Dad's Army featuring the characters from the show at a Christmas party, among whom was Mainwaring's unseen wife Elizabeth – or rather, what the children thought she looked like (Mainwaring remarks "Good grief. What a remarkable likeness!"). Arthur Lowe made a second appearance as Captain Mainwaring on "Blue Peter" with the "Dad's Army" van which would appear in the forthcoming London-Brighton run and showed presenter John Noakes the vehicle's hidden anti-Nazi defences. During its original television run, "Dad's Army" was nominated for a number of British Academy Television Awards, although only won "Best Light Entertainment Production Team" in 1971. It was nominated
William Mainwaring declared to be in the interests of workers of Britain. Mainwaring became a staunch opponent of Welsh nationalism. In 1955 he denounced the assumption that the English "were in some peculiar way wholly foreign and alien to Wales", and ridiculed basing a nation on "poets, preachers and musicians". He supported reform of the system of leasehold ownership to allow leasehold tenants to buy their freeholds, attacking the sale of estates to financiers. After being little active in his last Parliament, Mainwaring announced his retirement a year before the 1959 general election. He lived to the age of 87. William Mainwaring