The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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The
‘Allies’ had defeated Japan in the Far East, and Germany in Europe.
Invading American, British
and Soviet armies had liberated Eastern Europe and
Western Europe. Resistance forces within the European
countries themselves had
played an important role in the victory. “Britain, its Empire, and all that
it stood
for had won through. ‘If the British Empire, and its Commonwealth last for a
thousand
years men will still say this was their finest hour’, said the war-time
Prime Minister Winston
Churchill in 1940, when nothing seemed able to
withstand Hitler and his victorious
troops.”13

In
Britain the Parliament elected in 1935 had continued to sit throughout
the war. Its character had been
almost set by a party truce: “it was understood that
if a seat fell vacant, the candidate of the
party which had previously held it would
not be opposed by candidates of the other major
parties.”14 This situation was not
popular with everybody. It
had provoked the emergence of a Common Wealth
party and the candidacy of Independents who had not felt
obliged to accept the
truce; and in a number of cases they had been successful at by-elections. On
the
other hand “the Conservatives were associated with the distress of the 1930s and
with
attempts to appease the dictators between 1935 and 1938.”15
Obviously a
general election could not be delayed.

On
21st May, Attlee sent a letter to Churchill stating that “there were acute
differences between the
parties, especially over economic policy.”16 Thus,
Attlee
proposed an autumn election. Churchill’s reply was to tend his resignation to the
King.
Four hours later he was summoned back and asked to form a new
administration. He accepted the commision,
and asked for a dissolution of
Parliament, which was granted. Britain would go to the polls on 5th July
1945 for
the first time in a general election since November 1935.

The
result, which was declared on 26th July, showed that “the
Conservatives had suffered their greatest
reverse since the Liberal landslide of
1906. Labour had won 166 seats from the Conservatives, and lost
none of them.

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