1945: Churchill gets boot by wind of change

It was a landslide election result which underlined a seismic change in Britain. The 1945 general election saw Winston Churchill, the great war leader, unceremoniously washed away by a red tide of Labour.

After six years of the hardship of war, voters turned their backs on the old guard and the old ways. They wanted to build a different and modern path for Britain in the post-war era.

The wind of change in 1945 introduced a quartet of brand new faces as MPs to Shropshire's four Parliamentary seats, three of whom were men in uniform who had fought during the war.

Despite Labour's stupendous victory at national level, Shropshire remained true blue, with only one seat, The Wrekin, falling to a Labour candidate.

He was Ivor Thomas, who won the seat from sitting MP Arthur Colegate with a sizeable majority for Labour.

Thomas had a trade union background. He had been adopted as candidate by the local Labour Party in February 1938, but he hailed originally from South Wales, his home town being Briton Ferry.

Unlike the rest of the country, voters in The Wrekin had had a wartime Parliamentary election, which came in tragic circumstances. Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, the Tory MP since 1931, was killed in 1940 when the liner City of Benares was torpedoed by a U-boat. A by-election in September 1941 saw Colegate, a National Conservative candidate, elected.

Elected at Shrewsbury was a local man who was destined to be Shrewsbury's MP for many years, finally stepping down in 1983. He was 29-year-old Commander John Langford-Holt. His parents lived at Port Hill, Shrewsbury.

Commissioned into the Royal Navy, he flew in the Fleet Air Arm and according to newspaper accounts when his candidature was announced he took part in most of the actions of the Home Fleet, including attacks on the feared German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. He was on an escort ship on nine Russian convoys.

Ludlow's successful candidate was 36-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Uvedale Corbett, who had the nickname "Streak". The story goes that this was acquired when his fellow officers described him as a "long streak of misery" when a horse on which he had had a flutter was pipped at the post.

Corbett's home was at Stableford, near Bridgnorth, although he had not spent much time there since joining the Army. He served in the Royal Artillery and was a war hero, having been awarded a Distinguished Service Order in August 1944 in Normandy during the capture and defence of the Orne bridgehead.