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The British general election of 1945 held on July 5th 1945 but not counted and declared until July 26 1945 (due to the time it took to transport the votes of those serving overseas) was one of the most significant general elections of the 20th century.
Held just months after VE Day, it was the first general election to be held since 1935, as general elections had been suspended during World War II. It resulted in the shock election defeat of the Conservatives led by Winston Churchill and the landslide victory of the Labour Party led by Clement Attlee, who won a majority of 145 seats.
The result of the election was almost totally unexpected, given the hero status of Winston Churchill, but reflected the voters' belief that the Labour Party were better able to rebuild the country following the war than the Conservatives. Churchill and the Conservatives are also generally considered to have ran a poor campaign in comparison to Labour; Churchill's statement that Atlee's program would require a Getapo-esque body to implement is considered to have been particularly poorly-judged. Equally, whilst voters respected and liked Churchill's wartime record, they were more broadly distrustful of the Conservative Party's domestic and foreign policy record in the late thirties. (It is worth remembering that the last election had been held in 1935, and voters had been given no opportunity, due to the war, to 'let off steam' electorally between then and 1945.) Labour had also been given, during the war, the opportunity to display to the electorate their domestic competence in government under men such as Ernest Bevin at the Ministry of Labour.
The Labour Party, promised to create full employment, a tax funded universal National Health ServiceThe National Health Service NHS is the publicly-funded healthcare system of the United Kingdom. It was created on 5 July 1948 by Clement Attlee's Labour government, under health and housing minister Nye Bevan. The NHS followed on from the "Panel" system s, and a cradle-to-grave welfare stateThere are three main interpretations of the idea of a welfare state # A welfare state is a type of government that assumes the primary responsibility for the individual and social welfare of its citizens. The welfare state refers to the provision of welfa. Which they duly did once elected.
| Party | Votes | Seats | Loss/Gain | Share of Vote (%) |
| Labour | 11,967,746 | 393 | + 239 | 48.0 |
| Conservative | 8,716,211 | 197 | - 190 | 36.2 |
| LiberalThe Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the early 19th century until the 1920s, and a third party of varying strength and importance up to 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form a new party which wo | 2,177,938 | 12 | - 9 | 9.0 |
| National LiberalThe National Liberals also known as Liberal Nationals were a political party in the United Kingdom who broke away from the Liberal Party. The National Liberals evolved as a distinctive group within the Liberal Party in 1931 when the main body of Liberals | 686,652 | 11 | - 22 | 2.9 |
| Independent | 133,191 | 8 | + 6 | 0.6 |
| NationalThe National Party was formed on January 6, 1976 by John Kingsley Read as a less extreme alternative to the National Front. Seeking a less confrontational solution to immigration than the NF the National Party adopted a more populist approach and broke fr | 130,513 | 2 | + 1 | 0.5 |
| Common Wealth | 110,634 | 1 | + 1 | 0.5 |
| Communist | 97,945 | 2 | + 1 | 0.4 |
| Irish Nationalist | 92,819 | 2 | 0.4 | |
| National Independent | 65,171 | 2 | 0.3 | |
| Independent Labour | 63,135 | 2 | 0.3 | |
| Independent Conservative | 57,823 | 2 | + 2 | 0.2 |
| Independent Labour Party | 46,769 | 3 | - 1 | 0.2 |
| Independent Progressive | 35,072 | 1 | + 1 | 0.1 |
| Independent Liberal | 30,450 | 2 | + 2 | 0.1 |
| SNP | 26,707 | 0 | 0.1 | |
| Plaid Cymru | 16,017 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Common Wealth Labour | 14,096 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Independent Nationalist | 5,430 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Liverpool Protestant | 2,601 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Christian Pacifist | 2,381 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Democratic | 1,809 | 0 | 0.0 |
Total votes cast: 24,073,025. All parties with more than 1,100 votes shown. Conservative total includes Ulster Unionists.
UK General Election results