The 1951 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 25 October 1951 to elect 625 members of the House of Commons, of which 506 constituencies were in England.
The Labour Government led by incumbent prime minister Clement Attlee decided to call an election just over one and half years after the previous election in February 1950, primarily because the Labour Party had won a mere majority of 5 seats in the House of Commons.
The election produced an interesting anomaly in England as well as the nation at large - despite the Labour Party winning a greater share of the vote, the Conservative Party won an overall majority, both in the Commons and in England.
This occurrence would next take place only in 2005 when the Labour Party would a win a majority of seats in England while the Conservative Party would accumulate a grater share of the vote (however, the Labour Party won a greater share of the vote than the Conservatives in the nation as a whole).
[1] The narrow victory of the Conservative Party led to the return of Winston Churchill as prime minister and the start of 13 years of Conservative rule (the second longest period of one-party rule in the 20th century).