Britain has undergone a silent revolution. Few suspected it. Hardly a politician from one end of the country to another had ventured to forecast what has happened at the polls. The people kept their secret. Yet throughout the country, in country no less than in town, they swung to the Left. And when they voted Left they meant it. They had no use for the middle-of-the-road Liberals; they voted Labour and they knew what they were voting for. The Conservative press had seen that they should know the worst; the Prime Minister had tried to scare them in broadcast after broadcast. But their marrows were not frozen; they took the risk. And so here we are for the first time in British history with a clear Labour majority in the House of Commons and the crushing defeat of Conservatism after over twenty-five years of dominance. We enter into a new political world, and though we (and the Labour leaders too) may shiver just a little at the thought of what lies ahead, we enter it with confidence. Many bad things have been made an end of. It is a kind of Progressive opportunity that comes only once in every few generations ╤ in 1832, in 1868, in 1885, in 1906.
Those were internal revolutions; this is part of a European revolution. The British vote parallels the revulsion of feeling that has occurred throughout Europe against old regimes and old habits of thought. There is encouragement in this, for if our affairs are wisely managed we have a magnificent chance of exerting British leadership in a desperately troubled world. Many of us, perhaps, may have felt in advance a little apprehension at the thought of a Labour victory on the edge of the economic upheaval of demobilisation and with all the great problems of European and Far Eastern resettlement in front of us. Only a Government of archangels could succeed, and it was natural to feel that it might be better from the long-range party view to see the Conservatives back with a clipped majority and the certainty of a crushing defeat in two years╒ time. But the people has willed it otherwise and the plunge has been taken. A Labour Government will have the responsibility of carrying us through and we must give it all the support and loyalty we can. No Government has ever had a harder task before it in time of peace, but none has ever had a great opportunity.
First thoughts are inevitably of the Government╒s defeat and what brought it about. The conclusions are salutary. Uppermost is the lesson that the British people will not be dominated by one man. They admire Mr. Churchill as a great Englishman; they are grateful to the war leader, but they are resentful of the party politician. It is now plain that Mr. Churchill╒s broadcasts and his attempt to turn the election into a personal plebiscite did him immense harm. As in President Roosevelt╒s elections the influence of the popular newspapers on political opinion is shown to be far less than their proprietors like to think; they cannot manufacture opinion at their will. But what caused the revulsion of feeling? It can hardly be that Labour has won because of affection for its leader; there is respect perhaps but hardly affection. The overwhelming influence was distrust of the Conservatives. This is not because of what they have done while they were in the Coalition but because of their history before 1940. Munich and the ╥phoney war╙ have been too much to stomach, and even Mr. Churchill has not been able to make people believe that there has been a change of heart. The Conservative record has been enough to wipe out the sentiment for a National Coalition, which again was evidently not as deep as many thought. Reactionary in social and international policy before the war, the Conservative party held out no hope for the future. If reconstruction was to be bold, if the high hopes of full employment and social security were to be fulfilled, it was not the Conservatives who could be entrusted with the task. The soldiers╒ vote, in particular went against them, but it was only the reflection of the way the mass of the people at home were taking.
There are, of course, some things in the election to be regretted. The submergence of the Liberal party is a disappointment. Given Proportional Representation, the party would still have a future, but it is obvious that under the present system its hopes must be slender. The country will part with Mr. Churchill with many regrets. After all, he is the greatest Prime Minister we have known since Gladstone and the greatest national leader since Pitt. But he has been the symbol of an attitude of mind against which the world has turned. The new Labour Government will have new faces and may be in part scratch material. The first thing it will have to forget is the Coalition mind. Its leaders should know how much the Coalition Government, to say nothing of the minority Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929, lost by timidity and shilly-shallying. They will keep the confidence of the country in the degree in which they show themselves to have purpose and conviction and are ready to accept the help of men of goodwill. They must rid themselves of their old inferiority complex, bring in fresh blood, and set out boldly. The country will not be afraid of its first Socialist Government; the Government must not be afraid of the country which has made it.
