By the end of the war in Europe there were few of Attlee’s colleagues who doubted his ability to handle business efficiently, to work tirelessly for party unity or to act swiftly and ruthlessly when occasion demanded. Within the Labour Party, however, doubts remained among opposing factions – doubts about his popular appeal as a leader and his commitment to press for far-reaching reform and a socialist foreign policy. Bevin and Morrison had both held important positions throughout the war; each had supporters prepared to promote his claim to lead the party.

Since 1935 Attlee had remained virtually unchallenged. Now the very need for change that Attlee had predicted when the war ended prompted movements to unseat him. Without prejudice to his patent strengths, there was concern that the end of the coalition would offer Labour a unique opportunity to gain power and that the occasion called for a man of greater stature – or more palpable socialist credentials – to defeat Churchill and seize it.

In 1944 The Observer had published a profile of the Labour leader that was perceptive, accurate and, on the whole, positive.1 It did, however, focus on Attlee’s capacity to serve as second man in government rather than as a charismatic leader. Employing passages such as ‘sign of diffidence, a lack of confidence’ and ‘He is almost anonymous. Slight in figure, he does not stand out in a crowd’, it fuelled the doubts of those who sought a change in the leadership.

For as long as the coalition continued, however, the doubters were powerless. Then, on 31 October, the Prime Minister himself moved the second reading of the Prolongation Bill, clearly doubtful that the Parliament would be required for another year.2

In truth, Churchill had been campaigning since he broadcast his Four Year Plan.3 In that broadcast he attempted to hijack the Labour Party platform, associating himself with steps towards a welfare state. He described himself as a ‘lieutenant’ of Lloyd George, ‘the prime parent of all national insurance schemes’; he painted himself as having been ‘prominently connected’ with them since he brought Sir William Beveridge into public service ‘and when Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith and I framed the first unemployment insurance scheme’.

The plan attempted two things: to associate the Conservative Party with the desire for real post-war reform and to suggest that the coalition – naturally headed by Churchill – would remain in power after the defeat of Germany. Greenwood described the second suggestion as ‘staggering’.

By the end of the 1944 parliamentary session, with victory in Europe imminent, no one doubted that this was the last session of coalition government. But, since the date of the Nazi surrender could not be accurately foretold, there could be no definitive plan for the withdrawal of ministers from the coalition. As Churchill put it, the ‘odour of dissolution was in the air’.4

Domestic politics were overshadowed by international events as the Allies closed on Berlin. Differences between the parties were apparent enough – private enterprise versus nationalisation – and these were highlighted by members of opposing parties. In March Attlee spoke in Nottingham, drawing the lines between them. ‘We are now in the season of party conferences’, he said. ‘The Conservative Party have made it quite clear that they take their stand on what is called private enterprise.’ In a deft thrust he rebuked the Tories for their ‘optimistic doctrine that if everyone puts his own interests first, the interests of the community are served.’ Labour, he told his audience, took a more realistic view based on experience.5 A few days later, on 9 April, Bevin made a provocative speech, effectively his opening bid in the imminent contest.6

When the German surrender was signed and Churchill treated as a national hero, Attlee and Eden were in San Francisco on United Nations business. Clearly, announcement of an election needed to await their return. There was talk of an election in July, of an election in October. Surprisingly, Churchill forced the issue by writing to the leaders of other parties on 18 May, suggesting that either the coalition remain in power until the end of the Japanese war or it be disbanded forthwith and an election held in July. He also mooted the possibility of holding a referendum.

The former option came as a surprise, although Churchill maintained in his letter that he and Attlee had discussed this. Attlee, however, after discussion with the National Executive of the party, rejected it in a letter of 21 May.7 Churchill’s remarks at the second reading of the Prolongation Bill had indicated that an election would be held during the year and this should now take place. He did, however, assure the Prime Minister of Labour’s support for the war against Japan, whatever the outcome of the election.

Concerning the election’s timing, he argued that autumn would be more suitable as a more accurate electoral register would be completed, and this would give returning servicemen time to consider the issues. He rejected Churchill’s suggestion that party politics were already harming the business of government. As to the suggestion of a referendum, he rejected it as un-British.

A certain disingenuousness suffuses this exchange. Churchill knew his prestige to be high at this point and that the notion of a government with continuity of leadership would have wide appeal. The Prime Minister had been the very persona of Britain’s resistance to Hitler. He had promised a long struggle with victory at the end; now that victory had been achieved. The attractions of a Churchill-led government would never be higher than immediately after VE Day.

