Britain, 1950-1960 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Clement Attlee

List of postwar Prime Ministers (till October 1964): July 1945 - Clement Attlee; November, 1951 - Sir Winston Churchill; April 1955, Sir Anthony Eden; January, 1957 - Harold Macmillan; October 1963 - Sir Alec Douglas-Home.

Answer: British diplomats that had spied for the USSR

Burgess was born at Devonport, Devon 1911; he died on August 30, 1963, Moscow. Maclean was born in London, 1913. He died in Moscow, on March 11, 1983. Both had been members of Foreign Office. They 'disappeared' in 1951 and re-surfaced in Moscow in 1956.

Answer: True

Churchill had become Prime-Minister again after the general election of Nov. 1951. George VI died on 6 February 1952, at Sandringham, Norfolk. Princess Elizabeth, on a tour in Kenya, was immediately called back to take up her duties as Queen of the U.K.

Answer: June

July and August would probably not have been very suitable because everybody would have been having their holidays, and even with the moderate British climate the summer weather might not have been ideal. By the way Queen Elizabeth was already fully functioning as Queen and had already carried out her first State Opening of Parliament on 4 November, 1952.

Answer: Gamal Abdel Nasser

In 1952 King Farouk had been removed from power (which he had held since 1936). Initially there was a confused period in which Farouk's infant son Fouad II was theoretically still in the running for the throne, but actual power was in the hands of a group of 'Free Officers' officially presided by General Naguib.

Not long afterwards Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real leader of the bloodless coup d' etat was to come to the foreground. On 23 February 1954 Nasser forced Naguib to withdraw as President. Because of popular protests Naguib was allowed to return temporarily as Prime Minister, but not as President. On 18 April Nasser decided to take over as Prime Minister, and on 14 November he completed his seizure of power by putting Naguib under house arrest.

In 1956 Nasser became the President of the new Republic and remained in office till 1970, when after his death he was succeeded to by Anwar Al Sadat.

Answer: True

The Television Act approved setting up Commercial Television under the Independent Broadcasting Authority. ITV was created in 1954. Its channel was used by various contractors: Rediffusion; Granada; ATV and ABC.
In practice the British people got the benefits (?) of Commercial Television only from 1955 on. Food rationing had remained in force for an astonishingly long time after the end of WWII.

Answer: Aneurin Bevan

Bevan was the son of a miner. Born at Tredegar in Monmouthshire, he represented the more leftist tendency within his party. Died in 1960. Bevin was born in Somerset (1881), Gaitskell was a born Londoner (1906) and Wilson was a Yorkshireman (Huddersfield, 1916).

They all died in London at ages 70, 57 and 79. (By the way, *don't* confuse Bevan with Bevin! The latter was Foreign Secretary, 1945-51, and is better known internationally. Bevan was Health Secretary, 1945-51 and is remembered above all for founding the National Health Service in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from the medical profession, which was overwhelmingly Conservative at that time.

Answer: Archbishop Makarios

Makarios (born 1913) became President of Cyprus in 1959. He remained President till his death in 1977 in Nicosia. When the Turks invaded the island, he left for some time until the Greek Colonels' regime had been replaced. Being deported to the Seychelles by the British government only enhanced his status with the local population.

The other local hero was Giorgios Grivas, also called Dighenis. Born in 1898. Guerilla-fighter.His Ethniki Organosis Kipriakou Agonos organisation wanted to bring about 'enosis' (union) with Greece rather than independence. Died in 1974, at Limassol. Colonel Papadopoulos was one of the figureheads of the so-called Colonels' regime. Denktash is still today the leader of the Turkish minority in Northern Cyprus.

Answer: withdraws funding from Aswan High Dam

As a response to this reaction Nasser decided to nationalize immediately. First the Israelis invaded .Then the British and the French sent in their airplanes and later their troops. You can find a website on the British Special Air Services at www.1earth.com.au and then: militaria

Answer: Budapest, Hungary

Already in June 1953 some 30,000 workers had reacted in East Berlin to the restrictive politicies applied by the East-German authorities. In June 1956 riots broke out in Poznan. They resulted in the coming to power of Wladyslaw Gomulka. At the end of October a multi-party government was in the making in Hungary with Imre Nagy as the new Prime Minister. Neutrality was going to be declared.

