1951 United Kingdom general election in the context of "Attlee government"

Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff (/ˈkæləhæn/ KAL-ə-han; 27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. Callaghan is the only person to have held all four Great Offices of State, having also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964 to 1967, Home Secretary from 1967 to 1970 and Foreign Secretary from 1974 to 1976. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1987.

Born into a working-class family in Portsmouth, Callaghan left school early and began his career as a tax inspector, before becoming a trade union official in the 1930s. He served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was elected to Parliament at the 1945 election, and was then regarded as being on the left wing of the Labour Party. He was appointed to the Attlee government as a parliamentary secretary in 1947, and began to move increasingly towards the right wing of the Labour Party, while maintaining his reputation as a "Keeper of the Cloth Cap" – that is, seen as maintaining close ties between Labour and the trade unions. Following Labour's defeat at the 1951 election, Callaghan increasingly became regarded as a leader of the right wing of the Labour Party, and stood for the positions of deputy leader in 1960 and for leader in 1963, but was defeated by George Brown for the former and Harold Wilson for the latter.

The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by Prime Minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labour Party led by Tony Blair, which achieved a 179-seat majority and a total of 418 seats.

This was the first victory for the Labour party in a general election in nearly 23 years, its previous one registering a majority of 3 seats in October 1974 under the leadership of Harold Wilson. It was also Labour's first comprehensive victory over the Conservatives since the 1966 election, which had produced a near 100-seat majority. This election also marked Labour's highest vote share since the 1970 election and its second highest total number of votes in history (the largest being the 1951 election). On the other hand, it was an ignominious end to the 18-year government of the Conservatives, the longest continuous period of government of any party in modern British history. This election marked the third-largest defeat ever suffered by the Conservatives (the largest being the 2024 election) with the party left with just 165 seats—it was left devoid of any MPs outside England, with only 17 MPs north of the Midlands, and with less than 20% of MPs in London. Additionally, the party also registered its lowest share of the vote since 1832 as well as its lowest vote in absolute terms since 1929. This would be the last election until 2024 that the Conservatives decreased their share of the vote.

Clement Attlee was invited by King George VI to form the first Attlee ministry in the United Kingdom on 26 July 1945, succeeding Winston Churchill as prime minister of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party had won a landslide victory at the 1945 general election, and went on to enact policies of what became known as the post-war consensus, including the establishment of the welfare state and the nationalisation of 20 per cent of the entire economy. The government's spell in office was marked by post-war austerity measures; the crushing of pro-independence and communist movements in Malaya; the grant of independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and Burma; the engagement in the Cold War against Soviet Communism; and the creation of the country's National Health Service (NHS).

Attlee went on to win a narrow majority at the 1950 general election, forming the second Attlee ministry. Just twenty months after that election, Attlee called a new election for 25 October 1951, but was narrowly defeated by the Conservative Party, sending Labour into a 13-year spell in opposition.

The Ministry of Housing and Local Government was a United Kingdom government department formed following the Second World War, covering the areas of housing and local government.

It was formed, as the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, in January 1951 when functions of the Ministry of Health, which had taken over the powers of the old Local Government Board, were merged with the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, which had been created in 1943. Its name was changed to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government by the new Conservative government following the October 1951 general election.