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British History > Britain 1951-64 > Flashcards

Britain 1951-64 Flashcards

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1
Q

Who was Hugh Gaitskell?

A

Labour party Leader/Leader of the opposition from 1955-63

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2
Q

Who was R.A Butler?

A

Deputy Prime Minister to Eden + Macmillan
Strong party leader of promoting post war consensus

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3
Q

What kind of Conservative was Butler?

A

Encouraged the party to become more progressive, and modernised the party’s attitude and policy
- ie Education Act 1944

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4
Q

How did the Education Act (1944) support the idea that Butler was a progressive, left leaning Conservative?

A
  • The act outlined a tripartite system
  • Introduced to tackle Beveridge’s giants (ignorance)
  • Represented modern change in society
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5
Q

Why was Butler an important Conservative figure between 1945-51?

A
  • Had a key role in restoring Conservative morale, encouraging recovery after 1945 defeat
  • Prevented Labour from being known as more modern than the Conservatives by trying to modernise Conservative policies
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6
Q

What is the significance of Butler’s ‘Industrial Charter’
(1947)?

A
  • Represented the modernisation of the party’s policies
  • Highlighted the importance of trade unions (more left wing) and suggested a mixed economy of private and state-directed industries
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7
Q

What is ‘Butskellism’?

A

The feeling of Post war consensus between the 2 parties, leading a more Central party (Labour right + Conservative left)

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8
Q

What were reasons for Labour’s defeat in the 1951 election?

A

Labour weaknesses
Conservative advantages

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9
Q

What were the Labour weaknesses causing their defeat in the 1951 election?

A
  • Atlee’s government was worn down by heavy economic and financial difficulties
  • Collectively and individually, government was exhausted after 6 troubled years in office
  • A number of ministers, ie Atlee himself, Herbert Morrison and Ernest Bevin were working continuously since 1940
  • Serious divisions between the right and left of the party over economic, welfare and foreign policy
  • Resentment amongst some trade unions at Labour’s slowness in responding to worker demands
  • Shrinking of their majority in 1950 election made it hard to govern and damaged party morale
  • Labour found it difficult to shake off image as party of rationing, austerity, and high taxation-> unhappy electorate
  • Britain’s entry to Korean war in 1950 angered Labour left wing, essentially following USA in Cold WAR engagement
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10
Q

What were the Conservative strengths leading to Labour’s defeat in the 1951 election?

A
  • Reorganisation of the party by Lord Woolton, reforming its finances + constituency organisation-> in a better position to fight for seats and votes compared to 1945
  • Young Tory MPs (ie R.A Butler) bringing new ideas to the party
  • Conservatives had begun to recover from shock of 1945 defeat
  • 1950 election saw influx of bright young Conservative MPs eager for battle against a tiring government
  • attack on government nationalisation of iron and steel provided strong platform for opposition attacks
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11
Q

What were the 1951 election results?

A

Conservatives- 321 seats
48% vote
Majority of 17

Labour- 48.8% vote (won the popular vote by 0.8%)
295 seats
Labour got more votes but less seats

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12
Q

What is the explanation of vote share in the 1951 election?

A
  • Labour added 2 million votes between 1945-51
  • Conservatives added nearly 4 million + Liberal party only put up 109 candidates, drop of 366 compared to 1950-> nearly 2 million ex-Liberal voters went largely to Conservatives
  • Due to FPTP system, even though Labour got more votes, they lost the election due to seat share.
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13
Q

What significant things happen in 1957?

A

UK first hydrogen bomb tested
Homicide Act
Rent Act

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14
Q

What significant things happened in 1958?

A

Life peerages introduced

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15
Q

What significant things happened in 1959?

A

Conservatives won general election. Britain became founding member of EFTA

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16
Q

What significant events happened in 1960?

A

Macmillan’s winds of change speech
Labour party adopted unilateralism

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17
Q

What significant events happened in 1962?

A

Commonwealth immigration Act.
Cuban missile crisis

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17
Q

What significant events happened in 1963?