But on 4 November the Soviet Union sent in tanks to crush the rebellion. The West itself being involved in Egypt, was in a too weak diplomatic position to stop the Russian intervention. Twelve years later the Prague Spring of 1968 was suppressed by force.

The breakdown of the Eastern Bloc was to come from Russia's Polish neighbour. In 1970 there were food riots in Gdansk. On August 14, 1980 new protests about food shortages led to a strike at the Lenin shipyards. Soon Solidarnoc was going to ring a knell for the crumbling Soviet system.

Answer: False

On 22 November 1956 the British Government had denied any collusion already a first time. On 20 December Eden once again claimed there had been no collusion. But his credibility was falling so fast, that he soon saw no other way out anymore but to resign.

Answer: Selwyn Lloyd

Selwyn Lloyd had been Secretary of State for Defence from Apr. 1955 till Dec. 1955, when he became Foreign Secretary. He stayed in office till Earl Home took over. Hailsham became Secretary of State for Education in January 1957. Was replaced by Geoffrey Lloyd in September of the same year. Sandys became Secretary of State for Defence in 1957.

Answer: Gold Coast

Nyasaland is now called Malawi and became independent on July 6, 1964. Ivory Coast (better known under its French name (Cote d'Ivoire) has been independent since 1960. British Cameroon had been created at the end of the First World War. Ex-German Cameroon was divided into a French part and a British part.

The north of British Cameroon later went to Nigeria. The southern area was added to French Cameroon.

Answer: Legislation on sexual behaviour

Discontinuing 'call up' after 1960 had already been decided upon in April 1957. Homosexual behaviour between consenting adults was illegal till 1967.

Answer: Earl Russell

Sir Stafford Cripps was born in London (1889) and died in Zurich in 1952. He is chiefly remembered as a rigorous Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Beaverbrook was born in Ontario, 1879 and died in Leatherhead, Surrey, 1964. In Canada he had been a financier, in England he became a politician and a newspaper propietor.

As a politician he sat in the War Cabinets of both WW1 and WW2. During the 30s he was definitely one of the leading 'presslords'. Lord Denning was a British judge who was considered to be 'the champion of the common man'.

He happened to have to preside over the sex-and-politics case in which John Profumo, the British War Secretary had been involved. The model with whom Profumo had been having an affair, Christine Keeler was also seeing an important Soviet diplomat. Bertrand Russell was the driving-force behind the Pugwash Conference between scientists from the East and the West.

In the sixties he was notorious for leading, together with his wife, so-called 'mass sit- ins'.

Born at Trelleck, Monmouthshire, 1872 he became nearly 100 years old and died at Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, Wales in 1970.

Answer: Nuclear disarmament

Aldermaston, Berkshire, was a centre of atomic weapon research and development.

Answer: crushing majority of 100 seats

This was not a case of a dissatisfied nation ousting the sitting government; it was an increased majority and a landslide victory for the party in office!

Answer: 'the winds of change'

The Sharpeville massacre that took place the next month showed how urgent the problem was.

Answer: False

The negotiations were not in 1960 but in 1961 and were unsuccessful. In January 1963 General de Gaulle vetoed Britain's entry - in highly insulting terms, at a press conference, without having previously informed the British government or the governments of France's partners in EEC.

Answer: Cyprus

Malta became independent on Sept. 21, 1964. Crete, is still today an administrative region of Greece. Historically it was called Candia by the Venetians. It's famous for its Minoan civilisation. Rhodes, the 'island of snakes' is the largest and most easterly of the Dodecanese group of islands in the Aegean Sea.

It belongs to Greece though it's closer to Turkey from which it is separated by only the Straits of Marmara. Cyprus, is mainly Greek - apart from the northern section that is occupied by the Turks.

It is about 40 miles south from Turkey, 60 miles west from Syria and 480 miles southeast from what it considers to be its true homeland: Greece.