Attlee recognised this and needed to allow time to wear some of the shine from the Prime Minister’s crown. It is hard to gauge to what extent either Churchill or Attlee was aware of the greatly enhanced prestige of the Deputy Prime Minister. Since 1940 he had served with conspicuous loyalty in the coalition. He had chaired the War Cabinet in Churchill’s absence, an acting Prime Minister for a total of almost six months; he had spoken up and down the country, in measured, rational speeches that gave an honest statement of the strategic position, spiced with encouragement over the nation’s achievements. Attlee was a leader in his own right; Churchill at first failed to appreciate that. The Liberals too failed to grasp the changed status of the Labour Party. Lord Rosebery, in a pamphlet ‘Why Liberals Should Support Churchill’, charged that Labour had ‘deliberately chosen to seek power in its own right, entirely free from any kind of commitment to or co-operation with any other party.’8 The impertinence of it!

Churchill responded to Attlee and Sinclair on the following day. It was a patently political letter, overtly drawing the lines between the parties and suggesting that Attlee had unilaterally rejected the possibility of working together – which he, Churchill, reluctantly had to accept. Dismissing the suggestion that an early election was proposed for party political reasons, he subtly laid the blame for the dissolution of the coalition on the Labour leader.

This was a neat piece of politics. If Churchill could smear the Labour Party as the saboteurs of the Four Year Plan that he had proposed in 1943, then he could – as he subsequently did – suggest that the measures proposed therein were not sufficiently extreme for Labour, that they were aiming at a far greater socialisation. It was the first step in the creation of a scenario in which Churchill was not being allowed to ‘Finish the Job’ purely as a result of political discord created by Labour, anxious to dissolve the successful coalition.

The Labour Party, however, having been bound by the electoral truce throughout the war, was now resolved to have not a referendum, but a full-scale general election fought on the issues concerning post-war Britain that divided the parties. The justification for the continuation of the coalition could only be to carry through the proposals of the Four Year Plan, yet it was precisely the party differences over the Plan that required an election. It was clear, then, that the coalition should be disbanded; the principal issue remaining was when this should take place.

Churchill’s decision to request the King to dissolve Parliament in time for a July election infuriated Labour leaders who, quite accurately, saw this as a political decision and accused him of using his position as Prime Minister for purely party purposes. This was either remarkably naïve or utterly disingenuous as every party leader seeks to time his actions for the benefit of his party. Attlee understood that the Prime Minister would capitalise on his enormous stature in the aftermath of Germany’s surrender. No realistic politician would have expected him to do otherwise. The party would simply have to make the best of the situation.

Attlee urged that the break-up of the coalition be postponed until various international issues were settled, but there was uncertainty if this would happen between July and October. Moreover, as Churchill responded, if the date of the dissolution of the coalition were fixed, then the government would be a ‘lame duck’ during the interim.

On 23 May Churchill offered King George VI his resignation and four hours later accepted the King’s invitation to form a new government, whereupon he requested that His Majesty dissolve the Parliament on 15 June. He then set up a ‘caretaker government’, principally of members of the Conservative Party. National Liberals and Liberals were invited, but not Labour Members. Press reaction ranged from tributes to the coalition (The Times and the News Chronicle) to contempt (Daily Herald and Daily Worker) with many shades of opinion in between (Daily Telegraph, Manchester Guardian, Daily Sketch).9

Churchill chose to make the break-up of the coalition appear a selfish, political, even unpatriotic act – something that he, in his long-suffering role, must needs overcome. Thus the opening of the Conservative manifesto, ‘Mr Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors’, regrets Labour’s ingratitude and desertion of their posts. Churchill lamented the unwillingness of the Socialist and Sinclair Liberal Parties to agree to his proposal, noting that he had ‘formed a new National Government, consisting of the best men in all parties who were willing to serve and some who are members of no party at all.’ Many had helped him ‘carry the burdens of state through the darkest days’.10

The balance of the Conservative manifesto was remarkable for its appropriation of Labour aims. The Conservatives claimed to ‘seek the good of the whole nation, not that of one section or one faction’, believing in ‘the living unity of the British people, which transcends class or party differences’. The manifesto based its hopes for world peace upon ‘the setting up of a World Organisation strong enough to prevent future wars of aggression whether by the weak or the strong’. Their ‘prevailing hope’ was that ‘the foundations will be laid on the indissoluble agreement of Great Britain, the United States and Soviet Russia.’11

Concerning India, the Conservatives welcomed ‘the framing of plans for granting India a fuller opportunity to achieve dominion status’. As to the rest of the Commonwealth they accepted responsibility ‘to help them to raise their standards of life by agricultural advance, the application of science and the building up of local industries; to improve conditions of labour and of housing, to spread education, to stamp out disease and to sustain health, vigour and happiness’.

