Why Did the Conservatives Win the 1959 Election

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Why did the Conservatives win the 1959 general election? In 1959 there was a general election in Britain which the conservatives won. This meant that they were going to stay in power for another 4 years. In this essay I am going to explain the reasons why the Conservatives won the election and why Labour lost. One reason why the Conservatives won is there Stop-Go economic policy. Although the policy itself was bad the Conservatives engineered it by making it a go period when the election came round. They did this by ‘electioneering’ the Budget and cut income tax, purchase tax and the duty on beer. This made the public feel like the economy was good as most of them vote with their wallets they voted Conservative. The Labour economy policies are also a reason why they lost. Gaitskell promised to increase public spending without increasing taxes. This put his credibility under question. Another reason is that although voters were happy with the nationalisation of electricity, gas, atomic energy and airline industries they thought public ownership of coal and the railways had been a failure when they were last in government and there was little enthusiasm for further nationalisation which Labour was committed to by Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution. Another reason why Conservatives won is that in there manifesto they promised to stabilise the cost of living which would close the gap between rich and poor and double everyone’s standard of living. This was helped by Labour being identified with the working class rather than the nation as a whole. This was a problem as 40% of manual workers now considered themselves middle class so the Labour policies for the unemployed and working class no longer appealed to them, instead they believed that the Conservative party was going to help them to continue to move up the social ladder. A third reason that the
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