What did Churchill’s second premiership achieve?
Winston Churchill’s political career was far from over after World War II. How did his peacetime premiership in the 1950s prepare the UK for the Cold War?
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We all think we know Winston Churchill, the British icon whose bulldog spirit defeated the Nazis and won the war for the Allies. However, there are many amazing facts about Churchill that the average Joe wouldn’t know. One especially overlooked chapter of Churchill’s career is his tenure as peacetime prime minister in the early 1950s.
Churchill is best known for his inspirational stewardship as British prime minister during World War II. Sky HISTORY’s World War II with Tom Hanks shows how Churchill formed strong bonds with wartime allies. Even after being booted out of office in 1945, he would make a spectacular comeback.
The Britain of Churchill’s youth was an undisputed imperial superpower. By the time he became prime minister for the second time in 1951, the balance of world power had tilted heavily. Sky HISTORY looks at how Churchill steered the UK through the new challenges of the emerging nuclear age.
Why did Winston Churchill lose power after the war?
With the outbreak of World War II having put UK elections on ice for a decade, the British public were clamouring for change by 1945. As a wartime leader, Winston Churchill had enjoyed consistently high public approval ratings. However, the Allies’ victory in Europe was firmly in the bag well before the 1945 general election came around.
So, voters were now looking to the postwar future, and Labour Party leader Clement Attlee promoted a promising vision for it. The result was a landslide victory for Labour, and a spell on the opposition benches for Churchill. This gave the spurned Conservative Party leader a chance to rejig his campaign messaging for future elections.
The first of those arrived in 1950, and left Labour with a significantly reduced, almost unworkable majority. In an attempt to increase it, Attlee called another election for October 1951, but this time found his party swept away by the resurgent Tories. Winston Churchill was back in Number 10, but it wasn’t quite a case of him simply picking up where he left off.
A country (and empire) under pressure
Attlee’s Labour government made sweeping social reforms, including the introduction of the National Health Service (NHS), and nationalised key utilities and major industries. In their 1951 election manifesto, the Tories pledged to keep the popular NHS intact. Upon his return to power, Churchill also resisted reprivatising many of the nationalised industries (iron and steel were among the few exceptions).
In many respects, the Tories sought to build on Attlee’s legacy rather than repudiate it. While food rationing persisted during the Attlee era, it finally came to an end in 1954. Churchill’s housing minister Harold Macmillan (the future prime minister) also launched an ambitious housebuilding programme. By 1954, the government was hitting its target of building 300,000 new houses per year.
Attlee had set several British colonies free, including India, Burma and Ceylon. Conversely, the returning Churchill strove to preserve what remained of the British Empire. This included attempts to suppress rebellions in Malaya and Kenya. Churchill did begrudgingly accept the need to remove troops from the Egyptian seaport of Suez, where Britain’s previously strong military presence was looking increasingly infeasible.
The complicating factor of the Cold War
Churchill was alarmed by the nuclear arms race that took hold between the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1950s. Worse, he also came to realise that he was powerless to stop it. This spurred Churchill to develop Britain’s own nuclear arsenal, aware that it would deter the Soviet Union from launching a nuclear attack on the UK.
Nonetheless, Churchill also continued holding onto hope that some kind of détente could be reached between the US and the Soviets. Hence, he pushed for the two sides to meet in a summit where the increasing Cold War tensions could ideally be diffused. A four-power summit (with representatives of the US, Soviet Union, UK and France in attendance) would eventually be held in Geneva.
The Geneva Summit actually took place on 18th July 1955, about three months after Churchill’s final departure from Number 10. The aging Churchill had been blighted by health issues throughout his second term, including a serious stroke in June 1953. Still, Churchill’s last few years at the helm also saw notable successes, contrary to the common image of calamity and decline. Churchill resigned as prime minister in April 1955, handing power over to his Downing Street successor Anthony Eden.
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