Making of Modern UK 11th September 2015 Suez Profumo Education Feminism

 1940 to 1985: the Attlee Era
 1985 to 2015: the Thatcher Era
 The Attlee Era is one of collectivism, the
welfare state, expansion of social services,
nationalization of industry, strong Trade
Unions, economic growth, low
unemployment.
N C Gardner MA PGCE 2

 1985 to 2015: the Thatcher Era is one of
individualism, a free market economy, much
weaker Trade Unions, privatisation, much
higher unemployment, a winner-take-all
society.
 1940: the start of the wartime Coalition
Government and state control of people,
industry and services for the war effort
against the Axis Powers

 1985: the defeat of the miners (the National
Union of Mineworkers) led by Arthur Scargill,
marks the end of Trade Union power in post-war
Britain and the start of a new national culture of
individualism, looking after number one, a
winner-take-all society.
 In addition from 1983, when Thatcher secured
her second term of government, privatisation of
industry went into full swing, as well as the
promotion of the ‘enterprise culture’. Britain
changed fundamentally into a neo-liberal,
business-driven economy and society.

 Pervasive state involvement in social and
economic life
 State dominates over civil society
 Collectivism
 Keynesian demand management
 Confined role for markets: the mixed economy

 The intellectual justification for the planned
economy of the post-war Labour and
Conservative governments from 1945 to 1979,
came from the economist John Maynard Keynes
(1883 – 1946).
 Keynesianism required that the large institutions,
corporations, and unions should drive the
country’s economy and that the government
should intervene constantly to balance the
situation, increasing or decreasing interest rates
where necessary.

 The Labour governments led by Clement
Attlee (1945 to 1951) and continued under
the postwar settlement by Conservative and
Labour governments, broadly speaking, from
1951 to 1979, was that strategic industries
e.g. coal mines, railways, gas, electricity,
could be run more efficiently and more
profitably by central government than by
private capital, and could thus make the
contribution required to pay for the Welfare
State.

Conservative Prime Ministers:
• Winston Churchill 1951 to 1955
• Sir Anthony Eden 1955 to 1957
• Harold Macmillan 1957 to 1963
• Sir Alec Douglas-Home 1963 – 64
• Edward Heath 1970 – 74
• Margaret Thatcher 1979 – 90
• John Major 1990 - 97
13N C Gardner MA PGCE

 Labour Prime Ministers:
 Clement Attlee 1945 to 1951
 Harold Wilson 1964 – 70; 1974 – 76
 Jim Callaghan 1976 – 79
 Tony Blair 1997 - 2007

 1945 to 1951: Britain was largely
preoccupied with post-war recovery under
Clement Attlee’s Labour governments.
 The social and political consequences of
affluence dominated the 1950s under the
Conservatives. Britain was part of the ‘Golden
Age’, the post-war economic boom of the
West, led by the United States.

 By the early 1960s confidence had begun to
ebb. Britain had lower economic growth than
the defeated powers in the war, Japan and
West Germany, as well as that of France and
Italy. Therefore Britain tried in 1963 and
1967 to join the affluent club, the Common
Market, but both applications were turned
down by President de Gaulle of France.
 The General said “Non.”

 From the early 1960s until 1973 governments
of both parties tried to modernize the
country.
 The ‘oil shock’ of 1973, when Middle Eastern
oil producers increased the price of oil by
four times, which led to much higher
inflation, proved to be a climacteric, a sea-
change event.

 The 1980s witnessed the end of the post-war
settlement. Open polarisation replaced
political compromise, and by the mid-1980s
British politics seemed to have acquired a
new middle ground based on market
capitalism and strong economic
individualism, mapped and occupied by the
Conservatives.

 By the 1990s, all major parties accepted a
market-orientated, individualist politics.
 New Labour, led by Tony Blair, accepted
private enterprise and the new individualism
of the Thatcher Decade. Thus New Labour
occupied the middle ground of the private
enterprise economy and won three successive
elections in 1997, 2001, and 2005.

 The United Kingdom had been one of the Big
Three Great Powers in winning the Second World
War against the Axis Powers. Britain still had her
Empire in 1945 and retained a Great Power
status.
 However, Britain was bankrupt after the war and
independence was granted to India, the jewel in
the crown, in 1947, so a process of de-
colonisation was underway and the British Empire
evolved into the British Commonwealth.

 In the General Election of July 1945, Labour
secured 393 seats out of the 640 seats in
Parliament; a majority of 146 seats.
 The Labour victory came as a great surprise.
Despite wartime by-elections and opinion
polls, few thought Churchill could be
defeated. He was, after all, the saviour of his
country and of Western civilisation.

1. The drift to the left, towards Labour, started
before the war, since by-elections were won
by the Labour Party.
2. Widespread feeling that the Conservatives
had failed on the economy and believed in
an unfair, inefficient and complacent
society; that their party was the party of the
stuffy, the smug and the well heeled.

3. A feeling, less widespread though, that the
Conservatives had failed to prepare Britain to meet
the challenge of Nazi Germany and militarist Japan.
Wartime reverses, such as Dunkirk and Singapore,
strengthened this feeling.
4. During the war the media had discussed social
issues more widely. British films such as Love on
the Dole, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,
Millions Like Us and many others, attacked the
indifference, inefficiency, privilege, prejudice and
even treachery of Britain’s rulers.

 5. The Conservative election campaign was not very
effective, concentrating too much on Churchill and
not enough on policy.
 6. Labour, by contrast, presented a team of well-
known and respected leaders: Morrison, Bevin,
Cripps, Dalton and Attlee, and seemed to have a
well-thought-out strategy.
 7. Churchill was illiberal with his utterances, claiming
in a broadcast that Labour would have to fall back on
some sort of Gestapo to impose its policies. This
sounded incredible, because the public had got to
know the Labour leaders. Attlee could not have
looked more like the English gentleman that he was.

 On VJ Day (Victory over Japan), 15th August 1945,
the new Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh
Dalton recorded in his diary: ‘I am conscious of
having some mountainous problems in front of
me, especially with “overseas financial liabilities”;
Lend-Lease may be stopping any time now and
the resulting gap will be terrific.’ It did and it was.

 The economist John Maynard Keynes, leader
of the British delegation which went to
Washington in summer 1945, eventually
negotiated a smaller than expected loan
($3.75 billion), repayable over 50 years.
 Britain had to agree to the convertibility of its
currency within a specified period, and to
commit itself to freedom of trade and
payments.

 The terms of the American loan were opposed by
some in the Labour Party, because they saw it as
limiting the government’s ability to plan the
economy, and by some Conservatives as a further
step to dismantling the British Empire.
 The truth was that the Labour Government had
little choice. Britain was bankrupt. The House of
Commons accepted the terms on 13th December
1945, by 345 votes in favour to 98 against, with
many abstentions.

 Britain had paid a heavy economic price for
victory in the war. By 1944, her exports only
amounted to one-third of those of 1938.
 Export markets had been disrupted by the
war and, in some cases, native industries had
replaced imports.
 Many British industries had been trailing
behind the world leaders before the war, and
in some cases had deteriorated further.

 Britain had taken on costly new responsibilities
during the war and had to maintain large armed
forces.
 The gold and dollar reserves had been run down from
$4,190 million to $1,409 million. By contrast, the
American loan amounted to $3,750 million at 2%
interest. Canada agreed to lend another $1,250
million.
 The only bright spot was that the formidable
economies of Germany and Japan were temporarily
not competitors. British exporters had a golden
opportunity, if they could find anyone who could
afford their goods.

 To many Americans the termination of Lend-
Lease seemed appropriate, as the war was over.
 However, the difficulties in negotiating a loan
were in part the result of hostility to Britain as an
imperial power, or Britain as a ‘socialist’ state, or
to Britain as the oppressor of Ireland.
 By all accounts, Attlee and his colleagues grossly
overestimated the goodwill they, or Britain,
enjoyed in America.