Concerning defence Churchill declared himself ‘in agreement with Mr Bevin and other leaders of the Socialist Party that, until the end of the Japanese War and, I hope, until the World Security Organization has become a reality, all citizens under a democratic government should bear responsibility for defending their Country and its Cause’. On the issue of demobilisation too Churchill doffed his cap to Bevin, saying, ‘The broad and properly considered lines of the demobilisation proposals, based on age and length of service, which Mr Bevin has elaborated with much wisdom, will be adhered to, and releases will be made as quickly as the condition of the tormented world permits.’12

Committing themselves to a plan to build 220,000 new homes and have 80,000 under way in the first two years, advocating a nationwide and compulsory scheme for national insurance, proposing a ‘comprehensive health service covering the whole range of medical treatment from the general practitioner to the specialist’, and vowing to ‘guard against the abuses to which monopolies may give rise’, the Conservatives strove to take ownership of the fundamental aims of the Labour Party. The complimentary references to Bevin enhanced the impression that a Conservative government, if elected, would embrace the same humanitarian, egalitarian principles as the Labour Party.

There was, however, one glaring difference between the manifestos of the two parties. The Labour Party manifesto opened with the confident declaration that the fighting was almost over and that ‘Japanese barbarism would be defeated just as decisively as Nazi aggression and tyranny.’ The men of the fighting services deserved a happier future than they had received after the last war. Their welfare was ‘a sacred trust’.13

The Conservatives, by contrast, took the position that the future was still perilous. Britain was still at war, and even when all foreign enemies were utterly defeated, that would not be the end of their task. It would be the beginning of ‘further opportunity – the opportunity which we snatched out of the jaws of disaster in 1940 – to save the world from tyranny and then to play our part in its wise, helpful guidance.’14

The underlying implication was clear. Whereas the Labour Party wanted to focus immediately on domestic issues, Churchill, war leader par excellence, was mindful of the military problems still to be overcome and proposed, in his wisdom, to ‘take stock of our resources and plan how the energies of the British people can best be freed for the work that lies ahead’.15

This approach was carefully calculated to gain the maximum benefit from the Conservative Party’s greatest asset, the Prime Minister. The use of the name ‘National Government’ for the caretaker government that contained not a single Labour member suggested a continuing emergency and Churchill, clearly, was the leader most fit to handle an unfinished war, to ‘Finish the Job’. In time a Conservative government would apply itself to the several pressing domestic issues, but in the meantime there must be sensible circumspection with an experienced guiding hand to prevent over-enthusiastic untimely reform. The fact that Churchill was the Tory Party leader with a chequered history of relations with the Conservative Party was, naturally, not emphasised.

The choice for the voter was effectively between retaining Churchill – a decision that would temporarily freeze social change – or to look for immediate change, which involved removing from power the very symbol of Britain’s continuing struggle. Change from the period of the 1930s was devoutly to be wished, but at what price? The choice could be made either on emotional or coldly logical grounds. It is easy in retrospect to judge Churchill a magnificent, indeed a unique, wartime leader and to argue that Britain needed another leader in 1945. It was not, however, an obvious truth at the time.

A people fighting a war needs to believe that it is fighting for a better world. A world without Hitler certainly, but in the light of wartime austerity, Britain needed also to believe that wartime measures were part of the risk:reward equation. Expectation grew and people believed that Labour was more likely to reward them. Hence the need for Labour to emphasise that the fighting was over – and the Tories’ need to maintain that it was not.

The Labour Party drew a parallel between 1918 and 1945. Their message was clear and divisive along class lines: the Tories will look after the rich; ordinary folk have suffered during the war. Don’t fall for that smooth talk about progress that was handed out dishonestly in 1918. Vote ‘Straight Left’. Bevan, unsurprisingly, went further. In Why Not Trust the Tories?, published in 1944, he pointed out the parallels.16

In 1945, as in 1918, the country had changed Prime Minister during the war. In each case fighting morale had been sustained by promises of a better Britain after both wars – a fairer distribution of wealth, better social services, housing and employment. The Beveridge Committee had been formed in June 1941; in September 1943 it was announced that the government would soon pronounce on the committee’s report. Now, in 1945 after Tory delaying tactics, with an election imminent, it was time to ask the Tories why they had withheld benefits for so long. ‘Why should we trust you to do in the future what you would not use your power to do in the past?’