A

Britain’s application to join EEC vetoed by France
Profumo affair
Macmillan retired
Douglas-Home Conservative PM until 1964

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18
Q

What was Macmillan’s social background?

A

Macmillan came from a middle class background (Publishing business)
- Married into the upper class

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19
Q

What type of Conservative attitude did Macmillan have?

A

Macmillan, like Butler, is sometimes described as a one nation conservative. A ‘one nation’ conservative is another name for a centrist or left Conservative.
He thought they should give more provisions to the poor

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20
Q

What were the good social developments between 1957-63 under Macmillan?

A
  • Education…
  • spread of comps
  • the Robins Report (1963
  • Class and Social Mobility
  • Housing and Living Standards
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21
Q

How did Macmillan impact Housing and Living Standards between 1957-63? (pos)

A

Committed to build 300,000 houses annually
1951-54: achieved the target
By 64: they claimed they built 1.7 million houses, 60% being private

Rent Act 1957: abolished rent control, put 6 million properties on the market
- Rents rose considerably
- Difficult for tenants at the lower end to afford leases
- Macmillan felt he had to do this to stimulate the rented property market

More ease with money being borrowed and repaid over long periods of time
- Encouraged by government-> banks and building societies advanced capital in the form of mortgages, allowing increasing numbers to own their own homes (thought more people would vote Conservative as home owners)

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22
Q

How did Macmillan impact Education between 1957-63? (pos)

A
  • The Robin’s report 1963 expanded Universities
  • Some Conservatives opposed the spread of comprehensives
    Boyle (minister of education 62-64) pushed for the abolition of the 11+, and for better education for all children

More comprehensives schools were built under Conservatives than under Labour

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23
Q

Why was the spread of Comprehensive schools good/Why were grammar schools bad?

A
  • 11+ was unreliable
  • Undervalued children who failed
  • Selection was socially divisive
  • Larger shares of funds went to top layers of schools, leaving lower layers impoverished
  • Bright pupils formed as well academically in comprehensive as they did grammar
  • Takes away wealth leading to education- social class all mixed together
    Grammar schools received more funding, unfair
    Middle class children would pass more (tendency) as they were more prepared for it
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24
Q

Why were Grammar schools good/Comprehensive schools bad?

A
  • No alternative to bad comprehensive if grammar schools abolished
  • Sets are still in Comprehensive, so still separated
  • Smart children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have any alternative and cannot move unlike wealthy parents
  • Comprehensive denied children from disadvantaged backgrounds to benefit from school education fitted to their needs
  • Quality of schools depended on the area they were situated-> would just be replaced by a poor comprehensive
  • Wealthier parents could move to let children go to better comprehensives, poorer parents couldn’t, now changing to selection by parental income
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25
Q

How did Macmillan impact Class and Social Mobility between 1957-63? (pos)

A

○ The increased availability of financial credit meant poorer people could spend more, so generally had more possessions - as did increased production due to higher consumer demand.

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26
Q

How did the importance of class decrease?

A

○ The war weakened class divisions due to shared wartime experience
○ The welfare state
○ People generally became much richer during the 1950s and 1960s, blurring class distinctions

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27
Q

How did social mobility not change from 1957-63?

A

People would still see things through the lens of class - for example, lower-middle class people who earned less than some of the wealthier working class people still saw themselves as socially superior.

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28
Q

What was Britain’s industrial state under Macmillan, from Eden?

A

Britain wasn’t producing quality products at a high enough quantity (late 50’s, early 60’s= heavily industrial country)

  • Germany + Japan had to restart after WW2, rebuilt the countries post invasion with new technology and innovation + ideas in mind
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29
Q

How was Britain different to Germany and Japan post WW2?

A

Britain had older technology, expensive to replace, no need to change how they produced things-> become a smaller manufacturing powers

  • Country began to sink into debt, lack of modernisation (products from Germany and Japan began to dominate British markets
30
Q

Why was there potential tension between Macmillan and trade unions?