 The ownership of key industries was one of
the key dividing lines between the two main
parties, Labour and the Conservatives, after
the 1945 election.
 For socialists, inside and outside the Labour
Party, this was one of the fundamental tests
for Attlee’s government. For socialists, public
ownership of key industries represented a
step on the road to the abolition of
capitalism.

 For pragmatists in the Labour ranks, as well
as for most Liberals and some Conservatives,
nationalisation was a necessary measure to
rescue ailing industries.
 Churchill, as a Liberal minister, had acquired
for the British government the controlling
interest in the great Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company in 1914. The Conservatives had
nationalised the BBC in 1926 and the main
airways in 1939.

 The National Health Service, set up in 1948,
brought the whole population, regardless of
status or income, into a scheme of free medical
and hospital treatment.
 Drug prescriptions, dental and optical care were
included.
 Under the NHS the existing voluntary and local
authority hospitals were co-ordinated into a
single, national system, to be operated at local
level by appointed health boards.

 The NHS gave everyone the right, as a citizen
of the United Kingdom (or resident or visitor)
to free health care.
 To achieve this success, Nye Bevan had had
to fight a long battle with the British Medical
Association (BMA), which represented general
practitioners.
 Many BMA members feared Bevan was
attempting to turn them into salaried civil
servants who would have to do the
government’s bidding.

 Bevan also faced the anger of some of his
more doctrinaire Socialist colleagues, who
wanted the NHS to be based on local
authority control, with doctors responsible to
the local authority.
 Instead, Bevan left GPs with most of their
freedom intact. He nationalised the hospitals,
giving specialists the right to work either full-
time or part-time for the new service (or
remain completely outside it).

 Bevan also accepted private ‘pay beds’ in the
NHS hospitals and gave the specialists
substantial representation on the committees
of management.
 For the specialists, this was a very
satisfactory outcome and they led the way in
integrating their colleagues into the NHS.

 Primary care would be provided by GPs, who
would work as independent contractors and be
paid for each patient on their books.
 Dentists and opticians, while providing NHS
treatment, would continue to operate as private
practitioners.
 Hospitals would be run by 14 regional boards,
which would appoint local management
committees to oversee matters at local level.

 Community services such as maternity care,
vaccination and the ambulance service were
to be provided by local authorities.
 Medical prescriptions would be provided free
of charge.

Sir William Beveridge’s ‘Report on Social
Insurance and Allied Services’, in
November 1942, recommended
comprehensive public protection for all
individuals and families, ‘from the cradle
to the grave’, against the ‘giants’:
sickness, poverty, unemployment,
squalor and ignorance.

 The Bank of England
 The coal industry
 Civil aviation
 Overseas telecommunications
 Railways and canals
 Electricity supply industry

 Raised the school leaving age to 15
 Passed a Town and Country Planning Act
 Increased housing subsidies
 Promoted ‘new towns’
 Imposed rent controls on some private landlords
 Founded NHS in July 1948

 Ernest Bevin, former trade union leader and
Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition
government of 1940 to 1945, was Foreign
Secretary in Labour’s 1945 – 51 government and
was a key instigator of Western security against
the threat of the Soviet Union.
 Bevin helped shape the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) in 1948 – 49, which became
the organisation for the security of Western
Europe in the post-war period.

 In 1945 – 46, the United States appeared to be
retreating from European commitments. Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin overrode Treasury
objections in autumn 1946 and insisted that
Britain must build its own atomic bomb: “We’ve
got to have this thing over here whatever it costs
…We’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack flying
on top of it.”

 1945 Overwhelming election victory for
Labour led by Clement Attlee
 1945 Family Allowances Act
 1946 National Insurance Act
 1946 Nationalisation of coal; civil aviation;
Cable and Wireless; Bank of England

 1946 – 47 A severe winter intensified the
government’s austerity measures
 1947 Government undertook to develop
Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent
 1947 Nationalisation of road transport and
electricity services
 1947 Independence of India

 1948 NHS founded
 1948 National Assistance Act
 1948 Britain began to receive Marshall Aid from the United
States to restore its economy and well-being
 1949 Nationalisation of iron and steel industries
 1949 Government forced to devalue the pound
 1950 Korean War started
 1950 General Election reduced Labour majority to just 5
seats
 1951 Election victory for the Conservatives, but Labour
gained higher popular vote

 The great Labour landslide of July 1945 swept
away nearly half of the Conservative
parliamentary party. This included grandees such
as Sir Reginald McClarry, the last of the founding
fathers of the 1922 Committee.
 Nor did the electorate show much respect for
‘household’ names. An Independent who stood
against Churchill (neither Labour nor the Liberals
were so disrespectful as to field a candidate in
his constituency) still managed to receive more
than 10,000 votes.

 The mood of the Conservative Party in Opposition,
and for a year or more after the catastrophic defeat,
was one of deep shock.
 ‘Disgusted’ of Tunbridge Wells pronounced that ‘The
people have elected Labour, and the nation won’t
stand for it’.
 Had it not been for the prolonged and arctic weather
of the winter of 1947, which for the first time focused
public attention on the administrative inadequacies
of Labour, morale would have worsened still further
within the Conservative Party.

 A nostrum which had been uttered on and off since
the 1832 Great Reform Act, that ‘Universal suffrage
means the end of the Conservative Party’, was being
uttered at the dining tables of the well-to-do.
 At a grand wedding reception Lady Cunard was
greeted by an excitable fellow guest: ‘It’s too
wonderful. Everybody is here! This is what we fought
the war for.’ To which Lady Cunard replied, ‘Really?
Are they all Poles?’ which neatly summarised the
futility of the occasion.

 The real deprivation for the upper classes after
Labour’s landslide victory in 1945 was the
severance of the link with government.
 Under Conservative and Liberal governments
before 1945 the socially prominent who had a
personal problem or an opinion to air, could
operate the ‘old boy network’.
 ‘Leave it to me. I’ll get hold of …(for example)
…Oliver’; or Julian; or Anthony. This linkage was
no longer operational.

 Under the 1945 – 51 Labour government, the
Conservative Party and the upper classes
were, for the first time in the twentieth
century, effectively cut off from power.
 On all previous occasions when it had been
out of power – even after the heavy defeat in
1906 and briefly in the 1920s – the presence
of the Conservative Party, and the weight of
its various personalities, had still made
themselves felt.

 Churchill first used the concept of ‘three circles’
in October 1948. His ‘first circle’ was ‘the British
Commonwealth and Empire’.
 His second circle was ‘the English-speaking
world’, especially the United States.
 ‘And, finally, there is United Europe.’
 Churchill spoke of these ‘three interlinked circles’
in which Britain was ‘the only country which has a
great part in every one of them. We stand in fact
at the very point of junction.’
10

 Churchill’s three circles concept was a
geopolitical expression of Britain’s self-image as
zero meridian – a world spreading out in
overlapping circles from London.
 This geometrical conceit summed up mainstream
political and official thinking in the early 1950s.
Despite Indian independence in 1947, the
Commonwealth and Empire, together with
Britain’s ‘informal’ empire of bases and foreign
assets, were still regarded as central to the
country’s identity and power.
10

 The post-war period saw one of Britain’s most
intensive efforts to exploit the resources of its
empire through programmes of colonial
development to boost the dollar-earning capacity
of the Sterling Area.
 Countries such as the Gold Coast and Malaya
were valuable sources of dollars. Thanks to this,
plus conversion to peacetime industry and a 30%
devaluation of the pound in 1949, Britain’s
payments position improved sharply in the late
1940s.
10

 British imperial influence did not seem a thing of
the past in the 1950s. New partnerships were
created with Middle Eastern clients such as Iraq,
and London was optimistic about controlling
devolution within the Empire by building new
groups of collaborators among tribal leaders and
the educated middle class of Africa and Asia.
10

 Labour and the Tories fostered the special
relationship with the United States.
 Britain made a small commitment to the
American-led UN forces in the Korean War (1950
– 53). But Attlee also used his influence to
discourage escalation that would have distracted
from the priority of Europe.
 Rearmament by the Labour government helped
convince the Americans that its allies were
serious about European defence.
11