While ostensibly both parties campaigned on the battle cry of a better Britain, the Labour claim was that the Tories could not be trusted to deliver on their election promises. In 1918 when the government had promised ‘Homes for Heroes’, they had pledged to build 500,000 houses in three years. In 1919 they built 700 houses and it took the Wheatley Act of 1924 to improve the situation. Simply, for the Tories to make good their promises they would have to act against Tory interests. It was, Labour argued, ‘Eyewash’.17

For the Labour Party the issue in 1945 was Britain, the kind of Britain that should ‘win the peace’. For the Tories the thrust of argument was that Britain needed as never before experienced statesmen like Churchill and Eden to ensure that the country’s international position was protected. Yet both parties proposed substantially the same foreign policy – the maintenance of the Big Three alliance and contribution to the United Nations for collective security.

The Labour Party manifesto emphasised that action, not mere words, was needed. The coming election would be ‘the greatest test in our history of the judgment and common sense of our people’. To counter the Tories’ appropriation of Labour programmes, the manifesto questioned the Conservative Party’s commitment to reform:

On the issue of foreign policy the Labour Party was able to drive a wedge between Churchill and the Tories by quoting from a speech of Churchill from 5 October 1938 in which he had castigated the Tory Party for leaving Britain ‘in the hour of trial without adequate national defence or effective international security’. Churchill may have been correct before the war, they suggested, but the Tory Party under Baldwin and Chamberlain assuredly had not been.

On the question of state control the two parties differed most fundamentally. The Conservative position, naturally, was that state control entailed ‘excessive taxation’. The Labour Party argued that only by nationalising certain industries could industrial efficiency and full employment be achieved. Just a theory, countered the Conservatives. It had never been attempted and it would achieve the reverse of efficiency. This, retorted the Labour Party, was the traditional argument for ‘sound’ finance, the policy that led to unemployment in the 1930s. Ultimately, however, the appeal of the Conservatives was to the experience, essentially of one man, that they would bring to the task of restructuring Britain.

The Labour Party held its conference just before the election campaign. When Parliament reassembled the lines had been drawn. On 6 June in the House of Commons, Attlee criticised Churchill for rushing the election.19

Attlee was active in supporting local candidates and spent much of the period from 16 to 30 June in the Midlands and Yorkshire. Bevin spoke on the east coast, working down from Lincolnshire, the two meeting up at a huge Labour rally in the Albert Hall on 23 June. This organisation was in vivid contrast to the apparent lethargy of the Tories, other than Churchill who made an extensive election tour. Curiously, the most voluble speaker for the Conservatives was Beaverbrook, who made notable speeches at Bradford, Chatham, Streatham and Worcester.

For the Labour Party Bevin was most clearly visible in the front lines, answering Beaverbrook’s thrusts. Attlee orchestrated a series of radio broadcasts by different Labour speakers, clearly and cogently setting out the three principal Labour programmes: public versus private, controls, nationalisation. Here we see the force of the partnership between Bevin and the Labour leader. Attlee had little of Bevin’s pugnaciousness and Bevin could not have performed Attlee’s job with the same efficiency and dispatch. Bevin became the most visible and charismatic of the Labour ministers and Attlee knew well enough to allow him all the space necessary to be effective. The partnership was central to Labour’s success; without such a close working relationship between two prominent ministers, there could not have been the harmony that later characterised their working methods.

The successful co-operation of Conservative and Labour ministers during the wartime coalition guaranteed that the election would be a straight fight between the two leading parties. Within the grouping of the left, however, there were the Communist Party, the Common Wealth Party and the Independent Labour Party. All three were to the left of Labour; none differed greatly from Labour’s domestic goals in principle, only in degree.

