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History > Britain from 1914 to the present > The political situation > Britain since 1945 > Conservative government (1951–64)

The last years of Attlee's administration were troubled by economic stringency and inflation. The pound was sharply devalued in 1949, and a general election on February 23, 1950, reduced Labour's majority over the Conservative and Liberal parties to only eight seats. Attlee himself was in poor health, and Ernest Bevin, formerly the most politically powerful man in the cabinet, had died. More-radical members of the party, led by Aneurin Bevan, were growing impatient with the increasingly moderate temper of the leadership. On October 25, 1951, a second general election in a House of Commons not yet two years old returned the Conservatives under Churchill to power with a majority of 22 seats.

Photograph:Queen Elizabeth II reads the speech from the throne at the state opening of Parliament, 1958.
Queen Elizabeth II reads the speech from the throne at the state opening of Parliament, 1958.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The Conservatives remained in power for the next 13 years, from October 1951 until October 1964, first under Churchill—who presided over the accession of the new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, on February 6, 1952, but was forced to resign on account of age and health on April 5, 1955—and then under Churchill's longtime lieutenant and foreign secretary, Anthony Eden. Eden resigned in January 1957, partly because of ill health but chiefly because of his failed attempt to roll back the retreat from empire by a reoccupation of the Suez Canal Zone after the nationalization of the canal by the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the summer of 1956. This belated experiment in imperial adventure drew wide criticism from the United States, the British dominions, and indeed within Britain itself. Although it was cut short in December 1956, when UN emergency units supplanted British (and French) troops, the Suez intervention divided British politics as few foreign issues have done since. Eden was succeeded by his chancellor of the Exchequer, Harold Macmillan. Macmillan remained in office until October 1963, when he too retired because of ill health, to be succeeded by Sir Alec Douglas-Home, then foreign secretary. In this period of single-party government, the themes were economic change and the continued retreat from colonialism.

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