 By ‘United Europe’ Churchill meant ‘them’ not ‘us’.
Rapprochement after the Second World War between
France and Germany was to be welcomed: their
enmity lay at the root of two great wars in one
generation.
 But, as Churchill told the Cabinet in November 1951,
he ruled out Britain becoming ‘an integral part of a
European federation’.
 Labour also agreed with Churchill: in spring 1950 the
Labour government had declined British membership
of the European Coal and Steel Community – the six-
power grouping that became the basis for the
European Economic Community.
11

 In part the Cabinet objected to the surrender of
national sovereignty implicit in federalism: “when
you open that Pandora’s box you never know
what Trojan horses will jump out” warned
Labour’s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.
 At a deeper level, the Cabinet feared that tying
Britain so closely into ‘Europe’ would weaken the
transatlantic and Commonwealth roles. “Great
Britain was not part of Europe; she was not
simply a Luxembourg”, said Bevin.
11

 The enduring mentality of 1940 was,
according to national myth, that Britain had
severed itself from the deceitful continentals
and sought salvation with its kin across the
seas – the English-speaking peoples of the
United States and the Commonwealth.
 These convictions animated a generation of
Britons who had lived through the dark days
of Hitler’s war.
11

 The result of Britain’s myth of 1940 was an abiding
suspicion of the continentals, or even contempt,
especially after Britain’s empire-led economic recovery of
the early 1950s.
 The public attitude was summed up by Prime Minister
Clem Attlee: “We had to rescue four to them (France,
Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg) from the other
two (Germany and Italy).”
 In 1951, British manufactures exceeded those of France
and West Germany combined. When the Six began talks
for further economic integration in 1955, the British sent
only a Board of Trade official, as an observer.
11

 Nationalisation
 Keynesian economics: confined role for
markets
 Government regulation and planning
 Universal welfare
 Full employment as official government policy
12

 John Maynard Keynes, author of ‘The General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’
(1936), benchmark in economic thought,
regarded capitalism as having irrational qualities,
but he believed these could be controlled to save
capitalism from itself.
 Keynes showed how market capitalism could be
stabilized through demand management and the
creation of a mixed economy. Although he did
not favour it, one feature of the mixed economy
in Britain was nationalisation.
12

1) Pervasive state involvement in social and
economic life.
2) State dominates over civil society.
3) Collectivism.
4) Keynesian demand management, plus
corporatism.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
12
5

 Confined role for markets: the mixed
economy.
 Full employment as official policy of the
Government.
 Strong egalitarianism.
 Comprehensive welfare state, protecting
citizens ‘from cradle to grave’
N C Gardner MA PGCE
12
6

 The public ethic of 1945 – 47 was a matter of
exhortation and an assumed public morality
rather than of concerted planning. A heavy
emphasis was placed on physical controls of
raw materials, foodstuffs, and consumption.
 The well-known controls on personal
consumption of the war years were invested
with an aura of patriotism. The ration book
was a badge of good citizenship, queuing for
buses or food a necessary privation.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
12
7

 The Labour government relied on promoting a
kind of secular religion in dictating the public’s
response. The mood of collective endeavour
would give impetus to the drive for economic
recovery.
 With conventional religion in continued long-
term decline, Sir Stafford Cripps (Chancellor of
the Exchequer 1947 – 50), the high Anglican
prophet of austerity, took over from the
Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘Fair shares’ conveyed
that reassuring creed.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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9

 The façade of national unity began to crack in
early 1947 with unprecedentedly severe
weather in late January and February, with
snow and ice covering Britain. Industry almost
seemed to close down, and unemployment
mounted rapidly.
 What the severe winter was to confirm long-
held feelings that Labour’s planners had
failed to plan.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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1

 From early 1946 economic specialists had
pointed to weakness in the running of the
nationalised coal industry, the shortfall in the
workforce, the absence of any policy for
planning consumption or determining
industrial priorities.
 Productivity remained low, work practices
antique, the labour intensity of the coal
industry chronic.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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5

 The minister who presided over the coal industry
and took it into public ownership, Emanuel
Shinwell, was a monument of complacency. As
late as October 1946, he denied the existence of
a manpower shortage or any real production
crisis in the coal industry.
 When the crisis struck in the wintry weather of
early 1947, he blamed the climate, the privately-
run railway system, or simply ‘capitalism’.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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7

 In the depths of the years of austerity in the
late 1940s, Herbert Morrison (Deputy Prime
Minister 1945 – 51) outlined the prospect of a
‘Festival of Britain’ to echo the Great
Exhibition of 1851.
 Morrison wanted it to provide encouragement
to the industrial designers, planners, and
artists of the nation, and offer a conspicuous
platform for Britain’s technical and scientific
achievement as well.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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8

 There was much public scepticism and
ridicule in the right-wing press at the
expensive frivolity of the Festival while the
economy languished, and much doubt as to
whether the country could afford it.
 Nevertheless, a great army of scientists and
artists met the challenge with zest, notably
Hugh Casson, the designer of the main South
Bank site.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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0

 The inter-war years had given birth to a new
consumerism, with the rapid growth of the
home market, especially in suburban areas
with a private housing boom.
 Much of this market was deliberately
suppressed in the late 1940s, with productive
effort directed into export-orientated
industries. Private cars sold only very
sluggishly in Attlee’s Britain compared with
the boom of pre-war Britain.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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3

 In the late 1940s people travelled to seaside
holidays in tightly packed and unmodernised
rolling stock. They queued in cafes, pier-heads,
or dance-halls.
 British weather was much as ever: 1948 was a
particularly wet summer.
 Clothing shops were largely confined to ‘utility’
products made from strictly controlled
government allocations of textiles, and usually of
extreme drabness reminiscent of eastern Europe.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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4

 The gulf between the classes in post-war Britain
remained wide.
 Civic life remained much the same in such places
as Newcastle, Manchester, Stoke, or Swansea,
where the monolithic, if not actually corrupt,
nature of Labour rule became legendary.
 Non-political pastimes retained a clear class
image. The spectators of football matches or dog
races were incontestably working class.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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7

 The two main political parties identified
themselves with class division in the secure
knowledge that their supporters expected it
of them.
 Nye Bevan, the Minister of Health in Attlee’s
Government, referred to the Conservative
Party as ‘lower than vermin’ in 1948.
 Likewise Conservative MPs kindled fear and
loathing in party conferences by complaining
that Bevan himself was building council
estates as revolutionary barracks.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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8

 After their decisive defeat in the General Election of
July 1945, the Conservative Party began a re-think
and started to publish new policies while in
Opposition (1945 – 1951).
 An Industrial Policy Committee was set up under the
chairmanship of R.A. Butler (RAB Butler), who was
also the head of the Conservative Party Research
Department.
 The result of the Committee’s work was the
‘Industrial Charter’, which called for private
enterprise and incentive, and opposed nationalisation
on principle.
15

 Some Conservatives were shocked that the
‘Industrial Charter’ accepted several of the
Labour Government’s measures, including the
public ownership of the Bank of England, the coal
industry and the railways.
 On the other hand, it demanded the privatisation
of road haulage and expressed strong opposition
to the Government’s impending nationalisation
of the iron and steel industry, which was
profitable and enjoyed good industrial relations.
15

 Broadly speaking the postwar settlement lasted
from the Attlee Labour governments of 1945 to
1951 until the election of the Conservatives led by
Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
 During the Attlee years (1945 to 1951), the
Conservatives decided to accept the main
principles of the legislation of the Attlee
government.
 Indeed, it was considered to be essential by the
leadership of the Conservative Party for regaining
power to convince the electorate that the party
had abandoned the capitalist policies of the 1930s,
the decade of the Great Depression, high
unemployment and welfare cuts.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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0

 By 1951 the Labour government – most of whose
senior Ministers had served in the Cabinet from
1940 onwards – was exhausted.
 On the policy front the Labour Party had run out
of steam and nearly all of the undertakings in its
1945 manifesto had been implemented.
 Conversely, Conservative batteries had been
recharged by six years in opposition (1945 to
1951).
N C Gardner MA PGCE
16
2

