SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 2 of 95

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which party formed the government in Britain in the year 1945?

(a)Labour Party
(b)Socialist Party
(c)Democratic Party
(d)Liberal Party

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Britain voted in July 1945, weeks after victory in Europe, and the Labour Party under Clement Attlee won a landslide, turning Winston Churchill out of office.

The result is why SSC asks it. It was Attlee's government that sent the Cabinet Mission to India in 1946 and that carried the Indian Independence Act through Parliament in July 1947 → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Socialist Party — No Socialist Party has ever formed a British government. The organised left in Britain is Labour; the label is borrowed from continental European politics and is here only to look plausible.
(c)
Democratic Party — The Democratic Party is American, not British, and has never contested a United Kingdom general election. The option tests whether you read the country named in the stem.
(d)
Liberal Party — The Liberal Party did once govern Britain, but its last Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, left office in 1922. By 1945 it held only a handful of seats and formed no government.

Concept

The 1945 general election is the hinge date between wartime Britain and the transfer of power in India. Churchill, who had said he would not preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, lost office; Attlee's Labour government took it and moved quickly.

Within two years it had sent the Cabinet Mission, announced a date for withdrawal, appointed a new Viceroy and legislated independence. That is the chain SSC is really testing when it asks a question about a British party.

The stem is British political history, but every option except the answer fails on a simple test: is it a British party at all, and was it capable of forming a government in 1945?

Key facts

Clement Attlee led the Labour Party to a landslide in the British general election of July 1945, defeating Winston Churchill's Conservatives.
Attlee's government sent the Cabinet Mission to India in 1946.
On 20 February 1947 Attlee announced that Britain would transfer power in India by June 1948 and named Lord Mountbatten as the incoming Viceroy.
The Indian Independence Act was passed by the British Parliament in July 1947, under the same government.

Study next

Attlee's statement of 20 February 1947 and the advancing of the transfer-of-power dateThe Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 and its grouping proposalThe Indian Independence Act 1947 and the two-dominion settlement

Common traps

Answering Churchill's party because he led Britain through the war and the war ended in 1945 — he lost the election held that July.
Reading Labour Party as an Indian organisation. SSC also sets the Independent Labour Party founded in India in 1936 (23 Sep 2024, 12:30, General Awareness Q.22).

SSC keeps British political history to the points where it touches India — who held office when a decision was taken. The same instinct is set as a Viceroy question on 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, General Awareness Q.11, which asks who was Viceroy when the Dandi March began.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.