form a government. Although the King was initially suspicious of Churchill's character and motives, in due course both the King and Queen came to respect and admire him. Post-war years In the 1945 British general election, Churchill's Conservative Party was soundly defeated by the Labour Party of Clement Attlee. Elizabeth's political views were rarely disclosed, but a letter she wrote in 1947 described Attlee's "high hopes of a socialist heaven on earth" as fading and presumably describes those who voted for him as "poor people, so many half-educated and bemused. I do love them." Woodrow Wyatt thought her "much more pro-Conservative" than other members of the royal family, but she later told him, "I like the dear old Labour Party." She also told the Duchess of Grafton, "I love communists." During the 1947 royal tour of South Africa, Elizabeth's serene public behaviour was broken, exceptionally, when she rose from the royal car to strike an admirer with her umbrella because she had mistaken his enthusiasm for hostility. The 1948 royal tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed because of George's declining health. In March 1949, he had a successful operation to improve the circulation in his right leg. In summer 1951, Elizabeth and her daughters fulfilled the King's public engagements in his place. In September, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. After a lung resection, he appeared to recover, but the delayed trip to Australia and New Zealand was altered so that Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, went in the King and Queen's place in January 1952. George VI died in his sleep on 6 February 1952 while Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were in Kenya on a Commonwealth tour, and with George's death his daughter immediately became Queen Elizabeth II. Queen mother (1952–2002) Widowhood Shortly after George VI's death, Elizabeth began to be styled as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother because the normal style for the widow of a king, "Queen Elizabeth", would have been too similar to the style of her elder daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. Popularly, she became the "Queen Mother" or the "Queen Mum". She was devastated by her husband's death and retired to Scotland. However, after a meeting with Prime Minister Winston Churchill, she broke her retirement and resumed her public duties. Eventually she became just as busy as queen mother as she had been as