 The post-war years after 1945 marked
the end of the British Empire.
However, the pain of losing India in
1947 was overcome and British
politicians in the following years were
more than happy to congratulate
themselves on the fact that the ending
of the imperial era had been
accomplished so smoothly.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
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4

 Labour narrowly clung on to power with a five-
seat majority.
 Labour 315 seats
 Conservatives 298 seats
 Liberals 9 seats
 Others 3 seats
 Labour’s share of the vote was down only 2.2%
compared to 1945 and they secured 46.1% of the
vote, compared to 43.5% for the Conservatives.
16

 With a narrow Commons majority constantly harassed
by the Opposition, and the government’s impetus
spent, Attlee decided that to postpone an election
would only lead to further deterioration in the
government’s position.
 The Conservatives won a narrow majority, capturing
321 seats to Labour’s 295, thus securing an overall
majority of 17.
 Labour actually polled a greater share of the vote
(48.8%, the highest it has ever achieved) than the
Conservatives (on 48%).
16

 RAB Butler was appointed Chancellor of the
Exchequer by Churchill after the Conservative
victory in the October 1951 General Election.
 At the Treasury, Butler was greeted by the
Permanent Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges, and by
his new Private Secretary William Armstrong (later
head of the Civil Service). Grimly, they presented
to Butler ‘the books’. The deficit on the balance
of payments was £700 million. Bridges wanted
more austerity at once.
17

 Treasury Permanent Secretary Sir Edward Bridges
told new Chancellor RAB Butler that Britain faced
‘a collapse greater than had been foretold in
1931’.
 Faced with this lurid ‘advice’ from his most senior
Treasury officials, Butler showed his metal. Butler
realised that he was in the company of very
senior civil servants whose careers were entirely
conditioned by the ethic of interventionism. They
believed that ‘The man in Whitehall knows best’.
17

 Faced with the prospect of the new
Conservative government, the Treasury
mandarins led by Sir Edward Bridges,
thought that the best way of affirming
their ascendancy was by subjecting the
incoming Chancellor (RAB Butler) to an
ordeal which would, or should, leave him
wholly convinced of their particular
expertise and infallibility.
17

 RAB Butler was highly intelligent, unusually (for a
Conservative minister) hard-working, and
financially independent.
 The public was sick of austerity which had
continued after the end of war in 1945. The
Conservative manifesto of the 1951 election, still
fresh in people’s minds, had hinted at ‘sunlit
uplands’.
 It would not be good for Butler if, immediately
and as his officials wanted, he were to turn
himself into a carbon-copy of Sir Stafford Cripps,
Labour’s austerity chancellor.
17

 Butler put some ‘emergency’ measures in
place, like cutting the foreign travel
allowance, bought time, and set about
thinking things through.
 The first move Butler decided upon to reduce
the balance of payments deficit was to cut
imports, and cut them good and hard.
17

 The balance of payments of a country is the record of
all economic transactions between the residents of a
country and the rest of the world in a particular
period (over a quarter of a year or more commonly
over a year).
 These transactions are made by individuals, firms and
government bodies. Thus the balance of payments
includes all external visible and non-visible
transactions of a country during a given period,
usually a year.
 It represents a summation of a country’s current
demand and supply of the claims on foreign
currencies and of foreign claims on its currency.
 Balance of payments accounts are an accounting
record of all monetary transactions between a country
and the rest of the world. 17

 From November 1951 to March 1952, the
Chancellor RAB Butler, cut imports deeply to
try to solve Britain’s balance of payments
deficit.
 Butler was acutely aware that import cuts
limited expansion of the economy, carried the
danger of reprisals by foreign governments
and firms, and could not for both these
reasons be regarded as more than temporary.
18

 An interest rate is the rate at which interest is
paid by borrowers (debtors) for the use of
money that they borrow from lenders
(creditors).
 Specifically, the interest rate is a percentage
of principal paid a certain number of times
per period for all periods during the total
term of the loan or credit.
18

 The Treasury proposed a scheme for solving
the balance of payments problem by letting
the pound float (code-named Robot).
 If a currency is free-floating, its exchange
rate is allowed to vary against that of other
currencies and is determined by the market
forces of supply and demand. Exchange rates
for such currencies are likely to change
almost constantly as quoted on financial
markets, mainly by banks, around the world.
18

 An exchange rate between two currencies is
the rate at which one currency will be
exchanged for another.
 The real exchange rate is the purchasing
power of a currency relative to another at
current exchange rates and prices.
 The problem with ROBOT was that it was
contrary to the Bretton Woods Agreement of
fixed exchange rates.
18

 The strength and reputation of sterling is central to
the international relations of Britain and therefore the
Foreign Office was involved in the decisions over
ROBOT.
 ROBOT was already controversial in the Treasury and
the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden wrote to Prime
Minister Churchill expressing his doubts over the free
floating of the pound idea.
 Eden’s letter ensured that the ROBOT proposal was
effectively dead before it even came to Cabinet. Butler
was defeated. And he didn’t try again to tamper with
the controlled economy set-up by the Bretton Woods
Agreement.
18

 On coming to office in October 1951,
following the Conservative election victory,
Winston Churchill had been shocked by the
Treasury’s initial report on Britain’s economic
prospects. Churchill dictated a memo setting
out his policy as: ‘housing, red meat and not
going broke’.
18

 In the early 1950s, The Economist current affairs
weekly coined the term ‘Butskellism’ to refer to the
post-war political consensus. It was a term
compounded out of the name of Hugh Gaitskell, the
Shadow Chancellor and later Leader of the Labour
Party from 1955, and the name of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer in the Conservative government of
1951 to 1955, RAB Butler.
 Butler used the tools of Keynesian demand
management to increase household incomes and
secure ‘full’ employment.
18

 Butskellism was the term used by The Economist
to describe the broad post-war political
consensus between Labour and the
Conservatives on the mixed economy, full
employment and the welfare state.
 RAB Butler and Hugh Gaitskell were friends.
Butler admired Gaitskell as a man of great
humanity and sticking power, and regarded
Gaitskell’s untimely death in 1963 as a real loss
to the Labour Party, to Britain and to the tone of
public life.
19

 However, Butler did not share Gaitskell’s
convictions since they were socialist, nor
Gaitskell’s temperament which was quite
emotional, and his training, which was that of
an academic economist.
 Both Butler and Gaitskell spoke the language
of Keynesianism, but they spoke it with
different accents and with a differing
emphasis.
19

 Butskellism was a two-party consensus
about:
1) The Welfare State
2) Full Employment
3) A Mixed Economy
4) Consultation with the Trade Unions
N C Gardner MA PGCE
19
4

 In foreign policy Butskellism led to a two-party
consensus concerning:
1) A commitment to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation)
2) The British nuclear deterrent
3) The run-down of the British Empire
4) The promotion of the Commonwealth
N C Gardner MA PGCE
19
6

 President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the
international Suez Canal in 1956.
 Britain, along with France and Israel,
responded by sending troops to seize the
Egyptian town of Suez and invading Egypt.
 The Suez Crisis of 1956 led to the fall of the
Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, who had
succeeded Sir Winston Churchill as Prime
Minister in April 1955.
19

 King Farouk of Egypt was overthrown by the young
officers’ corps of the Egyptian Army on July 25th, 1952
and this accelerated the pace of Egyptian and Arab
nationalism.
 King Farouk was a playboy, a womanizer with a
questionable taste in women. He had become grossly
over-weight and was making very rash and unwise
decisions.
 The young officers had been humiliated and infuriated
by their defeat at the hands of the Israelis in 1948, a
reverse they attributed to the inferior weapons
supplied by contractors. 20

 Nasser was the son of a small postal official,
and therefore very near to the Egyptian
proletariat, the people of Egypt who “had not
spoken yet” under 400 years of Ottoman
supremacy and 60-odd years of British
influence and dictation.
 Nasser wished Egypt to regain her former
glory, become prosperous at home, greatly
industrialised, and a power abroad, the
undisputed leader of the Arab world.
20

