ABSTRACT
The year 1945 was, and remains, the most significant in the history of the British Labour Party. It was not only that the general election of that year was the first to produce a clear parliamentary majority for Labour, based on a popular vote of nearly twelve million – two million more than were cast for the Conservatives. It also remains the case that none of the three later periods of Labour government, each lasting about five or six years, including the post-1997 Blair Governments, have a record of substantial, reforming achievement comparable to that of the Attlee Governments of 1945-51. This was, as Ralph Miliband called it, ‘the climax of Labourism’1 not to be surpassed.
