1956 Labour Party deputy leadership election

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2 February 1956 (1956-02-02)

1959 →


Candidate	Jim Griffiths	Aneurin Bevan
Popular vote	141	111
Percentage	56.0%	44.0%

Deputy Leader before election

Herbert Morrison

Elected Deputy Leader

Jim Griffiths

The 1956 Labour Party deputy leadership election took place on 2 February 1956, after the resignation of sitting deputy leader Herbert Morrison. Morrison resigned after his heavy defeat in the leadership election in December 1955, but the party decided not to hold a deputy leadership election until the new year.

Candidates

Herbert Morrison resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party after a humiliating third-place defeat behind the winner Hugh Gaitskell and the runner-up Aneurin Bevan in the 1955 Labour Party leadership election. During this contest the Labour Party was divided between Bevanite and Gaitskellite wings.

Aneurin Bevan, former Minister of Labour and National Service, Member of Parliament for Ebbw Vale
Jim Griffiths, former Secretary of State for the Colonies, Member of Parliament for Llanelli

Results

Only ballot: 2 February 1956
Candidate		Votes	%
	Jim Griffiths	141	56.0
	Aneurin Bevan	111	44.0
Jim Griffiths elected

The day after the result was announced, the political correspondent of The Glasgow Herald reported that "Mr Griffiths's success was a foregone conclusion", but Bevan attracted a much higher vote than had been expected. He speculated that if Bevan could "keep his personal animosities under control, and restrain his tendency to quarrel with colleagues in public" he would be "a formidable contender" for the post of deputy leader if he were to challenge Griffiths the following year.

As a result of Bevan's performance, his rival Gaitskell appointed him to his Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Colonial Secretary. He also won the election as party treasurer over George Brown in October 1956. One month later, he was promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary for his fierce denunciation of the Suez Crisis. Afterwards the Bevanites and the Gaitskellites would increasingly reconcile, and Bevan was elected unopposed in the next deputy leadership election after Griffiths' retirement in 1959.

Notes and references

"Mr Gaitskell elected Labour leader". The Times. 15 December 1955.
"1955: Gaitskell elected Labour leader". 14 December 1955. Retrieved 17 June 2022.
Campbell, John (2010). Pistols at Dawn: Two Hundred Years of Political Rivalry from Pitt and Fox to Blair and Brown. London: Vintage. pp. 216–228. ISBN 978-1-84595-091-0. OCLC 489636152.
"Mr Griffiths as Labour's New Deputy Leader - Good Support for Mr Bevan". The Glasgow Herald. 3 February 1956. p. 8. Retrieved 13 March 2022.
Thorpe, Andrew (1997). A History of the British Labour Party. London: Macmillan Education UK. p. 133. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-25305-0. ISBN 978-0-333-56081-5.

Quinn, Thomas (2013). "Labour Party Deputy Leadership Elections 1952-2007". University of Essex. Archived from the original on 17 April 2014.
"Mr J Griffiths's majority of 30". The Times. 3 February 1956.
"New deputy leader". Manchester Guardian. 3 February 1956.

Labour Party

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Leaders	Hardie Henderson Barnes MacDonald Henderson Adamson Clynes MacDonald Henderson Lansbury Attlee Morrison^ Gaitskell Brown^ Wilson Callaghan Foot Kinnock Smith Beckett^ Blair Brown Harman^ Miliband Harman^ Corbyn Starmer
Deputy Leaders	Clynes Graham Attlee Greenwood Morrison Griffiths Bevan Brown Jenkins Short Foot Healey Hattersley Beckett Prescott Harman Watson Rayner
General Secretaries	MacDonald Henderson Middleton Phillips Williams Barker^ Nicholas Hayward Mortimer Whitty Sawyer McDonagh Triesman Carter Watt Collins McNicol Formby Evans
Treasurers	Henderson MacDonald Henderson Lathan Greenwood Gaitskell Bevan Nicholas Davies Callaghan Atkinson Varley Booth McCluskie Burlison Prosser Elsby Dromey Holland
Leaders in the Lords	Haldane Cripps Ponsonby Snell Addison Jowitt Alexander Pakenham Shackleton Shepherd Peart Hughes Richard Jay Williams Amos Ashton Royall Smith of Basildon
Scottish Labour Leaders	Dewar McLeish Jamieson^ McConnell Jamieson^ Alexander Jamieson^ Gray Lamont Sarwar^ Murphy Gray^ Dugdale Rowley^ Baillie^ Leonard Baillie^ Sarwar
PLP Chairs	Hardie Henderson Barnes MacDonald Henderson Hodge* Wardle* Adamson Clynes MacDonald Henderson Lansbury Attlee Lees-Smith* Pethick-Lawrence* Greenwood* Gaitskell Wilson Houghton Mikardo Hughes Willey Dormand Orme Hoyle Soley Corston Clwyd Lloyd Watts Cryer Morden
EPLP Leaders	Stewart Prescott Castle Lomas Martin Seal Ford Green David Donnelly Murphy Titley Willmott Corbett
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Internal elections and selections

Leadership elections	1922 Ramsay MacDonald 1931 Arthur Henderson 1932 George Lansbury 1935 Clement Attlee 1955 Hugh Gaitskell 1960 1961 1963 Harold Wilson 1976 James Callaghan 1980 Michael Foot 1983 Neil Kinnock 1988 1992 John Smith 1994 Tony Blair 2007 Gordon Brown 2010 Ed Miliband 2015 Jeremy Corbyn 2016 2020 Keir Starmer
Deputy Leadership elections	1952 Herbert Morrison 1953 1956 Jim Griffiths 1959 Aneurin Bevan 1960 George Brown 1961 1962 1970 Roy Jenkins 1971 1972 Edward Short 1976 Michael Foot 1980 Denis Healey 1981 1983 Roy Hattersley 1988 1992 Margaret Beckett 1994 John Prescott 2007 Harriet Harman 2015 Tom Watson 2020 Angela Rayner
Shadow Cabinet elections and reshuffles	Sep 1931 (Henderson) Nov 1931 1932 (Lansbury) 1933 1934 1935 (Attlee) 1936 1937 1938 1939 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 (Gaitskell) 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 (Wilson) 1970 1971 1972 1973 1979 (Callaghan) 1980 (Foot) 1981 1982 1983 (Kinnock) 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 (Smith) 1993 1994 (Blair) 1995 1996 2010 (Miliband) June 2016 (Corbyn) May 2021 (Starmer) November 2021 2023

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