 Nasser was incorruptible, living in the same
modest house he had occupied as an Army
Colonel and lecturer. This side of his character
brought him great prestige at home. The
Egyptian people had seldom had a leader who
did not wax rich in office.
 Nasser’s industrialisation project included the
building of a new Aswan High Dam and originally
the United States and Great Britain agreed to
back the dam project with the large sums of
money required.
20

 However, the United States wanted to reduce
foreign aid and was concerned by Nasser’s
purchase of Soviet weapons. America, followed
by Britain, withdrew their support for the Aswan
High Dam.
 This was a major blow for Nasser and he turned
to the Soviet Union for support, realizing the
century-old Russian dream of establishing a
foothold of influence in Africa at the heart of the
principle satellite of the former Ottoman Empire,
Egypt.
20

 President Nasser, sensing the feelings of his
countrymen, decided to nationalize the Suez
Canal, up to then controlled by an
international company with headquarters in
Paris, in which Britain held a large share.
 The Canal passed entirely through Egyptian
territory so it was not an international
waterway any more than the Panama Canal in
Central America was.
21

 Nasser had good reasons for wanting the Canal
revenue. His sources of national income were
mainly two: cotton and tourism. These were not
enough.
 If he could have the 50 to 60 million pounds paid
by the ships who used the Canal annually the
financial position of Egypt would be changed
overnight.
 It was a great gamble. If he lost, he probably lost
all. If he won there was a bright future awaiting
him and the people for whom he genuinely
cared.
21

 The act of seizure by Nasser was at once
described by the Canal users as illegal. Nasser
was faced with an international crisis of the first
magnitude.
 It was frequently argued that the seizure of the
Suez Canal was inevitable. The foreign enterprise
of the Canal was the most dramatic and also the
most vulnerable of the relics of Western rule
which the nationalist officers’ revolution in Egypt
was pledged to eliminate.
21

 It was equally inevitable that the British
government would contest the illegal seizure of
the Canal by President Nasser. Britain was the
largest single user of the Canal, accounting in the
year before nationalization for over 28% of an
annually increasing tonnage passing through it.
 The position of the Suez Canal Company, in
which the British government held 44% of the
shares, was enshrined in an international treaty.
21

 Nasser made an inflammatory speech in July
1956 in which he said: ‘friends of the hated
Israel are bent on the ruination of a poor but
brave people …we will take back into our
possession what is rightfully ours, and will no
longer be slaves in our own country’
21

 Anthony Eden, like other post-war prime ministers had
to face up to the realities of international relations after
the Second World War.
 Firstly the uncomfortable and enduring reality that the
whole sum of Britain’s exertions during the Second
World War had resulted simply in having substituted in
the field of international politics and European security,
one totalitarian threat for another i.e. the Soviet Union
for Nazi Germany.
22

 Secondly, the old Imperial pattern of the
British Empire, that of the economic
dependence of the colonies to Britain and
military deployment of British armed forces
around the globe, could never be recovered.
 And thirdly, that the fragility of Britain’s
balance of payments, and reserves of gold
and foreign exchange, were a constant
inhibitor on the country’s diplomacy and
position in the world.
22

 Britain, owing to her economic weakness, was
less able to resist Soviet aggression in the
1950s than had been Britain and France
together set against Germany in the 1930s.
 It was absolutely essential that the United States
be involved as well in the defence of the Western
world, and as the protector of the United
Kingdom.
22

 The United States needed Britain as the only
reliable component of its anti-communist
security system in Europe, the ‘unsinkable
aircraft-carrier’, the illusion spread that the two
countries were ‘allies’.
 But in fact the reciprocity of power and status which
characterises a true alliance was missing. For Britain
the U.S. was the guarantor of its security, of its very
life expectance.
 For the U.S. Britain was simply a ‘client state’; an
enthusiastic remittance man and mercenary.
22

 The relationship between America and Britain
was in reality a crude one since clearly the United
States was the superpower and Britain very much
the junior partner.
 This was well known to Eden and at this time
Britain was spending 9% of gross national
product on defence. However, when Eden meet
the Defence Chiefs and said to them he wished to
respond forcefully and immediately to Nasser’s
illegal takeover of the Suez Canal, they were
defeatist.
22

 Eden fell back on high diplomacy where he was
most at ease. He massaged world opinion;
assembled a coalition with France and Israel;
tried to secure the good offices of the United
States; with all this assured Eden would be
impregnable, surely.
 In October 1956, Eden sent the troops in. The
military operations to re-take the Suez Canal
went well. However, the United Nations
condemned the British action and called for
withdrawal of the British, French, and Israeli
forces, and a peaceful solution.
22

 Harold Macmillan, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
exploited his tenure of this key office most
unscrupulously to undermine Eden and to
advance his own claims to the premiership.
 Having egged on the expedition, Macmillan
chose his moment deliberately to sabotage it by
grotesque exaggeration of a sudden financial
crisis.
 Macmillan told his Cabinet colleagues on 6th
November 1956 that £100 million had been
wiped off Britain’s gold reserves.
22

 In fact the losses at this time, November
1956, were only £30 million. Despite
receiving confirmation of this lower figure,
Macmillan deliberately kept the true figure
from the Cabinet.
 By one of those grand-scale, and
unfortunate, coincidences that occur
sometimes in history a rebellion in Hungary
was crushed, over a few days, by a cruel,
effective and instantaneous Soviet response.
23

 Bloated with confidence Bulganin, the Soviet
Prime Minister, threatened to strike London with
nuclear rockets if British ‘aggression’ continued.
 As newsreels appeared in the cinemas, showing
in the same bulletin British tanks in Port Said and
the effects of Red Army shell fire in Budapest, the
impression spread of an approaching general
conflict.
23

 Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of the Opposition,
accused Eden’s Government of abandoning the
three principles that had guided British foreign
policy since the war – namely, solidarity with the
Commonwealth; the Anglo-American alliance;
and adherence to the Charter of the United
Nations.
 The House of Commons had reverted to division
along party lines. And the Conservatives were
themselves uneasy – split between ‘the weak
sisters’ and those like Captain Waterhouse, the
MP for South-East Leicester since 1924, who
wanted to bomb Cairo.
23

 President Eisenhower of the United States became
openly hostile to Britain’s intervention in Suez.
 During the crisis, the United States turned from
superpower ally of Great Britain, to well-intentioned
counsellor, and then to detached arbiter of UN
resolutions.
 By November 1956, Eisenhower was directing the
campaign to punish the ‘aggressor’, Britain.
23

 Eisenhower blocked a loan under the Bretton Woods
Agreement from the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) to Great Britain.
 The President was also considering oil sanctions
against Britain and let this be publicly known.
 In effect, Eisenhower humiliated Great Britain and
demonstrated to the world that the British Empire
was no longer an independent power. Only the
United States could determine the issues of Western
security and not lessor powers such as Great Britain.
23

 The United States exploited the Suez Crisis to
advance its claim to global dominance; to be
the sole arbiter, in the ‘free’ world, of territorial
disputes and to ensure that henceforth there
could be no rival centre where unilateral
decisions were made.
23

 By late November 1956, Conservative Party morale had
plummeted. The Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, was ill.
The Americans had deserted Great Britain. The British armed
forces had been stabbed in the back.
 Who was to blame? Nasser? The Israelis? The United
Nations? Eisenhower? In the smoking room of the House of
Commons, MP’s could be found ready to point the finger at
any, or all, of these.
 The Tory Party wanted to vent its anger. An Early Day
Motion lay on the Order Paper. It accused the U.S.
Government by their actions of ‘gravely endangering the
Atlantic Alliance’, and had attracted over a hundred
signatures.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
23
9

What the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956
demonstrated with brutal frankness was
that Britain was no longer in the Great
Power league, was no longer capable of
playing by its rules, and simply looked
absurd when it tried to cheat.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
24
1

The condemnation of President
Eisenhower, the sanction of the United
Nations, and the collapse of world
opinion in favour of Britain, destroyed
the career of the Prime Minister, Sir
Anthony Eden, who resigned on grounds
of ill-health in January 1957.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
24
2

