Who Is The Lloyd George Coalition 1918-1922

Labour disunity was a huge contributing factor as to why the conservatives were able to dominate from 1951 to 1964. However, there are also other factors that assisted conservative dominance. Whether that be conservative strengths, good timing, the end of austerity or their handle on public opinion, all factors contributed to the dominant years. However, how long the conservatives actually dominated is also a question. Did they dominate for the whole period, or just part of it? The years 1962-1964 question conservative dominance and how labour reunited.

Edward Heath led the conservative party through a difficult and revolutionary period in British politics from the years 1965 to 1974, punctuated by the joining of the ECC in 1973, prolonged damaging strikes, high levels of inflation, and many monumental U-turns through the period of his office. The concept of change is most notably seen right from the offset of his leadership as he was the first conservative leader to be elected democratically, by ballot, marking a turning away from the old boy network of Tory prime ministers preceding him. He himself went against tradition, coming from very humble backgrounds, having been through the grammar school

This period of Labour rule is often marked down as a poor performance on behalf of the labour party, critically looked upon by many historians. There were many failings under the rule of this government however the circumstances they were placed in caused severe restraints in their options.

The election campaign in 1964 was a close run contest even though there was a low public approval of the current Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home. The labour party only won a majority of 3 seats. The reason for the decline in support for the Conservative party was because of events and scandals such as the Profumo affair

By the early twentieth century the Liberal Government was worried that Britain’s military capability and general military power was not as strong and it once was. Therefore, the Government’s concern over national security definitely influenced the decision for the reforms. However, there are three main factors that also need to be taken into account when deciding if concern over national security was the real reason for the reforms: the Social reasons, concerns for Britain’s Empire and the Political motive. The Social reasons played a large part in persuading the Liberals to reform. The detailed reports of Booth and Rowntree, and the evidence which was brought to light, highlighted that nearly a 1/3 of Britain’s population lived in

The construction of stable, liberal, democratic political frameworks became a major goal of their postwar political leaders, as well as of the U.S.

The Treaty of Versailles was a truly cruel document and expressed a large dislike for Germany. The document had a myriad of demands and if they weren 't met, then extortion was used to achieve goals. The treaty caused many hardships such as limiting the army down to almost nothing, stopped the building of large ships and took away submarines completely. Also, Great Britain and France collected money for all the damage the war had caused. To pay its war debts the country borrowed money from America, but soon after it stopped when the Great Depression began.2 In result, Germany had it 's very depression that was so severe the money ended up having almost little to no worth.

The Labour government of 1974-1979 also won two elections, the 1974 February election and the 1974 October election, however both were won by a minority. The February election was won by 4 seats and the October election was won by 42 seats. The reason for the slim win is to do with inflation. The Labour governments of 1974-1979 were in office at a bad time because Britain had started to suffer from huge inflation because of the oil price rise in 1973, and so voters didn’t have a clear decision on which they were going to vote for. This shows that at the moment the 1964-1970 Labour Government was more successful by far because of their majority of 110 seats in the 1966 election.

As stated by Holmes, in the 1980s, there was a lot of chaos in the party as Margaret Thatcher had moved the party to the extreme right amongst other things, making her members of parliament keen to replace her. She was replaced by John Major in 1990 who won four successive elections. Between 1900 and 2000, the conservatives were in power two-third of the time. The period in time when they were not in power, was in 1997 were they lost the election and also in 2001.At that point time, the conservative leaders were (William Hague and Iain Duncan smith) who struggled to win back votes of the people. The policies that were left by Margret Thatcher were not favoured by the people. In 2003, Michael Howard (right winger) revived the conservatives but the conservatives were defeated by the liberal democrat party in the 2005 general election. (Holmes pg276-277)

This would mean that wartime coalition ministers from all major parties were far more willing to cooperate with each other. Paul Addison (1975) argued that pre-war and wartime conditions led to a unique situation in post war Britain which led to a coming together of thinking in politics and society. This was strongly influenced by the Beveridge Report’s ‘Five Giants’. As mentioned before, this cooperation was also aided by the fact that fears of an extreme Labour government in 1945 had been disproved, meaning that key policy makers in the Conservative Government could be seen to be ‘One Nation Tories’; keen to build on national cooperation to maintain and essential post war consensus. Another fundamental aspect of post war consensus was the idea of the necessity of a ‘Big Government’; many Conservatives were now convinced of the government intervention in social and economic policies, resulting in them being far more in tune with public opinion and so accepted Labour's welfare policies such as Keynesian economics. With regard to Winston Churchill, his government were seen to indeed follow Keynesian economics, but

This can be seen by any disagreements between cabinet members were never made public. Therefore, as a result of this the conservatives were able to gain more support from the public due to the fact that they were offering a united party whereas Labour was not. It can also be argued that their leadership was also able to judge the mood of the country in this period. This is as after Attlee’s government Churchill captured the mood of the country, which was that the public wanted more freedom as is seen by the film from this era ‘passport to

The Treaty of Versailles was penned during the Paris Peace Conference, mainly to decide upon Germany’s consequences for beginning World War One. When Germany signed the treaty, it lost a tenth of its land to surrounding countries. Not only did they lose part of their country, but they also lost their overseas territories, including Chinese ports, Pacific Islands, and African colonies. One of the actual causes of the war was that Germany wanted ‘a place in the sun’, and requested

Since the Weimar Republic was established in the aftermath of World War One, it was almost inevitable that it would be blamed for Germanys surrender and the Treaty of Versailles. The supposed surrender was even harder to accept since in 1918 Germany had signed an armistice with Russia. Weimar was in essence ‘brought about by defeat’ . The ‘November Criminals’ who signed the armistice were always associated with Weimar, thus making it difficult for Weimar to be associated with anything but defeat and humiliation. The war guilt clause was also difficult to accept because it lay all the blame on Germany for starting the First World War. This along with reparations were crippling not only the economy but German society itself

In 1997 Labour pledged a referendum on PR, but it was postponed and it has been argued that two strong political parties, Labour and Torries, would have lost the most if there were any changes in voting systems. If the referendum took place in 1997 elections, Labour majority would have to share, approximately, from 46 seats to 166 MPs with Liberal Democrats. Liberal Democrats gained 16,8% of the total votes, but won less than 10% of the total seats.

At the very end of World War 2, the British people is craving for a change in the economic and social policies of their country. In fact, the Great Depression and pre-war Conservative governments were very disappointing : Chamberlain's (from 1937 to 1940) and Churchill's (from 1940 to 1945) governments were practically only based on foreign policy (because of the war and the progressive degradation of the British Empire), and were considered responsible for not enough preparing Britain to war ; moreover, the Great Depression's various governments (Labour as well as Tories) were blamed because they did not assure the people's, and particularly the working-class'