BRITISH POLITICAL HISTORY 1945-90 Flashcards
What were the main features of Attlee’s Labour welfare programme 1945?
- National Insurance Act: Universal compulsory contributions to a central fund
- Industrial Injuries Act
- National Health Insurance Act: Free medical treatment, prescriptions, dental and optical care. Local health boards.
- National Assistance Act: National assistance boards to deal with poverty directly
- Education Act 1944 (Butler Act): tripartite secondary education system. 11 plus exam.
- Family Allowances Act 1945: weekly payment of 5 shillings for every child after the first. No means test.
What is the basis of Keynesianism?
- Demand - raising demand would increase industrial profit. Decline would be prevented and jobs sustained.
- Keeping the economy at high level of activity
- An artificial boost to the economy would lead to genuine recovery and growth.
- Achieve full employment
- Earnings of the people would increase spending on goods
What were the financial problems of Attlee in 1945?
- Debts £4 billion
- Balance of payments crisis
- Exports dropped 60% during wartime
- overseas commitments expensive
What were Attlee’s main achievements 1945-51?
- Nationalisation
- Welfare state
- Marshall Plan agreement
- Indian Independence
- Housing programme - a million new homes
- Formation of NATO
- Britain became a nuclear power
Why was Labour defeated in 1951?
LABOUR DISADVANTAGES
- Economic and financial difficulties
- Exhaustion after 6 years in government
- Divisions within the party over economy, welfare and foreign policies
- Resentment among trade unions at Labour’s slowness in response
- Labour’s image of rationing and high taxation
- Austerity
- Korean war expensive 1950
CONSERVATIVE ADVANTAGES
- Recovered from their defeat 1945
- Influx of young Tory MPs
- Attack on nationalisation of iron and steel
What were the consensus strategies?
- Keynesian policies
- Welfare policies based on the Beveridge Report
- Education policies based on equal opportunities
- Foreign policy based on pro-American, anti-Soviet stance
- Imperial policies based in independence
What were the key developments of 1951-5 under Churchill?
- End of rationing 1954
- Steel industry denationalised
- Built 300,000 new houses per year
- Continuation of Keynesian policies
- Detonation of first atomic bomb 1952
- Korean War ended 1952
Churchill continued Labour’s main aims: (butskellism)
- Maintaining full employment while achieving economic growth
- Expansion of welfare state
- Maintaining military defence programme (including Korea)
- Development of nuclear weapons
What were Eden’s reasons for withdrawing from Suez in 1956?
- Opposition of the public: Gaitskell and Bevan attacked Eden
- Fury of Eisenhower at not being consulted
- Failure to gain international backing
- UN condemnation
- Reluctance of many Commonwealth countries in supporting Britain
- Withdrawals on deposits by international investors - threatened economic collapse, with the USA refusing to bale Britain out
What was the Conservative economic policy 1957-64?
- Continue Butler’s policies
- Mixed economy
- Follow a loose form of Keynesianism
- Avoid the extremes of inflation and deflation
- resulted in stop-go economics and stagflation
Living standards under the Tories 1957 Macmillan:
- Rose
- Wages rose above prices - people could buy more, though inflation continued
- Credit - borrow large sums of money without saving. Consumer boom began and the class divisions became less prominent
- Built 300,000 new homes per year - 1.7 million by 1964
- Rent Act 1957: 6 million properties on the market, rent rose considerably
- ‘property owning democracy’ - Britain had ‘never had it so good”
- Unemployment- Tories inherited Labour’s goal of full employment, Unemployment was high.
How suitable was the comprehensive system of education?
FOR COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM
- Majority of children undervalued
- 11+ exam was unreliable
- Socially divisive
- Public funds went to top layer schools
- Inferior children marked as failures
- Records showed that bright children performed just as well at comprehensive schools as grammar schools
AGAINST COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM
- Denied able children from disadvantaged backgrounds
- Quality of schools depended on the area - no alternatives if grammar schools demolished
- Wealthy parents could move to areas with better quality schools
- Most comprehensive schools put children into sets anyway, creating internal divisions
Why were class divisions more blurred by the 1960s?
- The war: National war effort and common experiences of danger and hardships.
- Welfare state under Attlee and the cognition thereafter that the welfare of the whole population was a matter of national concern
- Growing affluence of society 1950/60s
Criticisms if the Conservatives under the Tories (Churchill, Eden, Macmillan) 1951-63:
- stop-go economics rather than a coherent economic system to prevent wild swinging between inflation and deflation
- No financial strategy, despite a desire to maintain the value of the pound
- Failed to invest in industrial research and development - the result was one of the poorest growth rates among the advanced industrial nations
What were the causes of the race riots under Macmillan 1958-9?
- sexual jealousy of white young males
- anger of whites at willingness of blacks to work for low wages
- whites were bitter at rise in rents - believed that this was due to the blacks’ willingness to live in cramped conditions and oay higher collective rents than individual whites could afford
- white ‘teddy boys’ were violent against immigrants - they became local heroes to local whites fearful of the growing number of blacks
Why were youths becoming so anti-social by the 1960s? (Macmillan)
- Growing affluence meant young people were on good wages and felt independent
- Pockets of poverty felt alienated
- Teenagers in the 60s were the first generation not to live through the depression of the war - they were targeted by advertisers at special and different from their parents
- Scandals of 1963-4 set a poor example
- 1960s were a boom time for satire
