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THE CHURCHILL GOVERNMENT 1951-55
Churchill was 77 years old when he became Prime Minister for the second
time. He regarded his return to office in 1951 as a belated thank you from the
British people for his wartime leadership. He was now too old and too frail to
be much more than a figurehead. He did not need to do much; what sustained
him was his past reputation as a statesman. For some months in 1953 he was
out of action altogether following a strike. Nobody seemed to notice. Yet his period
in government saw a number of important developments.
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Rationing was ended
The steel industry was denationalised
The Conservative party committed itself to building 300,000 houses
The government continued with Keynesian policies
The accession of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952 ushered in a new Elizabethan age
Britain detonated its first atomic bomb in 1952
The Korean War ended
Churchill’s government of 1951-5 was broadly successful. He would be a ‘consensus’ prime
minister, accepting the welfare state, the need for a massive house building programme,
conciliation not confrontation with the trade unions and even a large nationalised segment of
the economy. The Conservatives were lucky to come to power at a time when the economic
prosperity of the long post war boom was settling in. Although Churchill himself was often
inactive, Anthony Eden was a capable and respected figure, able to coordinate government
effectively during Churchill’s frequent absences. A number of talented ministers such as
Harold Macmillan carried through social policies that were widely accepted and did not break
away from the so-called post war consensus established by the Attlee governments.
Macmillan, for example, had impressive success in increasing the number of houses built.
THE ECONOMY
One of the key figures in the Churchill government was R. A. Butler, his Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Although Butler was never became Prime Minister he had held all the three
other great offices of state. Butler also played a central role in restoring Conservative morale
after the election defeat of 1945. It was Butler that set the pattern of economic policy
showing that he had accepted the new form of Keynesian economics adopted by the
preceding Labour government. Essentially Butler’s aims were:
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Trying to maintain full employment while at the same time achieving economic
growth
Expanding the welfare state
Keeping Britain’s heavily committed military defence programme (which included the
costly Korean War, 1950-3)
Developing a nuclear weapons programme
Butler acknowledged that the deflationary policies of the Labour government before 1951
had beneficial effects in the short term. The cost of British goods had dropped and exports
had picked up. There was also a major uplift in the international economy in the early 1950s,
largely a result of the Marshall Plan, which led to increased demand for British products. Yet
Butler was faced, as Labour had been, with the hard fact that Britain was heavily in debt, a
result of its wartime borrowing commitments. All this had produced a severe and continuous
balance of payments deficit. A strong criticism at the time made at the time and voiced by
later observers was that after 1945 British governments, both Labour and Conservative had
over reached themselves. They had tried to rebuild a modern competitive industrial
economy, but had crippled themselves by taking on huge costs involved in running a welfare
state and maintaining and extensive defence programme. Butler’s ideas were seen to be so
close to those of Labour that his name was used to coin a particular term-‘Butskellism’. The
word, first used in 1954 by a journal, The Economist, joined together the names of Butler,
seen as representing the Conservative left, and Hugh Gaitskell, regarded as the key figure
on the Labour right. It suggested that the left and right wings of the two parties met in the
middle to form consensus on such matters as finance, the economy and the welfare state.
However, there were differences between Butler and Gaitskell. Whilst Gaitskell favoured
high direct taxation an greater government direction while Butler believed in economic
control through use of interest rates, the two men did share a noticeable similar approach in
a number of key areas.
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
The most obvious area where ‘consensus politics’ reigned was in the government’s attitude
to industrial relations and the trade unions. Churchill was anxious to avoid the impression of
‘union bashing’, a policy he had become associated with during the General Strike of 1926.
Now in 1951 there was no attempt to restore the Trade Disputes Act of 1927, which had
annoyed the trade unions and been repealed by the post-war Labour government. In some
ways the new Conservative government was even more conciliatory to the trade unions than
its Labour predecessors had been. There was to be no use of troops to break unofficial
strikes such as Attlee had used in 1949. Churchill appointed Sir Walter Monckton as Minister
of Labour. Here in its early stages was one crucial aspect of what became known as the
‘British disease’, the essentials of which were low productivity, poor industrial relations and
wage demands above the level of economic growth, leading to inflation. Powerful trade
unions, their membership steadily increasing, resisted technological innovations in a desire
to protect jobs and existing work practices. The new Conservative government was quite
unprepared to allow the weapon of unemployment to be used to discipline the workforce and
the simultaneous pursuit of full employment and peace at all costs with the unions, without
an incomes policy, was bound to lead to inflation.
THE NHS
Regarding the welfare state, including the NHS, was to prove quite safe in Tory hands. The
new Minister of Health, Ian Macleod, was not inclined to try to alter Nye Bevan’s great
achievement. Macleod tried to fight for more money for hospitals, which he recognised were
in need of modernisation, but found himself in a queue very much behind housing.
HOUSING
The new government was determined to outperform Labour. At its 1950 conference, the
Tories had given a pledge to build 300,000 houses a year, a target not met by the Attlee
government. Harold Macmillan was the new minister and although rather disappointed to be
placed there by Churchill, saw the possibilities of enhancing his reputation. In 1952-53, the
team at the Ministry of Housing achieved and even exceeded their goal, when 318750
houses were built. This was partly achieved by reducing the high standards set under Bevan
in the 1940s and allowing slightly smaller council houses to be built. Some of the restrictions
on private house building were also relaxed. There was thus an increase in building for
private sale, but still 80% were built by local authorities.
NATIONALISATION
Despite the noises made by the Tories, during the general election campaigns in 1950 and
1951, about the iniquities of nationalisation, there was no great attempt to roll back the state
and private industries. Iron and steel were largely denationalised in 1953 and road haulage
eventually returned to private hands with the breakup of British Road Services.
EDUCATION:
Continuity was the dominant theme and this was even true in the one area of government
neglect; education. Indeed, education policy remained essentially the same, as laid down by
the Education Act of 1944 by Butler. Both parties ignored the intention of the Act to create a
tripartite system with an important role for technical schools, as well as grammars and
secondary moderns. As under Labour, education tended to get pushed to the back of the
queue for money, behind housing, health and defence