Postwar Politics - Historiography Flashcards
Thorpe (1945-51) (2)
- Tories recovered quickly by closing party ranks in the post-45 climate
- Agreed narrative of wartime sacrifice against socialist self-interest
Addison (1945-51) (6)
- War engaged in state planning for centralisation of wartime production.
- Interwar period did not see radical experiments like in USA
- Main causes of poverty - family size increase, real wage static.
- “Labour broke in and took office”
- Tories adopted Labour agenda - Labour intelligentsia gave non-socialist reasoning for actions which were compatible with Toryism.
- Road to 45 concerning the nature of conensus.
Zweiniger-Bargielowska (1945-51) (6)
- Labour’s defeat in 1951 due to government fatigue, redistribution (Tory 35 seat bias), and Liberal disintegration.
- Labour victory in 1945 - poor Tory campaign, People’s war, interwar memory
- Industrial Charter 1947 significant to Tories.
- Discontent with shortages - bread and potato rationing 46-48 deeply controversial. 1947 v. Bad - Dalton Annus Horrendous. Hit middle class hardest. British Housewives League symbolising discontent.
- Gallup Polls - 1947 show public swing to right. 1947 - food and basic petrol by-election. Right focus on liberties took nostrum of liberals.
- Tories more economic with campaigning - Conservative success in 1951 was based on recapturing middle-class waverers, attracting stranded Liberals, and generally making inroads in areas where conversions mattered most. 6 categories of seat - focus on marginals
Cole (1945-51)
1) 1949 - Labour was essentially operating along Keynesian, and hence, Liberal, lines; it was not Socialism.
Barnett (1945-51) (3)
- New Jerusalem missed every opportunity to modernise the economy. Looked like 1990s Russia - power over-stretched, queues for basic foodstuffs, planners galore, industrial obsolescence.
- Labour’s three issues: - Thinking it was a world power still - Underwriting the Sterling era instead of repudiating Britain’s Sterling balances. - Instead of modernising infrastructure, wasting time on NHS.
- Comparisons to Germany were devoid of the contextual exceptionalism of the German situation.
Field (1945-51) (4)
- Expansion of the unions was not as important as the growth in union assertiveness and confidence - recovery from 1926 blunder.
- Labour pursued a form of tribal loyalty through ending regional unemployment, raising living standards and revolutionising social expectations.
- Savage and Miles - working class - homogenous communities in enclaves during interwar period WWII deepened a sense of class identity and reshape do class relations in important ways
Middleton (1945-1951) (4)
- The intention/ pitch of nationalisation was on the premise of greater efficiency - this was arguably not achieved through coal, which did not return the projected gains nationalisation had predicted.
- Nationalisationw was, however, beneficial to workers - miners secured better wages, security and union rights. This did not however appeal to Middle England.
- Planning, if not dead, was particularly weak in 1951
- British postwar performance severely dented by Korea. Rearmament costly + imposed restrictions.
Tiratsoo (1945-51) (3)
- Churchill was a great war leader but a terrible Party leader.
- This reflected in a distinct lack of domestic policy emerging from the Party, where Labour had an active intelligentsia which was gaining ground on the electorate.
- Revisionist argument - war not inevitable - Charmley - Churchill needed the war more than the war needed churchill
Fielding (1945-51) (9)
- Labour’s accent lies in the people’s war against the Axis.
- People were radicalised, leading to the collapse of traditional class, leading to the upsurge of a new social order.
- Evacuation at the rediscovery of poverty in England, as town people met middle-class.
- ABCA- suggests instilled socialist values on soldiers. Highly overinflated.
- Tories went into “cold storage” during war. Members were either acquiescent or disengaged.
- Labour argued for the failing of private enterprise – tied with Tories. Tories countered with support for entrepreneurial spirit.
- Tories used personal appeal of Churchill to gain support. Failings – Gestapo speech, 220,000 houses pledge (not enough). Socialist thinkers like JB Priestley given platform not otherwise present.
- “The General Election of 1945 was no manifestation of a politically conscious electorate setting up machinery for a changed order of society. At its best, it was no more than a profound distrust of the old political setup… At its worst it was a cynical hope that change might, perhaps, be for the better …. A vast body of opinion still looks to Tory politics and Tory politicians for satisfactory government.”
- Something went wrong during 45-51 – not policy, but electorate misinterpretation. Labour felt ethical socialism was acceptable due to wartime experience. In 1945, most wanted return to prewar conditions. Let us face the future – practical reforms accepted, no wish to accept ethical change.
Strike volatility 1940-44
- Strikes went from 922 to over 2000 between 1940 and 1944.
- Short - less than a week, in four generally tempestuous industries (coal, ship-building, metals, engineering)
Gender structure of 45 voting
- 65% of working-class men but only 52% of the female counterparts had voted for Attlee.
- Legacy of longer term political organisations?
Class structure ‘45 voting
- Middle class sympathies had swung to Labour, but not dramatically so.
- It mainly attracted the lower of the middle class.