A

Inflation was rising
Strikes + increase in union membership-> strong by the end of the war, got stronger during the 50’s

31
Q

What were the bad social developments under Macmillan from 1957-63?

A
  • Immigration, Race Riots and an Immigration Act (1962)
  • A youth subculture…
  • “Teddy Boys”
  • “Mods. vs Rockers”
  • The Rent Act of 1957

*The Beeching Report (1963)

32
Q

How did Youth Subculture change between 1957-63 under Macmillan? (neg)

A

Unwillingness for some youth to accept the standards and values of their elders, easily descending to antisocial behaviour and hooliganism

Led to Mods vs Rockers (antisocial behaviour) and Teddy Boys

33
Q

Who are ‘Mods vs Rockers’?

A

Mods drove motor scooters and dressed smarter whereas rockers rode motorbikes and they pre-arranged fights

34
Q

Why did Mods vs Rockers emerge?

A
  • Wealthier society meant people with good wages felt independent
    • Teenagers and 20 year olds first generation not to have lived through WW2 and were targeted by advertisers to see themselves as different
    • Psychological theories encouraged young people to ignore tradition and act out of their feelings
    • Scandals of upper classes didn’t set a good example
      1960s saw a boom of satire and undermined notions of respect and deference
35
Q

Who are the ‘Teddy Boys’ ?

A

Used violence against immigrants to become ‘local heroes’
Generally working class
Gathered in numbers
Racist
Called Teddy boys as they dressed like King Edward VI

36
Q

How were initial Attitudes to Race in the 1940s?

A

Pre 1948 immigrants- Jews and Irish, not too obvious
1948- Windrush
From Kingston, Jamaica to Britain
Ship carries 100’s of West Indian workers-> majority were young males
Initial warm welcome, assured them they would find new homes and jobs
Under existing law they had full rights of British citizenship, stimulating further immigration from the West Indies
Government encourages this with organised appeals for Caribbean workers to fill the vacancies- Hospital + transport services, Britain left with post-war labour shortages

37
Q

How did Attitudes to Race change in the early 1950s?

A

Segregation increased
- ‘no coloured’ notices appeared in boarding house windows + factory gates
- People thought they were attracted to Britain by the welfare benefits than the work aspect
- People said the housing shortage (problem in the poorer areas) was due to the immigrants
- People were exaggerating that too many immigrants were coming- net emigration was for a century, every decade up until 1970, net emigration was higher than immigration
- Main difficulties arose over accommodations-> immigrants usually took cheaper properties for buying and renting, inner cities had severe affordable housing shortages- increasing competition between low income residents and newcomers.
- Also same problems in the job market: people who couldn’t get a job tend to blame immigrants for taking their work at lower pay rates whites were prepared to accept

38
Q

How did Attitudes to Race change between 1958-9?

A

Riots broke out in urbans areas such as Nottingham, Bristol and some of the poorer London Districts
Pattern of trouble: gangs of white youths went round insulting black residents whose young men frequently retaliated
August, Notting Hill: crowd of 600+ white males tried to batter their way into black-owned properties
TV newsreels showed disturbing scenes of police trying to keep white and black mobs apart + fire services tried to quench the fires started by petrol bombs
Short term: severe prison sentences were imposed on white ringleaders who were found guilty of inciting

39
Q

What is the Salmon riot report?

A

Report on the 1958 Notting Hill race riots by Mr Justice Salmon

40
Q

What did the Salmon report find on the riots?

A
  • Sexual jealousy of young white males who resented white women going out with black males
    • The anger of whites at the willingness of blacks to work for low wages
    • Bitterness at the rise in rents which whites believed were a result of the readiness of blacks to live in cramped conditions and therefore pay higher collective rents than individual whites could afford
  • White ‘teddy boys’ who used violence against immigrants becoming ‘local heroes’ to whites fearful of the growing number of black residents
41
Q

How did the Report respond to the issue?

