nearly 14 million, a record at the time—but fewer seats under the arcane first-past-the-post system that traditionally benefitted the Tories.
The decisive factor in the Labour defeat was economic. The Attlee government struggled with a fundamental economic contradiction: Britain could not simultaneously sustain its progressive domestic programme and the very high military spending imposed by Cold War rearmament. Atlee’s government chose to resolve this contradiction with austerity. By suppressing consumption through an extension of war-time rationing, it hoped to be able to afford both post-War reconstruction and renewed rearmament. It was this continuation of post-War austerity that was rejected by voters.
International comparisons are useful, not least because the establishment of a ‘welfare state’ was not a uniquely British event, as it is sometimes portrayed. Something similar was happening across Western Europe.
Tens of millions dead, the utter devastation of Europe’s cities, and the real threat of mass starvation called for extraordinary measures. The US believed that the Red Army, which was widely understood then (if not now) as the victor over the Nazis, might sweep through the rest of Europe, or new uprisings in any number of countries might expand the ‘Soviet bloc’ by domestic upheavals.
The Marshall Plan, offering large-scale, highly conditional aid to Western Europe was conceived explicitly by the US as a Cold War initiative. The stated objective was to stop the spread of Communism.
But some countries’ return on the Marshall Plan funds was far greater than others, along with contrasting expectations about their international roles. West Germany was explicitly forbidden from maintaining armed forces under post-War treaties. Its Marshall Plan funds were directed towards post-War reconstruction and industrial regeneration, which led ultimately to the ‘West German economic miracle’, achieved through high levels of investment.
By contrast, Britain, which received double West Germany’s Marshall Plan funds, was very much expected to be a key contributor to the Cold War on the US side. And, outside Europe the Cold War became red hot. The Chinese Revolution had been victorious in 1949. When civil war broke out in Korea in 1950, the US was determined that it would not allow the same to happen there. Its key ally was Britain, and it was expected to contribute substantial personnel and armaments.
Britain was already spending 6% of GDP on the military before the Korean War began. It climbed rapidly from there. The Labour government committed to a further extension of past-War austerity, ration books included, from that point onwards.
The consequences were severe. Rearmament diverted resources from productive investment and production for civilian needs, including housing. Voters experienced this as endless queues, shortages and rising prices, even as the government pointed to its earlier reforms. The Tories exploited the frustration, promising to ease rationing and accelerate housebuilding.
The Atlee government made choices that were tied to its support for the US war machine over the well-being of the population. A socialist economic programme requires prioritising investment in the productive capacity of the domestic economy to improve the living standards of the working class. This was the opposite.
High military spending—especially when driven by external alliance commitments rather than genuine defensive necessity—crowds out needed investment. The resources spent on rearmament could not simultaneously fund expanded social provision without either higher taxation that fell on workers or open cuts to the welfare state. Gaitskell’s NHS charges represented the latter path. The Bevanite resignations highlighted the contradiction and the voters registered it at the ballot box.
The decisive political fact was the popular rejection of continued austerity. Voters who had endorsed the 1945 programme of social reconstruction were not prepared to accept that the price of that programme was permanent scarcity at home while resources poured into military commitments abroad. The narrow Conservative victory, despite Labour’s higher popular vote, reflected the concentration of discontent in marginal seats and shifts among relatively small numbers of floating voters.
The lesson is strategic. Progressive governments that accept the logic of permanently high or rising military spending under the guise of obligations to the US will find their domestic programmes undermined. Austerity then becomes the unavoidable method of fiscal adjustment.
It should be noted too that rearmament did not lead to economic growth. On the contrary, while the German miracle was at work, Britain’s diversion of investment towards higher military spending led it to become the ‘sick man of Europe’.
Despite its very considerable achievements, in 1951 the British electorate ended Labour’s time in office because a literal policy of ‘guns, not butter’ had become intolerable.
Similar choices are now posed. The current government has no such bank of achievements to fall back on.
Prioritising economic development and social provision over the spurious claims of rearmament might have led to a very different outcome in 1951. That is what is required now. Devotion to US demands for increased military spending can only come at the expense of the needs of the population, and the inevitable political consequences that will follow.
This article first appeared in the Morning Star here.
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