- Only about 10% of top business people and 15% of higher professionals were Labour supporters
How many Conservatives were in war work as of 1944?
313
How many controls and statutory laws under Attlee?
25,000 controls , 13,551 new statutory rules
List some policies in Dalton’s budget?
- Dalton’s first budget - surtax on incomes +£2500 PA, and on incomes over £20,000, the rate went up to 10s 6d in the pound from 9s 6d
- Labour effectively put a ceiling on post-tax income at £6000
What motions existed in the party?
Foot, Crossman had agitated for a capital levy
What are the limitations of the 1951 budget?
Property inequality remained unaccounted for in Labour’s 1951 budget
What did favourable economic conditions allow in Tory administration
“the British people earning, eating, producing, buying, building, growing and saving moe than they ever did under the socialists”
What organisation arose to respond to Labour?
The United Front Against Socialism
What was included in the New Tamworth Manifesto?
“an assurance that, in the interests of efficiency, full employment and social security, modern Conservatism would maintain strong central guidance over the operation of the economy”
Owen
- Kavanagh claimed that decolonisation was core issues of the postwar consensus.
- Darwin - post 1945 foreign policy was unplanned and inconsistent. At same time as dispensing power to India, Paki, Burma and Ceylon, was also imposing new generation in Malaya and intensified penetration into tropical Africa. war saw ruthless state planning for efficiency + from 1940 onwards, egalitarianism and community feeling - brought by the ration book - Addison - more powerful than the propaganda of the left
Ellison
- 1940s settlement was ‘Keynes-plus-modified-capitalism-plus-welfare-state’
What was the Let Us Face the Future plan?
Let us face the future - commitment to 20% of total economy under public ownership. 1949 ‘Labour believes in Britain’ alongside 1950 ‘Labour and the New Society’ - credit public ownership programme to the success of Labour
Jones - why does consensus exist?
- Consensus born more so to emphasise the differences from Heath to Thatcher. Butler – humanised capitalism.
- 3 groups on Beveridge:
- Authoritarian - believed in adopting Beveridge
- Tory - complacent
- Liberal - believed led to Road to Serfdom (Hayek) - market should take it from here - Hogg - poverty is a basic of human condition.
- Socialists want poverty and misery to be the lot for the majority
- Education Bill 1944 - consensus par excellence - though Labour was divided over comprehensives and private education: - Moderates behind Gaitskell believed grammar schools and the 11+, though not great equality wise, should remain Left-wing Technocrats wanted abolition of grammar schools
Toye
- Planning was not understood universally in the party – division between the thermostatters and the gosplanners
- Stafford Cripps, in the early days of his Chancellorship, continued to promote some aspects of the Gosplanners’ agenda. It concludes that the Attlee government’s transition from socialist planning to demand management was a slower and more closely disputed process than has generally been recognised.
What’s the difference between Gosplanners and Thermostatters?
Gosplanners - hardline socialist (based on soviets) Thermostatters - moderates
Tomlinson
- 1950s - Labour enter divide over the nature of corporatism - and its place in party. 1950 - ‘in this problem of the relation between Government and private industry we have what is almost a vacuum in Socialist though’ shifts in attitude to private corporation…were related to a failure on the part of the party to reconcile some much broader and contradictory ways of thinking about the nature of the firm and of modern capitalist
- First, Labour’s desire to raise investment in the private sector was in tension with its hostility to the distributional consequences of large profit
- Second, Labour’s adherence to ‘big is beautiful’ for reasons of economic efficiency was at odds with the perception that big corporations were too powerful.
- Third issue, how to respond to the perceived divorce of ownership and control. inally, in its search for greater efficiency, Labour was torn between the benefits of competition and regulation.
Who fought who in cabinet?
Well, lots of people, but chiefly Morrison (right) vs Bevan (left)
Bevan’s view on the government in later years
Socialist objectives could not be achieved with slim majority
Opinion polls 1950
- 12% ahead - Tories
Callaghan
- We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step
Addison
War saw ruthless state planning for efficiency + from 1940 onwards, egalitarianism and community feeling - brought by the ration book - Addison - more powerful than the propaganda of the left
Facts about 1950s Britain
- GDP per capita rose by 40% between 1950 and 1966 Unemployment rarely above 2%
What is affluence and what was its impact?
Term dev. by Galbraith to describe US, adopted by Crosland, entered debate around 1960 - stood at precipice of debate on social democracy vs democratic socialism
Toye
consensus was a single rhetorical con- struct, but rather that there were a series of competing constructs. On the one hand, the trope of consensus was deployed as a rhetorical tactic, to suggest that one’s opponents did not belong to a wide and established national community of common sense. On the other – well before Thatcher became Tory leader – consensus was portrayed negatively, as a means used by the political establishment to shut out alternative view- points, at the cost of voter apathy.
