The 1951 general election in Britain was held twenty months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Party had won with a slim majority of just five seats. The Labour government called a snap election for Thursday 25 October 1951 in the hope of increasing its parliamentary majority.
This election is remarkable for the fact that despite the Labour Party winning the popular vote (48.8%) and achieving the highest-ever total vote (13,948,385) at the time, the Conservative Party won a majority of 17 seats. This unusual phenomenon can be attributed to the collapse of the Liberal vote, which enabled the Conservatives to win seats by default.
The Labour Party has never gone on to equal or surpass the voteshare or the total vote that it acquired in this election. The Conservatives, however, would break the record of the highest votes in 1992 and again in 2019. It would also exceed the 48.8% voteshare won by the Labour Party, in the 1955 and 1959 elections winning over 49% in each case.
The election marked the return of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister and the beginning of Labour’s 13-year spell in opposition. It was the third and final general election to be held during the reign of King George VI, as he died the following year on 6 February and was succeeded by his daughter, Elizabeth II. It was the last election in which the Conservatives did better in Scotland than in Britain.
Because of the world wide interest in the election and its outcome, CBS radio ran a special broadcast featuring reports from London as well as Paris and Berlin, doing a recap by correspondents, discussing the potential for a return to power of the Conservatives and the political ramifications in Washington.
Here is that broadcast as it happened on October 25, 1951 via the CBS Radio Network.
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