Pre course context (1945-1951)

Question 1

What were labour principles for the economy?

Answer 1

Nationalisation
More government intervention
Redistribution of wealth

Question 2

What were conservative principles for the economy?

Answer 2

Privatisation
Laissez-faire
Competition generates wealth
Fewer taxes

Question 3

What were labours social principles?

Answer 3

Equality of opportunity
Welfare state
Investment in healthcare
Security

Question 4

What were the conservatives social principles?

Answer 4

Rugged individualism
No ‘propping up’ people

Question 5

What was the attitude towards the government post WW2?

Answer 5

A lack of trust in the government shifts into a desire for a government that helps and intervenes (labour).

Question 6

What were labours strengths in the 1945 election (6 points)?

Answer 6

• Labour leading figures had good reputation from serving in Churchills wartime Coalition
• Image of representing a progressive zeitgeist that encouraged reform and reconstruction.
• Labour was viewed as better fitted for post war construction
• Willing to overlook Labours mistakes in 20s due to minority government
• 1945 imbalance in electoral system worked in Labour’s favour
• Were not in power during great depression

Question 7

What were conservative weaknesses in the 1945 election (6 points)?

Answer 7

• They were associated with the struggle of war.
• Memories of Lloyd George Coalition and Conservative governments failure to deliver land fit for hero promises.
• Confidence in victory lead to poor electioneering such as personality over policy
• Churchill misread mood/zeitgeist of country
• Churchill was unreliable as a domestic politician in peacetime and said welfare state would require ‘a Gestapo’ to enforce it.
• Inability to manage economy and deal with unemployment in 1930’s

Question 8

What were economic factors that affected the 1945 election (5 points)?

Answer 8

• Widespread feeling that economic reconstruction was vital and deserved
• Rife unemployment between world wars
• Most infrastructure destroyed
• £4 billion in debt
• Needed state management and intervention to sort out destroyed economy

Question 9

What were social factors that affected the 1945 election (4 points)?

Answer 9

• Widespread feeling that social reconstruction was vital and deserved
• Government wartime propaganda department putting on films about need to reconstruct a better nation together.
• Conscription lead to a left wing zeitgeist spreading across the armed forces- they wanted a egalitarian country seeing as they were fighting it
• Beveridge report of 1942 said they needed to ‘slay 5 giants’: squalor, ignorance, disease, want, idleness

Question 10

What international context affected the 1945 election (3 points)?

Answer 10

• WW2 had entered peoples homes unlike WW1
• Spanish flu pandemic killing many young men
• WW2 had proved government intervention could be a power for good

Question 11

What were the “five giants” that Beveridge believed needed to be remedied and what were their remedies?

Answer 11

Want- to be ended by national insurance
Disease- to be ended by a comprehensive health service
Ignorance- to be ended by an effective education system
Squalor- to be ended by slum clearance and rehousing
Idleness- to be ended by full employment

Question 12

What was the legacy of social policies that the 1945-1951 Labour government installed?

Answer 12

• Labour set up welfare state based on principles of Beveridge report where everyone received help no matter how much they paid in, and everyone had to pay in and it was Commitment so people do not want for their basic needs.