Macmillan vs Keynes
Keynes would have the state do everything, Macmillan far favoured a quasi-partnership with business. “his quasi-partnership between the State and private enterprise lay at the heart of Macmillan’s ‘middle way’ between laissez faire and Socialism, with the State playing an enabling, supportive, and ‘hands-off role except where ‘the failure of private enterprise to meet the new demands of a developing society makes it essential for public authorities to step in’” However, agreed on reorienting the financial capital, and on freeing the government from the deflationary mindset.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
What is the thrust of The Road to 1945?
There exists significant continuity between wartime policy and postwar policy
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
What is the (pretty outdated) view of Jeffrys about the state of party opposition during this period?
The war had produced a middle ground, with a definable ‘consensus’. This can be seen in policy continuity from war to peace.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
What could be said about attitudes to postwar policy, how can we tell?
Conservatives were allergic to postwar policy - shown through the appointment of Arthur Greewood - Labour - to the post. Only with the Beveridge report did a Ministry of Reconstruction come to the centre stage in Nov 1943.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
On the board of reconstruction, what did Lord Woolton (minister) call the process?
‘a mixture of conservatism and socialism’
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
Where can we see lower-level agitation for serious conservative reform?
From Butler, who was convinced that the war had made necessary the creation of an enhanced role for the state while defending the place of individual liberty.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
Although Beveridge was not novel, how did he manage to make a sizeable difference on policy?
The successful synthesis and transmission of plans to rationalise the disjointed insurance schemes which existed before the war.
The Beveridge plan proved impossible to ignore, especially as Bracken as Minister of Information had taken it upon himself to encourage the enormous publicity given to its authror
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
How did Churchill approach the Beveridge bill?
Churchll still hoped to avoid at least delay reform in 1943. Attlee later recorded his view that ‘Winston planned to come in as the first post-war Prime Minister and he thought it would be a nice thing to have the Beveridge report to put through as an act of his government.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
What is Jefferys position on the existence of a coalition government during this time?
- Coalition, and the experience of war, made policies which were not tenable in 1939 tenable by 1945.
- Policy reform was still limited during the period - those resistant to reform still remained influential components of the system
- There existed a balance of coalition forces which prompted compromises which swung in the Conservatives’ favour
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
Where does Jeffrys acknowledge the failiings of consensus?
- Labour endorsed coalition proposals largely for tactical purposes:
- first 2yrs had shown the futility of pressing policies openly
- belief in Tory victory postwar led many to believe that groundwork had to be done during the war
- The rallying call for Labour was still the demand for a welfare state - with the policy stances of pre-war remaining largely unaltered.
Kevin Jefferys - British Politics and Social Policy During the Second World War - Limited - agrees to consensus!
Why did the Tories not prepare more for the 1945 election?
- The Tories thought election postwar was inevitable, as such, did not contemplate anything more than a superficial change of course on welfare issues.
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
How, to Harris, has the history of enterprise and the welfare state occurred?
- Immediate postwar: Battle of alturistic administration against vested private interests
- 1960s-Marxist-structuralist thought: symbiosis of welfare and private enterprise. Social policy was not a brake but a tool of industrial capitalism
- 1980s: Administrators as blocking effective enterprise - Correlli Barnett - The Audit of War - welfare state as one of the major links in the chain of Britain’s post-Second World War national decline.
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
Who turned to Correlli Barnett as a reputable source for the economy?
- None other than Mr Nigel Lawson
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
What themes does Barnett draw upon in his study?
- Decline of empire, decline of world power status, slippage from being the ‘workshop of the world’ to 14th, low domestic investment, weak entrepreneurship and low TFP.
- Britain threw away the historic moment of reconsturction and recovery at the end of WWII = investing in the welfare state when it should have invested in industry and modernisation
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
Who are the primary enemies in Barnett’s analysis?
- humanitarian Christians:
- William Beveridge
- Hugh Dalton,
- Harold Laski
- William Temple
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
Why is Barnett’s study limited?
- Ignores the implementation of social states across Europe
- Lack of evidence - fails to draw on the obvious source of European Community evidence and OECD evidence
- Evidence suggests that in 1950, Britain spent less on social security as a percent of GDP than West Germany.
- France and Germany had a fully fledged contributory social insurance system - whereas Britain retained means testing etc. on its provisions.
Jose Harris - Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective
What are the faws in Barnett’s analysis of Beveridge?
- Beveridge was not Christian
- Not a pacifist
- Was an advocate of the ‘Prussian’ model of government - which Barnett admired
- Beveridge’s estimates of welfare benefits were based on facts that deliberately kept provisions to a basic spartan minimum - both to encourage private saving and to maintain the traditional poor law principle of a substantial incentive gap between wages and benefits. - principle of ‘less eligibility’
Geoffrey Fry - A Reconsideration of the British General Election of 1935 and the Electoral Revolution of 1945
When the Conservatives won the election of 1935, what was the level of unemployment?
16.4%
Electoral victory of 53.3%
Geoffrey Fry - A Reconsideration of the British General Election of 1935 and the Electoral Revolution of 1945
What was the Conservative approach to 1930s economics?
Highly interventionist - introducing several checks to free market economy,
Still tried to attain a balanced budget - according to Gladstonian precepts