A

The report approached it as a law and order issue
Put the problem down to white reaction to increased immigration + made no explicit reference to racism or discrimination suffered by immigrants.

42
Q

How did the government act according to the Salmon Report?

A

Government then acted in the same sprit as the Report- interpreting the order to mean than immigrants need to be controlled

43
Q

What is the Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962) ?

A
  • Attempt to limit immigration by creating a voucher scheme, restricting the right of entry for those who actually had jobs to go to
    • Condemned for being racist
    • Limitations on the entry into Britain were necessary in the interest of good race relations
    • Rush of immigrants before the terms came into force (1960-62: 230,000 New Commonwealth citizens arrived)
      For the first time, GOVT will restrict numbers of immigrants coming from the Commonwealth
44
Q

What is the Commonwealth?

A

Countries who because independant from GB but wanted to keep ties with them, would join the Commonwealth
○ India was the first Non white country to gain independance from Britain

45
Q

What is the negatives of the Rent Act 1957?

A

Abolished rent control
Put 6 million properties on market but rents rose a lot so hard for poorer tenants to afford leases

46
Q

What were good economic
developments under Macmillan from 1957-63?

A
  • The availability of credit
  • Rising wages
47
Q

What is a Real wage?

A

wage adjusted with inflation

48
Q

What is the Availability of Credit?

A

Facility provided by finance companies, enabling people to borrow much larger sums of money than could be obtained by saving

Loan repayment spread over a few years, usually a small amount each month

49
Q

What is the positives of having an Availability of Credit?

A

People could now buy items they previously couldn’t afford
Access to credit enables consumers to buy a larger range of manufactured goods-> consumer boom began

1950-65: sales of private cars nearly quadrupled from 1.5 million to 5.5 million
Now foreign holidays, clothing and mod cons (modern conveniences: central heating, TVs, radios etc) were in the reach of ordinary people

50
Q

Why were there rising wages?

A

There were hardships for some of the population but the greater trend was a rise in living standards.

51
Q

How did rising wages help the population?

A

Meant inflation did not prevent the majority of gaining material prosperity ( Material wealth)

An example of this was the rise of wage from £8 6s (£8.30) in 1951 to £18 7s (£18.35) in 1964. This was also growth in real wages (wages relative to inflation) so people were able to buy more with their money. Despite the fact that there was inflation, the rise in real wages were never overtaken by inflation.

52
Q

What were bad economic
developments under Macmillan from 1957-63?

A
  • Budget Politics
  • Britain’s Comparative Industrial Growth Rate
  • “Stop-Go” and “Stagflation”

Unemployment levels

53
Q

What is Budget politics?

A
  • Criticism for both parties when in opposition
    Budgets were too often used as short term measures to buy votes in the general election
54
Q

Which budgets of the time can be seen to be ‘vote catching’ through budget politics?

A

Conservative budgets of late 1950’s and early 1960’s

55
Q

How did the 1959 budget show evidence of budget politics?

A

Effort to boost support for government in next election by introducing range of tax cuts. At the time, high inflation suggested financial restraint would have been more appropriate

56
Q

What were the effects of the tax cuts in the 1959 budget?

A
  • Resulted in increased consumer spending-> led to higher inflation and wider trade gap
    • Then Heathcoat Amory adopted deflationary measures, including tax and interest rate rises, cuts on public spending, attempt to limit wage increases
    • Conservative chancellors continues with the restrictive measures till 1964 election
    • To regain popularity, Macmillan government in 1963 returned to expansionist budgetary policy-> lowered taxes and interest rates
    • Resulted in boom in consumer spending-> sudden demand for goods couldn’t be met from British stocks, led to sharp increase in foreign import
    • 1964 net result: Balance of payments deficit of over £800 million
57
Q

What is Stop Go?

A

Consumption and prices rose too quickly, government increase taxes and raise interest rates, make it more difficult to borrow. When products and exports declined, government cut taxes and lowered interest rates, make it easier to borrow

58
Q

What is Stagflation?