The broadcasts by Churchill and Attlee to open the contest set the tone for the rest of the campaign. Churchill’s opening salvo on 4 June was a tirade against socialism. His Labour colleagues, he charged, had unpatriotically left the coalition, planning to subvert the British way of life. From this ungenerous opening he crossed the Rubicon of reasonable political debate:

Attlee’s response came in measured tones, totally in contrast to the hyperbole of the Prime Minister. He recognised that to criticise the Colossus who had directed the war would be a gross tactical error and directed his counter-attack with subtlety:

He struck exactly the right note. The villain was not Churchill but Beaverbrook. It was not Churchill who would descend willingly to such outrageous accusations; it had to be the company that he was keeping – the Tories who would stop at nothing to win. Without overtly criticising Churchill, he drew a distinction between Churchill in wartime and Churchill in peacetime. Ironically, by continuing to insist that he could not have meant what he said, the Labour leaders were able to inflict even more damage. In a fine rhetorical flourish Morrison, in a speech on 19 June, wondered why, if he was likely to introduce a Gestapo to Britain, did Churchill give him the Home Office in 1940. In thoroughly devastating good humour he chuckled and suggested indulgently that ‘Winston was having a night out’.22 The Prime Minister’s most violent criticism turned out to be his biggest blunder of the election.

The final Big Three conference of the war, appropriately named TERMINAL, was scheduled to take place in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, between 17 July and 2 August. Polling day was to be on 5 July, but, because of the difficulties in shipping back votes from those serving overseas, there was to be a delay of three weeks before the votes were counted and the results declared. Thus the results of the election would be known while the conference was taking place and it was possible that during the first week of meetings there would be one Prime Minister, replaced by another for the second week.

To ensure some continuity if this were to occur, Churchill invited Attlee to accompany him to Potsdam for the first week of the conference. Attlee accepted, whereupon Laski, the chairman of the Labour Party’s NEC, called on him to attend the conference merely as an observer.23 He argued that ‘it was desirable that the leader of the party which may shortly be elected to govern the country should know what is said, discussed and agreed at this vitally important meeting’. The Labour Party, he said, ‘cannot be committed to any decisions arrived at by the Three-Power Conference where matters will be discussed which have not been debated either in the party Executive or at meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party.’

In the light of Churchill’s suggestions that socialism would lead to totalitarianism, a suggestion gleefully adopted by Conservatives across the country, this was an unfortunate remark. While the Parliamentary Party consisted of Members of Parliament elected by voters, the National Executive Council had no such status. Thus Laski created the impression that, if elected, the Labour Party would be directed by an unelected body, a kind of Politburo that would erode the autonomy of a democratically elected Parliament. It also created the impression, exploited in subsequent elections by the Tories,24 that Attlee was merely a ‘front’ for a more extreme leader who would replace him.

The potential damage caused by Laski was compounded by his response to a question in Newark on 16 June. His remark that ‘If Labour did not obtain what it needed by general consent, we shall have to use violence even if it means revolution’ was seized on by the press and widely reported. Laski filed a suit for libel against the Daily Express, a suit that he ultimately lost, but which mitigated the damage that his comments might have caused.

A British general election, unlike an American presidential election, allows no direct vote for the future Prime Minister. Were that not so, it is very likely that Churchill would have been returned in 1945, much like Roosevelt in 1944. The British electorate could have expressed their vast gratitude to the existing Prime Minister, while registering a desire for domestic reform through a vote for the local Labour candidate. As it was, Churchill was greeted by huge enthusiasm but ‘he seemed strangely out of touch with the new mood, and was certainly misled – as were so many others – by the triumphal nature of his reception wherever he went.’25 Later in life, when asked why the electorate had rejected Churchill, Attlee replied simply and accurately that they had not. They had rejected the Tories.26

In this reply Attlee did himself less than justice. If the leader of the Labour Party had been an extreme radical, a Laski for example, then voters, aware that the leader of the majority party would be asked by the King to form a government, would have exercised more caution. As it was, Attlee was a familiar figure, a responsible statesman perfectly acceptable as a potential leader. A vote for Labour in a constituency did not run the risk of putting a firebrand in Downing Street. Voters could, therefore, vote for reform without opening the floodgates of revolution. They felt able to show their gratitude to Churchill while consigning him, as they thought, to a past era. They were enormously grateful, but the war was effectively over.

