ABSTRACT
After 1951 there were thirteen years of uninterrupted Conservative rule under four successive Conservative Prime Ministers: Winston Churchill (1951-5), Anthony Eden (1955-7), Harold Macmillan (1957-63) and Alexander Douglas-Home (1963-4). The party won three successive general elections, a record exceeded in the twentieth century only after 1979. It is, therefore, not surprising that the period 1951-64 is often known as the ‘Conservative decade’. Within this timescale there were two general trends. Between 1951 and 1960 Conservative domination was complete, while from 1961 to 1964 the governments of Macmillan and Douglas-Home came under increasing pressure, the latter eventually falling to a revived Labour party under the leadership of Wilson.