A

Stagnation + inflation
Industry declined but inflation persisted, economy suffered

59
Q

When are Stop Go and Stagflation used?

A

The terms were used to denote the failure of governments developing policies to encourage a consistently performing economy

60
Q

Why was the government seen to be presenting Stagflation and Stop Go?

A
  • Policy lagged behind events, leading to the belief that Britain lacked an economic strategy
  • The economy was shown to be vulnerable to unforeseeable circumstances
61
Q

Why was Britain’s industrial growth rate worrying?

A

Despite the good economics, a major worry was Britain’s poor performance compared to its chief international competition. Its GDP growth rate was the lowest in Western Europe:

Italy- 5.6%
Germany- 5.1%
France-4.3%
UK 2.3%

62
Q

Why was Britain’s Industrial growth rate so poor?

A

There was heavy defence spending. It maintained costly naval and military bases across the world and was involved in an expensive nuclear arms programme.

By 1964 , (the end of the Conservative Government) UK was paying £1.7B (10% of GDP)
In this time Britain was committing a extraordinary proportion (34.5%) of defence on Research and Development (R&D). Only the US was spending more. (40.6%)

63
Q

What were unemployment levels like at the time?

A

The level of unemployment rose at the end of the 1950s, and while dropping slightly in the early 1960s, reached the record high 800,000 in 1963 (Macmillan’s last year in government)

64
Q

What were positives of Conservative economic and social policies?

A
  • Material quality of life was improving for everyone
    • Increase of opportunities for poorer people
65
Q

What were negatives of Conservative economic and social policies?

A
  • Gap between rich and poor widened between 1951-64 in Britain
    • Stop Go tactics, not developed coherent economic policies
    • No structured financial strategy (apart from keeping the value of the pound sterling), didn’t use budgets responsibly but as a technique of buying votes during election time
    • Government failure to invest in industrial research and development- no effort to improve Britain’s employer- worker relations-> stagflation, poorest growth rates amongst advanced industrial nations in mid- 1960s
    • Property owning democracy led to heavy borrowing by government and consumers-> creating economically dangerous debts, encouraging materialism, consumerism and irresponsibility
66
Q

What economic policy did Macmillan’s chancellors follow?

A

Keynesianism

67
Q

If Unemployment is rising and there is danger of low growth and recession, how should the government change spending and taxes?

A

should increase spending, (decrease taxes) lower interest rates, encouraging firms to invest/take on more workers.

68
Q

If inflation is rising because of high demand (ie economic boom), how should government change spending and taxes?

A

should decrease spending, (increase taxes), increase interest rates.

69
Q

Why did Conservatives tend to follow Keynesianism?

A

they tended to be more worried about inflation, Labour more about unemployment.

70
Q

Why were Macmillan’s chancellors accused of not following Keynes properly?

A

They paid too much attention to politics rather than economic conditions. Eg in the run up to the 1959 election inflation was rising but, to make voters feel happy, Chancellor Heathcote-Amory decreased taxes. This fuelled inflation and after the election he had to restrain it more strictly eg tax increases, interest rate rises.

71
Q

What are criticisms of the 1957-64 economic policy?

A

Stop go contributed to stagflation when the two evils of unemployment (stagnation) and inflation happened at the same time.
It also meant Macmillan did not address underlying issues, like why was British growth lower than Europeans (because we weren’t investing in newest machinery like they did because so much more heavily bombed). He should have had a research and industrial strategy.
Also by 1964 government spending 10% GDP on military to keep the remains of empire and superpower status going.

72
Q

How was Consumer society affected between 57-64?

A

1957 Mac said ‘British people had never had it so good’. He wanted poor to get richer. BUT Wages rose faster than prices 1951-64.

Banks and shops lent more, partly because relaxation of moral opposition to debt. People could buy ‘mod cons’ (modern conveniences) on ‘hire purchase’. Also bought new cars on hire purchase; 1950-65 private cars increased from 1.5m to 5.5 million.

73
Q
A

British History (3 decks)

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