Attlee had a shrewd appreciation of the forces at work, recognising public gratitude for what it was and not believing that it would translate into votes for the Tory Party. As the campaign came to an end, he wrote to Tom: ‘We are getting near the end of the election now. I can’t find that my opponent is getting any support … Winston keeps slugging away at the silly Laski business, but I don’t think he gets the better of the exchanges with me.’27

Churchill unwisely ‘slugged away at the Laski business’ until the last days of the election. The Manchester Guardian reported that ‘Mr Churchill in his letter to Mr Attlee tonight has so magnified the bogy of the Labour National Executive as to transform it into a new scare.’ Attlee had ‘wisely lost no time in … demonstrating that the Labour Party is completely autonomous’.28

Newspapers also published the exchange of letters between the two leaders from which the impression emerges of a petulant Prime Minister being firmly dealt with by a reasonable and regretful Attlee, whose rejoinder ended simply, regretting that Churchill ‘should have been so distressed owing to … lack of acquaintance with the procedure of the democratic parties in general and of the Labour party in particular’.29

Remarkably, Churchill refused to let the matter rest and weighed in once more on the very eve of the election, concluding that ‘the controversy on these very important issues [cannot] be satisfactorily cleared up until the public has a statement signed jointly by yourself and the chairman of the Executive Committee regarding the use of these powers in the future’. The tirade was a gift to Attlee who replied with a brisk dismissal, concluding with a stinging rebuke. ‘Despite my very clear statement’, he wrote, ‘you proceed to exercise your imagination by importing into a right to be consulted a power to challenge actions and conduct … I think that you underestimate the intelligence of the public, and I do not share your belief.’30

After this final exchange of fire Britain went to the polls in a somewhat unreal atmosphere pending the delayed counting of votes. Meanwhile the leaders of the two principal parties would travel together to Berlin to meet Stalin and the new American President, Harry Truman, to settle critical issues affecting the post-war world. They would both return to Britain to learn the results of the election; one of them would return to Potsdam to continue the conference. Attlee would have no locus standi during the first period. No longer Deputy Prime Minister, he was inevitably, as Laski had insisted he should be, a de facto observer.

Churchill, at this stage, was confident that his party would be returned to power. His invitation to Attlee to accompany him was a device, an apparent courtesy that would demonstrate his magnanimity to his former deputy. He expected a majority of about eighty in the House of Commons – a view with which, apparently, Attlee concurred, telling Chip Bohlen of the American State Department that ‘he did not think the Labour Party had a chance of gaining a majority in Parliament. He hoped for gains sufficient to force the Churchill government to listen to Labour’s views.’31

Throughout the first half of the conference these remained the stated positions of the British leaders. Churchill was back in his element, determining the fate of nations while Attlee modestly yielded primacy to him. It was clear that Stalin expected Churchill to remain in power, while Truman was greatly more interested in reaching agreement with Stalin on important issues than speculating about the outcome of the British election.

Attlee’s position was far from easy. When he made his first general appearance he was cruelly described by Bohlen as ‘a mechanical toy, which, when wound up and placed on the table by Churchill, would perform as predicted’.32 For Bohlen, as for many people, it was unimaginable that Churchill should cease to be Britain’s leader, certainly while the war was in progress and until the legacy of the war was settled. Yet here was Attlee, like some premature undertaker, ready to take over, a lean Cassius waiting to impale his chief.

On a different, unemotional level, however, it was Churchill who had his critics. Sir Alexander Cadogan, the waspish Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, who was appalled at Churchill’s handling of his position, had earlier confided to his diary: ‘How have we conducted this war with the PM spending hours of his own and other people’s time simply drivelling, welcoming every red herring so as only to have the pleasure of more irrelevant, redundant talk?’33

Of the Prime Minister’s performance before and at the plenary session he was no less contemptuous. Churchill, Cadogan wrote to his wife,

since he left London has refused to do any work or read anything. That is probably quite right, but then he can’t have it both ways: if he knows nothing of the subject under discussion, he should keep quiet or ask that his Foreign Secretary be heard. Instead of that, he butts in on every occasion and talks the most irrelevant rubbish and is giving away our case at every point.34

One can easily imagine how these sessions must have affected Attlee. Churchill’s rambling was anathema to Attlee even in a purely British setting. In January he had written formally to Churchill to complain of his inefficient use of time at Cabinet meetings. ‘Not infrequently’, he wrote, ‘a phrase catches your eye which gives rise to a disquisition on an interesting point only slightly connected with the subject matter.’35

Now, as when a family member behaves badly outside the family, so must these ramblings have seemed when delivered in the presence of Stalin and Truman, both of whom were brisk and businesslike in their dealing with the agenda. Clearly harsh words were going to be exchanged between the Soviet Union and the United States and neither flinched from confronting issues. Churchill, by contrast, occupied the seat that Attlee would dearly have wished to occupy – the third no-nonsense negotiator at a top-level conference. Attlee, loyal to the last, could only sit, watch and shudder.