 The rapid pace of the Suez Crisis and Eden’s ill-
health resulted in no firm recommendation by
the Prime Minister to the Queen of a successor.
 The Queen’s constitutional duty was to send
for the Leader of the House of Commons, RAB
Butler. Instead the Queen sent for Lord
Salisbury, who was leading the Tory Party in
the House of Lords, and for Sir Winston
Churchill.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
24
4

 However, to send for the Tory Leader in the
House of Lords without sending for the Tory
Leader in the House of Commons, was a major
error of judgment. The Queen had been ill-
advised.
 RAB Butler waited for the summons to Buckingham
Palace but the summons never came. Instead Lord
Salisbury and Sir Winston Churchill advised the Queen
to send for Harold Macmillan, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
24
5

1) The rise of the affluent society – mass
consumerism, house-buying, rising wages,
greater availability of credit.
2) The end of Empire – independence of the
former colonies in Africa and Asia.
3) Britain’s relations with Europe – the
application for European Economic
Community (EEC) membership in 1963.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
24
8

“Let’s be frank about it: most of our
people have never had it so good. Go
around the country, go to the industrial
towns, go to the farms, and you will see a
state of prosperity, such as we have never
seen in my lifetime – nor indeed in the
history of this country.”
N C Gardner MA PGCE
25
0

 RAB Butler had lost out to Macmillan in the
contest to succeed Eden as Prime Minister,
but he became Home Secretary instead, which
is an important office within the Government.
 The Home Secretary is responsible for the
maintenance of Law and Order and for all
home affairs not specifically assigned to
other Ministers.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
25
7

 Harold Macmillan (prime minister 1957 to 1963)
was a liberal Conservative, who in his later
years publicly criticised aspects of Mrs
Thatcher’s premiership as socially divisive.
 Macmillan’s premiership is often interpreted by
historians as one in which fundamental
decisions on Britain’s world role and economic
performance were left unresolved.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
25
9

 The U.S. Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara,
suddenly announced at a NATO meeting in Paris
in December 1962 that America was cancelling
the Skybolt missile on the grounds of its cost-
effectiveness. It had already cost $500 million,
while its technical feasibility was said to be in
doubt.
 Britain would indeed be given the Polaris instead,
but it would be specifically assigned to the
Atlantic Multilateral Force. Britain’s posture of
nuclear independence was suddenly threatened,
and the British press and politicians launched a
violent reaction.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
26
2

 Skybolt was indeed desperately expensive, but
Britain, and especially Peter Thorneycroft, now
Minister of Defence under Macmillan, felt deeply
down.
 President Kennedy himself was sufficiently
concerned to ask one of his advisers to examine
how the Skybolt crisis in Anglo-American
relations had occurred. At the Nassau Conference
in the Bahamas in December 1962, therefore,
Macmillan tried to find a solution, if only as a
solace to national self-esteem.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
26
3

 The negotiations between Macmillan and
Kennedy at Nassau were the most tense and least
intimate to take place between British and
American leaders since the wartime conferences.
Never before had Britain’s subservience been so
explicit.
 In the immediate background, there was Dean
Acheson’s speech at West Point on 5th December
1962 in which he condemned British delusions
about both the Commonwealth and the Anglo-
American relationship. (Acheson was a former
U.S. Secretary of State)
N C Gardner MA PGCE
26
5

 In very difficult negotiations at Nassau,
Macmillan insisted on Polaris being substituted
for Skybolt; Kennedy was reluctant to agree for
fear of upsetting President de Gaulle of France.
 Macmillan regarded Kennedy’s counter-offer of a
multilateral nuclear force as no substitute, since
the loss of Britain’s great-power status would be
impossible to sell to the British electorate at a
time when the Tories’ by-election record was
very poor.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
26
6

 In the end, Macmillan’s persistence did bring
very grudging agreement from the Americans
that Britain should indeed have Polaris
missiles without warheads, to be employed
on British submarines.
 Britain had thus to switch from an airborne
nuclear force, but could claim to have
preserved the elements of its nuclear
independence nevertheless and at relatively
low cost.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
26
8

 The Profumo Affair was a political scandal involving
Conservative War Minister John Profumo. He denied having
an affair with Christine Keeler, a prostitute who was also
involved with the Soviet naval attaché.
 The revelation that he was lying forced his resignation on 4th
June 1963.
 The Denning Report claimed that national security had not
been put in jeopardy by the affair.
 The scandal, which coincided with a growing popularity of
political satire, undermined an already unpopular
government in a pre-election year.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
27
4

 Valerie Hobson didn’t care for the cut of her
husband’s trousers. “Surely there must be
some way of concealing your penis,” she
wrote to the Secretary of State for war John
Profumo (her husband).
 In 1963, the concealment of Profumo’s penis
– the denial that it was where it was said to
be at the times in question – was the premise
of the greatest sex scandal of post-war
British politics.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
27
6

 In 1960 Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister,
appointed John Profumo as his Secretary of State
for War.
 On 8th July 1961 Profumo met Christine Keeler, at
a party at Cliveden, the Italianate mansion at
Taplow, Buckinghamshire, the home of Lord
Astor, which was then being used as a high-class
brothel.
 At the same time Keeler was also sleeping with
Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet spy.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
27
8

 Keeler was introduced to Profumo by Stephen
Ward, a practising osteopath, a social climber
and a reputed pimp. He liked young girls, ageing
aristocrats and shady customers from overseas,
and took a delight in stirring them together.
 Ward introduced one of his prostitutes, Mandy
Rice-Davies, to Lord Astor, owner of Cliveden. At
the age of 16, Rice-Davies had been the mistress
of the ageing Lord Dudley and soon afterwards
became the mistress of the notorious landlord
Peter Rachman.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
28
0

 The society osteopath Stephen Ward was
scapegoated in the Profumo scandal and
branded a pimp.
 Ward was a social climber and his trial was a
joke. More likely Ward’s real crime was
introducing the high life to the low life.
 Ward suffered from naivety and a certain
moral sloppiness.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
28
3

The remark by Mandy Rice-Davies
dominated the front pages of the
newspapers the next day, damned Lord
Astor in the public’s eye (he was to die
three years later, a broken man), and
ultimately earned Rice-Davies a place in
the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
28
8

 Profumo’s proto-Clintonesque sex lie –
“There was no impropriety whatsoever in my
acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler” –
destroyed not only his career, but also the
government: Prime Minister’s Harold
Macmillan’s ill health was exacerbated by the
Profumo affair and he resigned that October
(1963).
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
0

 The poet Philip Larkin wrote his poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’
in late 1963 after the Profumo affair; the selling in
shops of a British-made contraceptive pill; the release
of the first James Bond film; and the entry into the pop
charts of The Beatles.
 ‘Sexual intercourse began
 In nineteen sixty-three
 (which was rather late for me) –
 Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
 And the Beatles’ first LP.’
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
2

 Britain during the Second World War
projected a vision of a united people and a
classless society fighting the Axis Powers,
Germany, Italy, and Japan.
 This vision is rightly identified with the social
and economic policies and institutions of the
post-war Labour Government of 1945 – 51,
centred around nationalisation of key
industries and the birth of the modern
welfare state.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
4

 In the 1950s a cultural renaissance did not
take place despite the founding of national
arts companies and the award of annual
government grants.
 The National Theatre – established in 1949
 The Royal Ballet – installed in Covent Garden
in 1946
 The Royal Opera – stabilized with annual
grants
 Sadler’s Wells Opera – awarded annual grants
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
5

 When Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne in
1952, commentators and politicians lived in hope
of a second golden Elizabethan age for Britain,
following on from that of Queen Elizabeth I
(1558 – 1603). But it didn’t happen.
 Some blamed the state: its definition of ‘culture’
was too narrow and too focused on London.
 Others blamed the artists: modern art had
become too intellectual, detached from the
realities of human experience.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
7

