Labour Party

The Labour Party’s victory in the 1945 United Kingdom general election brought down Winston Churchill’s government and made Clement Attlee the new prime minister. At the Potsdam Conference, the result transformed an expected brief interruption into a sudden change of leadership, and Harry S. Truman read it as another sign that the political order shaped by the war was passing.

Victory During the Potsdam Conference

On July 25, 1945, the conference was put on hold as Churchill prepared to return to London for the election result. Anthony Eden and other members of the British delegation were also due to depart. The expectation among those gathered was that Churchill would win and come back within days; even Attlee, his quiet opponent, seemed to share that expectation. The Labour Party’s victory the following day overturned those assumptions: Churchill was defeated, and Attlee became prime minister.

An Unexpected Change of Government

The result astonished those at Potsdam. The Soviet delegation appeared especially unsettled: Vyacheslav Molotov repeatedly asked how the outcome could have been unknown in advance. Joseph Stalin postponed the conference for several days and was seen by no one. The election had therefore altered more than the personnel of the British delegation. It disrupted the conference’s expected course at a moment when its participants were negotiating the postwar settlement.

Significance in Truman’s Account

Truman privately placed Labour’s victory within a larger sequence of political departures: first Franklin D. Roosevelt, now Churchill. He wondered what might happen if Stalin suddenly died and a struggle for power convulsed the Soviet Union, observing that he had seen no apparent successor among the Russians at the conference. His response to Churchill’s defeat was mixed. He regretted it, but also considered that Churchill’s absence might allow him to make better progress with Stalin. In this account, Labour’s victory marks a transfer of authority in Britain and intensifies Truman’s awareness that the wartime leadership order was changing.