Towards the end of the first period of the conference Churchill dined with Stalin. ‘I think that he wants me to win the election’, he told Lord Moran, his personal physician.36 On the following evening he confessed to Moran that the uncertainty about the election results ‘hovers over me like a vulture of uncertainty in the sky.’37 Away from the hustings, from the adoring crowds, aware perhaps that the realpolitik of a world of two ‘Superpowers’ was now passing him by, he confronted for the first time the reality of his position. Despite his popularity, he might have lost the election. As Truman and Stalin marginalised him at Potsdam, so, he began to fear, might he have been marginalised in Britain.

At the end of the plenary session on 23 July Churchill joked that he and Attlee had some business in London on 26 July and that they would leave on the afternoon of the 25th. ‘But we shall be back by the afternoon sitting on 27 July. Or at least some of us will.’38 All those present assured the Prime Minister that he would win. He had been a fixture in wartime conferences since Casablanca. He had shuttled the Atlantic to persuade and cajole Roosevelt. Yet now the war was over and some premonition was telling him that his government too was finished. The moment must have been bitter-sweet for him; for Attlee, if he is to be believed when he says that he did not imagine that Labour would win, the experience of being very much a No. 2, a minor actor who had a brief scene on stage, must have been humiliating. The curtain would come down and only the Big Three would be remembered. Photographs of him at TERMINAL seem to reflect this. He fades into his seat while Truman and Stalin expand. He appears not to belong among such exalted company, yet he had as grand and clear a vision of the future as either of the other principals. Sadly, it is for his lack of grandeur in such company that Cadogan characterised him when he spoke of the ‘Big Two and a Half’.39

Nor was Attlee’s irritation confined to the conference. Morrison, encouraged and supported by Ellen Wilkinson, informed him in a letter opening ‘My dear Clem’ that, if he were elected to Parliament, he would stand for the leadership of the party. Such action, he assured Attlee, would be solely in the interests of the party.40

On 25 July Churchill and Attlee returned to London. By the following evening the Labour Party led convincingly in the cities, but the votes from the rural constituencies, traditionally Tory strongholds, were not yet in. By the following afternoon the extent of the landslide was clear. Labour won 393 seats (up from 154 in 1935) while the Tories won 197 (down from 386). For the Liberal Party it had been a disaster, a mere twelve seats completing their demise as a national party. As a percentage of votes cast, however, the Labour Party’s mandate was less overwhelming; they captured 47.7 per cent of the popular vote, against 36.2 per cent cast for the Tories. In retrospect, the indications throughout the war were that Labour would win a post-war election. The British Institute of Public Opinion had concluded that from June 1943 onward Labour held a lead in voting intentions, rising from 7 per cent in June 1943 to a dominant 16 per cent superiority in April 1945. Polling was less scientific – and less slavishly respected – in 1945, however, and the result came as a thunderclap to the majority of Britons.

In typically matter-of-fact style, Attlee records the events of the day. A summons came from the Palace. Bevin openly supported Attlee over Morrison’s machinations and urged him to go to the Palace immediately. Violet drove him there and he received the King’s commission to form a government. After a Victory Rally at Westminster Central Hall, he ‘looked in at a Fabian Society gathering, and then returned to Stanmore after an exciting day.’41

ENDNOTES

1 The Observer, 5 May 1944.

2 Hansard, HC Deb, 31 October 1944, cols 662–668.

3 Broadcast speech of 22 March 1943, outlining the post-war social programme of the Conservative Party.

4 Hansard, HC Deb, 31 October 1944, col. 667.

5 Bodleian: MS. Attlee, dep. 17, 25 March 1945.

6 The Times, 10 April 1945.

7 Bodleian: MS. Attlee, dep. 18.

8 Bodleian: MS Simon, 96, folio 39.

9 McCallum and Readman, The British General Election of 1945, p. 22.

10 Conservative Party, 1945 general election manifesto, Mr Churchill’s Declaration of Policy to the Electors, paras 1–2.

11 Ibid. ‘Britain and the World’, para 4.

12 Ibid., ‘Defence’, para 2.

13 1945 Labour Party general election manifesto, Let Us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation, para 1.

14 Conservative Party, 1945 general election manifesto, para. 4.

15 Ibid, para 5.

16 Bevan, Why Not Trust the Tories, Chapter 1, ‘1918, After the Armistice’.

17 One Labour Party election poster depicts a medicine bottle labelled ‘National Eyewash: Poison. Tory Mixture as before’ and quotes a Churchill speech in 1908, in which he attacked the Tories.