 Others blamed the whole of the British
people, traditionally philistine, or the working
classes in particular: the problem with ‘his
people’, allegedly sighed Labour Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin, ‘is the poverty of their
desire’.
 The rigid class system and class divide was
not addressed. The greatest failure came in
the field of education.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
29
9

Selective education and the social class
system
The link between education, social class
and achievement
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
0

 The 1944 Education Act of RAB Butler was
supposed to democratize education by
extending proper secondary education to all
children, who would be separated by ability at
age 11.
 The 1944 Education Act (also known as the
Butler Act) provided compulsory free
education within a tripartite secondary
education system.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
2

 In practice a very stark divide grew up between
Secondary Modern Schools – really only a
continuation of the elementary curriculum,
leading to few if any qualifications – and
Grammar Schools – leading to General
Certificates in Education (GCE) ‘O’ and ‘A’ Levels
and to university.
 I passed my Eleven Plus exam and attended
Thames Valley Grammar School, Twickenham,
Middlesex, passed ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels and went
straight on to university.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
3

 The Grammar Schools actually became more
disproportionately middle-class in the 1950s, as
the middle classes scrambled harder to get into
them.
 Even those working-class pupils who did pass
the ’11-plus’ exam and enter grammar school
were the most likely to be early leavers who
dropped out before achieving qualifications and
this was my own observation of the working-
class pupils at my grammar school.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
5

 The proportion of university students of
working-class origin declined from pre-war
levels.
 And in the 1950s, the total number of university
students were kept at very low levels by European
standards. In the 1950s Britain had fewer
university students than Spain.
 Social mobility and cultural integration of the
social classes did not happen in the 1950s and
the education system reflected this.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
6

 Functionalism says education has three
functions that help society:
1) Education teaches the skills needed in work
and by the economy.
2) Education sifts and sorts people for the
appropriate jobs.
3) Education plays a part in secondary
socialisation, passing on core values.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
30
8

1) Education prepares children for the world of
work by giving them skills and values they’ll
need.
2) Education justifies inequality.
3) Education passes on ruling class ideology
that supports capitalism.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
0

 In 1956 Anthony Crosland, a former Labour
MP and lecturer in Economics at Oxford
University, published ‘The Future of
Socialism’, the most influential book ever on
Labour Party political thought.
 Crosland wrote ‘The school system in Britain
remains the most divisive, unjust, and
wasteful of all aspects of social inequality.’
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
1

 Anthony Crosland (later a Labour Cabinet
minister and Foreign Secretary) believed that
the education system in Britain denied even
the limited aim of equal opportunity.
 Crosland wrote that before the Second World
War a high proportion of children had no
access to secondary education of any kind.
Indeed only 14% of those from state
elementary schools achieved a secondary
education.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
3

 Crosland wrote that the class distribution of the
grammar school population was markedly askew.
He wrote that the middle-class was still heavily
over-represented in grammar schools and the
lower working-class heavily under-represented.
 Crosland also perceived that social influences
were crucial. He noted the less educated the
parents, the more crowded and noisy the home,
the smaller the opportunities for extra-curricular
learning, the less the learning outcomes of
working-class children.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
5

 Crosland also provided the insight (which is still
valid) that equality of opportunity in education in
Britain would never be possible as long as the
system of superior private schools (public
schools) was maintained.
 Crosland noted that it was beyond dispute that
the public schools were superior to state sector
grammar schools and secondary moderns since
their staffing ratio was higher, the academic
quality of the staff superior and their extra-
curricular facilities more ample.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
6

 Eton, the exclusive public school, founded in
1440, has been educating boys (and boys only;
no girls at all) for six centuries.
 The mid-nineteenth century Eton Master William
Cory wrote of the essence of school life at Eton.
He wrote that at a great school it is not just
knowledge that is acquired, nor even the ‘shadow
of lost knowledge’ that later protects a boy from
many illusions, but most importantly the ‘arts
and habits’ that last for a lifetime.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
31
8

 David Cameron
 Sir Alec Douglas-Home
 Harold Macmillan
 Sir Anthony Eden
 A. J. Balfour (prime minister 1902 – 05)
 Lord Rosebery
 Lord Salisbury – an outstanding Conservative
PM of the late 19th century
 William Gladstone – a Victorian Titan, the
outstanding Liberal PM of Queen Victoria’s
reign
N C Gardner MA PGCE
32
0

 Lord Derby – a notable Conservative PM after the
fall of Sir Robert Peel in 1846
 Lord Melbourne – Queen Victoria’s first PM and
one of her favourites
 Duke of Wellington – the conqueror of Napoleon
 George Canning – one of Britain’s greatest
Foreign Secretaries, later PM for a short period
 William Pitt – the outstanding PM during the
French Wars and the youngest-ever PM of Great
Britain
 Sir Robert Walpole – Britain’s first-ever PM, a
colossus of 18th century politics
N C Gardner MA PGCE
32
2

 Actors – Hugh Laurie, Dominic West, Damian
Lewis
 Royal Princes – Harry and William
 Left-wing academics – such as Perry Anderson
 Environmentalists – Jonathon Porritt
 Climate change sceptics – Matt Ridley
N C Gardner MA PGCE
32
4

The patchy egalitarianism of post-
war state schooling gave way to a
more traditional philosophy: stricter
uniforms and rules, pupils organized
into private school-style “houses”,
more powerful headteachers, more
competition and difference between
schools.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
32
6

 The classic Etonian skills have long included
adjusting your message to your audience,
defusing the issue of privilege with self-
deprecation, and bending to the prevailing
social and political winds, but only so far.
 David Cameron and other former pupils at
Eton are intelligent but what the private
schools have always lacked is an education
for life, because they have never mixed with
the other 93% of the population.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
32
8

 Alan Krueger, a labour economist and
chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic
Advisers, has studied the relationship
between inequality and social mobility.
 The UK, like the United States, Krueger says,
has become especially unequal since the
Thatcher Governments of the 1980s and has
especially low social mobility.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
33
0

 “As inequality has increased, evidence suggests
that year-to-year or generation-to-generation
economic mobility has decreased,” says Alan
Krueger, a labour economist and chairman of the
U.S. Council of Economic Advisers.
 “Children of wealthy parents already have much
more access to opportunities to succeed than
children of poor families, and this is likely to be
increasingly the case in the future unless we take
steps to ensure that all children have access to
quality education, health care, a safe environment
and other opportunities that are necessary to have a
fair shot at economic success.”
N C Gardner MA PGCE
33
2

 The Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) emerged
naturally out of the student politics of 1968. It was
a time when all forms of authority and oppression
were being challenged. The main demands were:
1. Equal pay
2. Free oral contraception and abortion on
request
3. Equal educational and job opportunities
4. Free 24-hour childcare
N C Gardner MA PGCE
33
4

 Public life and the workplace remained primarily
male-dominated spaces in the Sixties.
 Most of the top-selling pop artists were male.
Films overwhelmingly dealt with male-centred
narratives, viewing women on screen through the
‘male gaze’ of a camera lens that was almost
always directed by men.
 However, the increased focus on feminist issues
from 1968 onwards led to the development of a
nationwide network of ‘consciousness-raising’
groups.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
33
6

 ‘Now, what peculiarly signalizes the
situation of woman is that she – a free
and autonomous being like all human
creatures – nevertheless finds herself
living in a world where men compel her
to assume the status of the Other.’
 Simone de Beauvoir, ‘The Second Sex’ (1949)
N C Gardner MA PGCE
33
9

 De Beauvoir writes in ‘The Second Sex’ that
women, who want to be the subject of their
lives as much as do men, are confined to
immanence, to being an object.
 Rather than her situation being imposed on
her, as it is upon a child or a slave, “the western
woman of today chooses it or at least consents
to it.”
N C Gardner MA PGCE
34
2

 Unlike children or absolutely oppressed people,
who have no opportunity to choose change,
“once there appears a possibility of liberation, it
is a resignation of freedom not to exploit the
possibility, a resignation which implies
dishonesty and which is a positive fault.”
 In fact, because all our liberties are mutually
interdependent, de Beauvoir implies that
women’s complicity in their own oppression is
also thwarting the liberty of men.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
34
3

