Preview

It was the contrast between Douglas – Home and Wilson that led to the labour Party’s victory in 1964. Explain why you agree or disagree with this view?

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
854 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
It was the contrast between Douglas – Home and Wilson that led to the labour Party’s victory in 1964. Explain why you agree or disagree with this view?
It was the contrast between Douglas – Home and Wilson that led to the labour Party’s victory in 1964. Explain why you agree or disagree with this view

The contrast between Alec Douglas – Home and Charles Wilson was a key influence which led the Labour party to victory in 1964, but many other factors influenced the result e.g the failures and successes of both Conservative and Labour parties. On the day of the result, Labour won by the narrowest of margins. Labour took 317 seats, giving them a majority of just four and the smallest since 1847. Although Labour enjoyed a 3.5% swing from the conservatives, their share of the vote did not actually increase. However, the Tory turnout was two million down on 1959.

In 1964, Macmillan, who had hoped to lead the Tories into the next election, resigned the premiership due to ill health. When the Conservatives chose the aristocratic Sir Alec Douglas-Home, as their new leader, many say it was a gift to labour. Douglas-Home was a part of the establishment and came into power via Macmillan appointing him, his skills being in foreign affairs having been the foreign secretary. One major problem before coming into power for Douglas-Home was as he was a Lord he could not be a member of parliament therefore he had to renounce his lordship, furthermore many members of parliament and the public where nervous as he lacked experience in the House of Commons. Like many members of the cabinet 10 out of 23 to be exact attended Eton as schoolboys and being a member of the establishment as well he did not appeal to the public. One key fault Douglas-Home committed was when he openly admitted that he did not understand economics “There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible”.

Moreover on the other hand Harold Wilson was a much different candidate. Wilson had been elected Labour leader following the unexpected and untimely death of Hugh Gaitskell in 1962. A

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Assess the view that Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) had no choice but to send US troops to Vietnam in 1965.…

    • 2895 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Possibly the most important reason for the Tory victory was the growing economic prosperity. This ideology was one of the Tories key focuses since they came back into power in the post war elections of 1951 and Macmillan did a sterling job in continuing the great work by creating what was known as the “age of affluence” allowing Britain to shine through as one of the World’s major economic powers. Bolstered by an improvement of world trade in the later 1950s, which enabled Britain to import about 29% more goods than it had in 1951 for the name number of exports proved that Britain was truly changing for the good. This massive economic growth also had a positive effect on the citizens who saw their average weekly wage double since 1951. The increase in real wages saw an augmented national purchase of goods such as TVs, motorbikes and cars. This sudden and vast economic recovery was harmful to Labour’s electoral campaign. With the working classes able to afford considerably more under Conservative rule due to the mass economic prosperity left Labour without a message or a receptive audience as the former traditional Labour voters were now middle-class conservatives. I think the age of the economic prosperity proving “life was better” with the conservatives was the most paramount factor that contributed to their victory.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Edward Heath came into power in 1970 in a surprise victory against Harold Wilson. Heath was very different to other conservative leaders; he was a middle class grammar school boy, the youngest ever Conservative leader and the first to become a leader through an open election. His accession marked a change in the leadership of the Conservative Party from aristocratic to meritocratic, which many people saw as a refreshing change. However, the Heath Government is widely considered to be a failure, there are many factors of the failure of the heath government, whether it be his failure in dealing with the trade unions, the devastating actions of Bloody Sunday or perhaps it was Heaths incredible bad luck during his time in power.…

    • 975 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is undoubtedly true that during Heath’s time in office, 1970-1975, he faced many difficulties, many of them at the hands of the Trade Unions, which made his time in government difficult to make any progress. However it cannot be denied that the Heath Government did make some successes, and considering the harsh times that Heath faced, it could be argued that the Heath government was not a total failure and instead was one that had experienced lot of bad luck.…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dismissal

    • 767 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In March 1975 Malcolm Fraser took control of the Liberal opposition. Before February 1975 the senate was evenly balanced between the two parties but the retirement of a NSW senator and the death of a QLD senator left two gaps in Labours line up. The convention was that the premier of the states would replace the senators with someone from the same party. However In both cases the conservative Premiers of QLD and NSW selected a non-Labor person giving the coalition majority in the senate. The coalition was afraid that Whitlam would call a half senate election in an attempt to regain his majority.…

