The collapse of Post-War settlement, 1964-79 Flashcards
What were the 5 pillars of the Post-War consensus?
-High Tax
-Strong Unions
-Mixed economy
-Commitment to the NHS and the welfare state
-Government intervention in the economy
What was Neddy?
National economic development council established in 1961.
What was Neddy used for?
It was a plan to help boost the economic growth and development of the UK
What was Nicky?
National incomes commission established in 1962
Why did trade unions move away from wage restraints?
New members of trade unions didn’t remember/weren’t born in the days of the great depressions and thus due to changing times the new members which were now the majority of unions wanted to have higher wages.
How did Labour benefit from consensus politics in 1964?
Consensus politics during the time period after the war meant that the conservatives and Labour mainly had the same economic policies thus leading to general election battles relying more heavily in how good the leader was.
How much growth did Britain need to pay for health-care, education etc.?
Britain needed a growth rate of 4%
How much growth did Britain need to pay for wealth-care, education and health?
Britain needed a growth rate of 4% to achieve all of these things.
Why did post war consensus come under criticism?
-Other countries were outperforming Britain’s economy by a large amount,
-Britain’s economy may have been doing good however compared to other nations it was doing badly due to how well other countries were doing.
-The idea then came about that; to increase Britain’s economy then we need to remove the ideas of post war consensus.
-Therefore multiple ministers and economists believed that the problem with economic growth lay with the post-war consensus.
What issues did Ted heaths government uncover during the issue of modernization?
Heath introduced a statutory income policy.
What were the key issues in entering the common market?
It wasn’t popular with the majority of the country; people were worried about the idea of being close with Germany even though it was 30 years after the end of the Second World War.
What was the key issue in inducing growth?
-The key issue was that Britain hadn’t achieved a growth rate of 4% since the Victorian times.
-Therefore it was very hard to pay for all the things that the government at the time wanted.
-Growth is a long-term matter and therefore the conservatives didn’t want to do that as due to how when general elections pop up they were more focused on shorter-term impacts, as those are the ways that wins over voters.
Why was the election of 1974 different to the rest of elections?
-It led to a hung parliament as Labour won more seats [301] compared to the Tories [291].
-Another oddity was the fact that the liberals won 19.3% of votes but only won 14 seats.
-This led to people arguing for an introduction of a proportional representation system as the Conservatives only won 39.3% of votes.
What became apparent with trade unions in the 1970s?
-The leadership of the trade unions were younger.
-The leaders thought there shouldn’t be so much shared responsibility, this led to many being more left wing and socialist along with them being more militant,this spread into the Labour party and can be seen with the Labour leader Tony Benn during the early years of Thatcher.
-Trade unions leaders also began to lose control of members and thus there were a lot of action taken that wasn’t
What was the effect of the 1974 election on the liberal party?
-They pushed for proportional representation.
-The election was an absolute victory for the liberals as they became part of the coalition government and thus they could pick and choose what bills/acts were pushed into law, as they were the deciding votes in parliament.
