Eighty years ago Labour hopes rise after polling day in the general election

 

 

With a large increase in the number of voters since the last general election in 1935 it was especially hard to call the result of the 1945 vote. To give time for the votes of electors serving overseas to be counted, it would be another three weeks before the result was published.  Labour was in confident mood after polling day on the basis of detailed canvasses although the Conservatives were still on a formidable majority of seats won in 1935. Labour leadership talked in terms of winning 100 seats and many of the 25 new constituencies. This would put them within striking distance of enough MPs to form the government. The Conservatives were nervous that a vigorous campaign by the Liberals had translated to proper three-way fights in constituencies which would work to the government's disadvantage.

Political debate in France was dominated by the question of the consitution. De Gaulle preferred a simple reversion to the 1875 constitution of the Third Republic but found little support. He eventually accepted that the question should be addressed by a specially elected constituent assembly with the proviso that its decision might be subjected to a referendum, He saw this as a means of warding off any risk from a potentially Communist-dominated assembly but the Left detected an echo of Louis-Napoleon's  manipulated plebiscites which he had used to underpin his dictatorship.

The Australian army completed the assault on Balikpapan in Borneo in what would prove to be almost the large major land operation of the war. After fierce resistance and the loss of half their strength the Japanese withdrew into the centre of the island. The victory was far from decisive in the wider fight against Japan and of debatable value to the projected invasion of the Japanese home islands which was set for 1946. The oil refineries at Balikpapan had been wrecked by bombing; more important, the Japanese had no means of shipping their output anywhere useful anyway.