    • 767 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Labour weakness was the most important reason for Conservative dominance from 1951 to 1964. How far do you agree? Between 1951 and 1964, the Conservative's time in power, the Labour party were providing ineffectual opposition. One of the reasons for this was their internal disputes over issues such as unilateralism. However, there were also more important reasons for Conservative dominance, such as the economy and growing prosperity in Britain, the property owning democracy and the greater availability of credit, modern conveiniences and luxury items. Prosperity during this time was growing, and people were in general wealthier than they had been before. A reason for this could have been the manipulation of the economy by the Conservatives; their stop-and-go stagflation lowered and rose taxes in accordance to the election date in order to gain more votes. Though they had no real long-term economic plan and their wily manipulation was often criticised, it did help them to gain votes. The wages also rose during this time meaning people were able to more freely afford luxury items and other things such as mortgages, which links to the property owning democracy.…

    • 562 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    02) - Explain why the Conservative Party won the General Election of 1959 – (12 marks)…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    History

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Do you agree with the view that Labour governments in the years 1945–51 established a society with ‘a significantly greater degree of social equality’?…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This was the first time the Liberals were reunited since the Boer war. This aided them in an attempt to reunite there votes aswell. This meant that they were the second biggest party after the conservatives. All they needed to do was show the weaknesses of Balfour. The final nail in the coffin was having a decisive manifesto over free trede and how they refused to do it in case it harmed the working class. It was most important to appease the working class because they were the majority of the vote but they were also the poorest people able to vote with decisiveness.…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    1. It was the strength of the opposition forces, both liberal and conservative, rather than the ineptitude and stubbornness of President Wilson that led to the Senate defeat of the Treaty of Versailles.…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many believed that Thatcher offered an alternative to the Labour government, a change, so after Callaghan’s government was destroyed by economic crises, rising unemployment, hostile trade unions and political misjudgements the Conservatives had a landslide victory with 43.9% of the vote. Before the Conservative rise to power with Thatcher, the Labour party had experience many troubles during their time in government, perhaps this is why the Conservatives won the General election. However was this win purely down to the conservatives and their policies or was it down to the failure of the Labour party.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Essay on Gough Whitlam

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The ALP party were fairly certain that they were, once again, not going to win the 1972 election. They were aiming their appeal at the traditional working class people, but to win the election, had to appeal to the middle class as well. Whitlam wanted to shift the control of the ALP from the Union officials to the parliamentary party, and he also wanted to give every party member a voice in the parliamentary conferences. After the close election, Gough Whitlam had a considerable amount of control in his party and in parliament. He introduced new laws, such as establishing an Australian Schools Commission for recognising the need for help and funding in state schools and universities, recognising aboriginal land claims, eliminating conscription and improving universal health care.…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Balfour's leadership along with other key factors, including chamberlain's influence, the Boer war and the liberal party's actions, overall led to the decline in popularity for the conservative party giving the liberals their first taste of power in the 1906 general election.…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Arthur Balfour was a leader of the commons until his uncle Lord Salisbury retired 1902, after this he succeeded his position as prime minister and leader of the conservative party. This upset a majority of people as Balfour was not voted in to the position but took over from his uncle. Balfour wasn’t good at speaking out loud and struggled with leadership as he was very indecisive unlike his uncle which made it fairly obvious that he wasn’t a good leader for the conservatives and meant that some people no longer supported the conservative party because of him.…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The 1964 election changed the British political landscape forever as a thirteen-year Conservative dominance crumbled at the hands of Harold Wilson and his youthful Labour Party. Historians, such as Rowe, postulate that there are a plethora of reasons to why Labour won the 1964 election, most prominently because of the Conservatives’ inability to economically modernise Britain. Contrastingly, other historians such as Lynch uphold the opinion that there are other factors responsible for Labour’s victory, including Labour’s prominence in areas of politics where the Conservatives lacked…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays