General Election 1945

Labour’s landslide victory in the 1945 general election was one of the greatest shocks in British political history. Commentators had expected the wartime leader Winston Churchill to be returned to office by a grateful nation. Instead voters backed the first ever majority Labour government. On the day marking 70 years since voters went to the polls in 1945, BBC Parliament will broadcast a Gresham College lecture from constitutional historian Prof Vernon Bogdanor. He examines whether the result was a mandate for socialism or merely a reaction against the politics of the inter-war years.