18 Labour Party general election manifesto, 1945, ‘What the Election will be About’, paras 2–3.

19 Hansard, HC Deb, 6 June 1945, cols 921–923.

20 The Listener, 7 June 1945. This became a popular, if unworthy theme of the election. See, for example, Daily Express, 5 June 1945. Tony Benn commented, ‘If I was establishing a Gestapo I wouldn’t have picked Clem to run it.’ Attlee Lecture 1998, Royal Overseas League, 9 February 1998.

21 Bodleian: MS. Attlee, dep. 18, 5 June 1945. According to A. J. P. Taylor, however, the Gestapo bon mot was not Beaverbrook’s but Churchill’s own. He discussed it only with his son Randolph and with James Stuart, the Tory Chief Whip. Taylor, Beaverbrook, p. 515. Beaverbrook and Attlee disliked each other intensely. Attlee found ‘the Beaver’ bombastic and dishonest. Beaverbrook referred to Attlee, sitting next to Churchill on the coalition front bench as ‘a sparrow perched beside the glittering bird of Paradise’. Beaverbrook, p. 469.

22 See The Times, 20 June 1945. Sir Winston’s fondness for the stimulus of alcohol was an open secret. While many of his close associates denied that they had ever seen him adversely affected by the quantities he consumed, his fondness for champagne and brandy and his tendency to accompany breakfast with a bottle of Chablis were well known. Attlee compounded the impression of the Prime Minister as irresponsible with the comment ‘I am aware that he has rather old-fashioned views about fighting an election.’ The Times, 3 July 1945. See also Maudling, Memoirs, pp. 48–49 for Churchill and alcohol.

23 For reports and comment on Laski’s intervention see Churchill College, CHAR 2/557. For Attlee’s comments, As It Happened, p. 203. Churchill wrote to Attlee that ‘Merely to come as a mute observer would be derogatory to your position as the leader of your party and I should not have a right to throw this burden on you in such circumstances. I hope however that I may have your assurance that you accept my invitation.’ Manchester Guardian, 16 June 1945.

24 This became a theme of the Conservatives in the 1950 election, as Bevan pointed out.

25 Rhodes James, Anthony Eden, p. 305.

26 Williams, A Prime Minister Remembers, pp. 8–9.; Granada Historical Records, Clem Attlee, p. 27.

27 Letter to Tom Attlee, 3 July 1945.

28 Manchester Guardian, 3 July 1945.

29 The text of the lengthy letter from Churchill to Attlee on 2 July and Attlee’s response on the same evening are printed under the sub-headline ‘No New Situation has Arisen’ in the Manchester Guardian of 3 July 1945.

30 Once again the Manchester Guardian and other newspapers printed the exchange of letters in full. The contrast between the almost hysterical tone of Churchill’s accusations and the calm response of the Labour leader can only have damaged the Conservative Party. Manchester Guardian, 4 July 1945.

31 Charles E. (‘Chip’) Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 250.

32 Ibid., loc. cit.

33 The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945, Entry for 22 February 1945, pp. 719–720.

34 A. C. to T. C., 18 July 1945, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 1938–1945, p. 765.

35 Attlee to Churchill, 19 January 1945. The Prime Minister sulked for most of the day before rousing himself and saying to Jock Colville, ‘Let us think no more of Hitlee or Attler; let us go and see a film.’ On 22 January he responded, ‘My dear Lord President, I have to thank you for your Private and Personal letter of January 19. You may be sure I shall always endeavour to profit by your counsels.’ Both letters are at CAC: ATLE 2/2. According to Colville, Churchill, outraged, asked Beaverbrook and Brendan Bracken their opinion of Attlee’s letter, Both agreed with Attlee; Clementine Churchill applauded Attlee’s frankness. Wheeler-Bennett, Action This Day, p. 117.

36 Lord Moran, Churchill, Diary entry for 19 July 1945, p. 295.

37 Ibid., Diary entry for 20 July 1945, p. 297.

38 Charles L. Mee, Meeting at Potsdam, p. 163.

39 Cadogan, op. cit., p. 778. Cadogan was scathing about Attlee’s lack of presence at Potsdam (entries for 24 July, 29 July and 31 July, for example).

40 Bodleian: MS. Attlee, dep. 18, Morrison to CRA, 24 July 1945.

41 As It Happened, p. 207. Equally matter-of-fact was his conversation with the King. After their brief exchange the King said to his Private Secretary, ‘I gather they call him “Clem”. “Clam” would be more appropriate.’