Britain, Emphasis on Domestic Policy rather than Foreign Policy

Topic Areas  Consensus Politics from Labour to Thatcher  Britain & Decline? Performance of the economy,  Social change and multiracial society  Britain & Europe (Links to Ireland, Europe & World)

What was Britain like in 1945?  Changing nature of global position  Britain between the wars,  How was Britain affected by WWII?

Britain between the Wars: Poverty or Affluence?

George Orwell, 1936, Road to Wigan Pier ‘through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs…She had a pale round face, the usual exhaused face of the slum girl who is 25 and looks 40, thanks to miscarriages & drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate hopeless expression I have ever seen’.

Benefit of Hindsight…  Britain recovered relatively quickly from the ‘Great Crash’,  Between the years national income rose by 20% -Industrial production rose by 40% -Income per head of the population by 18%

 Orwell’s view does not tell the whole truth, but should not be dismissed.  According to Richard Hoggart: ‘There was a deep and gross divisiveness at the very heart of British society which radically separated the consciousness of the Lancashire mill worker – underschooled, underhoused, underpaid, undercared for in almost all respects and with no reasonable hope of betterment, from an Old Etonian – sure of a good job in the City, sure of a world which embraced the best clubs, Ascot, Lords, an attractive house and a wife to match it all.’

How does war affect a country?

Why did the Labour Party win the election of 1945?  Periods of warfare – that is to say of violence, brutality and general mayhem – are often followed by outbreaks of tender idealism whose most common symptom is the vision of a fairer society. As in 1918, with ‘a country fit for heroes to live in’, so in 1945, when the Labour party was closely associated with hopes for a better future and a welfare state...Labour did not have to win the election but merely avoid losing it Robert Pearce, 1994

An extract from Let us face the Future, the Labour Party’s 1945 Manifesto  The nation needs a tremendous overhaul, a great programme of modernisation and re-equipment of its homes, its factories and machinery, its schools, its social services. All parties say so – the Labour Party means it. For the Labour Party is prepared to achieve it by drastic policies of replanning and by keeping a firm constructive hand on our whole productive machinery; the Labour Party will put the community first and the sectional interest of private business after. The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, public spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.

The 1945 election result VotesSeats% Vote Conservative9,988, Liberal2,248, Labour11,995, Communist102, Others751,514203

Reasons for Labour’s Landslide Victory  A feeling that the interwar political establishment had not understood the needs of the people  Conservative’s mismanagement of the economy  Appeasement  ‘A land fit for heroes’?  The progressive spirit of the Labour Party  Churchill  Conservative election campaign  Labour experience gained in wartime coalition