 Extending the general existentialist view –
that we create society and to assume any of it
as given is merely “bad faith” – into the area
of gender, de Beauvoir asserts: “One is not
born, but rather becomes a woman.”
 The questions de Beauvoir addresses include:
1. How can a human being in woman’s
situation attain fulfilment?
2. What roads are open to her?
3. Which are blocked?
N C Gardner MA PGCE
34
5

1) Although de Beauvoir details gains women
have made over time, such as a law passed
in France in 1792 establishing divorce, her
stance is that these have generally been
“insignificant victories.”
2) Custom has interfaced with law in such a
way that legal rights gained for women were
largely converted into the “freedom” to be
poor and lonely or to “live in sin.”
N C Gardner MA PGCE
34
6

 ‘The Female Eunuch’ by Germaine Greer
(1970) became a worldwide bestseller and is
a landmark in the history of the women’s
movement. Drawing liberally from history,
literature and popular culture, past and
present, Germaine Greer’s book was a searing
examination of women’s oppression.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
34
9

 Greer pleaded for freedom to be a person,
with the dignity, integrity, nobility, passion,
pride that constitute personhood. Freedom to
run, shout, to talk loudly and sit with your
knees apart.
 Freedom to know and love the earth and all
that swims, lies and crawls on it. Freedom to
learn and freedom to teach. Freedom from
fear, freedom from hunger, freedom of
speech and freedom of belief.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
35
1

 Greer writes in the introduction to the 1991
edition of ‘The Female Eunuch’ the following:
“The sudden death of communism in 1989 – 90
catapulted poor women the world over into
consumer society, where there is no protection
for mothers, for the aged, for the disabled, no
commitment to health care or education or
raising the standard of living for the whole
population.”
N C Gardner MA PGCE
35
3

 Germaine Greer wrote that we have to question the
most basic assumptions about ‘feminine normality’.
 By 1970 when her book was published, some women
were already well along the path to liberation. Grass-
roots feminist activism had emerged throughout the
urbanised West as the 1960s progressed.
 Betty Friedan had articulated middle-class American
women’s dissatisfaction with their suburban lives as
early as 1963 in ‘The Feminine Mystique’. In 1966
Friedan founded the National Organisation for
Women (NOW) to campaign for equal rights for
women.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
35
5

 In the 1960s many Western women were involved
in the burgeoning array of activist movements
that blossomed, intersected and overlapped – the
Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War movements,
the student protest movement, the New Left and
the counterculture.
 Radical political groups and the counterculture
proved fertile ground for feminism: small groups
of women began meeting to discuss and analyse
their unsatisfactory experiences as women in
these movements and elsewhere.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
35
6

 The British Women’s Liberation Movement was
always more socialist-feminist orientated that its
American counterpart.
 The movement did not have a single unifying
ideology but at its heart was a powerful attack on
the sexual division of labour in society.
 By resisting sex-role stereotyping and bringing
gender oppression from the home into the public
domain, they were asserting that ‘the personal is
political’.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
36
3

 By the 1970s, the words ‘sexism’ and ‘male
chauvinist’ sprang into popular use.
 The Peckham Rye group of the women’s
liberation movement (WLM) gave a paper at the
Ruskin Conference in which they attacked the
enforced domesticity of mothers:
 ‘Our window on the world is looked through with
our hands in the sink and we’ve begun to hate
that sink and all it implies – so begins our
consciousness.’
N C Gardner MA PGCE
36
5

1) During 1969, women’s liberation groups
started to spring up spontaneously. Some were
formed by women in left-wing groups such as
the International Socialists and the International
Marxist Group.
2) Others began when groups of women just
started talking to each other about their
situation. The Peckham Rye group from south-
east London started from women based at
home who attended a ‘One O’Clock Club’ with
their small children.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
36
7

 History Workshop was a movement of radical
historians very much associated with the New
Left.
 When Sheila Rowbotham (one of the historians)
stood up at a meeting in Ruskin College in
November 1969 and tried to get together with
other History Workshop women who were
interested in women’s history ‘there was a great
guffaw from the floor’ from men who thought
that the whole idea of women’s history was a
joke.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
36
9

1) The British women’s movement was
accompanied by an array of new feminist
literature: Shrew, Women’s Report, The
Women’s Newspaper and later on in 1972 by
Spare Rib, the first commercially successful
feminist magazine, which now has a website.
2) WLM groups became involved in local
campaigns for nurseries, accessible health care,
assisting lone mothers to make social security
claims, refuges for battered women, etc.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
37
1

 Radical feminists saw hegemonic male power,
organized into a system of patriarchy, as the
primary explanation for their oppression.
 Socialist feminists wanted to unite a class and
race analysis with feminism to build a broader
movement of oppressed peoples.
 Lesbians within the WLM succeeded in pushing
through an additional demand for ‘an end to all
discrimination against lesbians and a woman’s
right to freely determine her own sexuality’.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
37
2

1) Marriage in late 20th century/early 21st century
Britain is now seen as optional rather than
essential as the trend towards cohabiting
couples has increased.
2) It is no longer a social stigma for couples or
lone women to bear children out of wedlock.
3) The rise of the single-parent family continued
and between 1975 and 1995 the percentage of
families containing a lone mother increased
from 9 to 20% and has been 25% in the 21st
century.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
37
7

1) Statistics for 1997, gathered by the British
Household Panel Study at Essex University for
the Economic and Social Science Research
Council, showed that only 15% of households
now have a husband in full-time work and a
full-time housewife at home.
2) But the demise of the full-time wife and mother
since the 1970s has not necessarily resulted in
a transformation in the sexual division of
labour in the home. Studies have found that
where both partners are in full-time work, on
average the man does 5 hours housework a
week, whilst the woman does 14.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
37
9

1) The growing visibility of working-
class culture in literary novels and
the theatre.
2) Americanization of popular culture
– television, Coca-Cola, cheap
comic-books, and rock n ’roll.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
38
5

 John Osborne’s play ‘Look Back in Anger’ (1956)–
rage against the Establishment. The play involves
a love triangle between an intelligent, educated
but disaffected young man (Jimmy Porter), his
upper-middle class wife (Alison), and her
haughty best friend (Helena Charles).
 The play in London’s West End was a huge
success and the critics coined the term ‘Angry
Young Men’ to describe Osborne and other
working-class playwrights.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
38
7

 John Braine’s novel ‘Room at the Top’ (1957)
 Alan Sillitoe’s novel ‘Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning’ (1958)
 Both of the above novels were made into
films. The novels and films showed realism
about the fierce pleasure-taking of working-
class youth. They were the opposite of the
complacent sentimentality about the
working-class in previous novels and films.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
38
9

 Following the increasing Americanization of
British culture and the emergence of the
‘teenager’ – young people with disposable
income, buying different styles of clothing than
their parents, listening to the different music of
rock n’ roll, and adopting more relaxed
attitudes to relationships, feelings and
expression – London for a time in the Sixties
became the hippest city on the planet.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
39
0

N C Gardner MA PGCE
39
2
In comparison with other post-war
Prime Ministers, Margaret
Thatcher’s style of government was
entirely different.
She had a broadly-based policy
agenda of her own, an agenda
distinct from that of most
members of the Conservative Party.
She ensured that her agenda was
her Government’s agenda and was
therefore willing to assert herself
on an unprecedented scale
compared to other post-war Prime
Ministers.

 Minimal government
 Autonomous civil society
 Market fundamentalism
 Moral authoritarianism, plus strong economic
individualism
N C Gardner MA PGCE
39
4

 Acceptance of inequality
 Traditional nationalism
 Welfare state as safety net
 Realist theory of international order; firm
stand against Communism
N C Gardner MA PGCE
39
5

1) In her memoirs, ‘The Downing Street Years’,
Margaret Thatcher analysed what she thought
had gone wrong in post-war Britain.
2) Thatcher stated, rightly, that Britain had
invested less than her foreign competitors,
especially Germany and the United States; she
had educated and trained the British people to
a lower standard; and allowed her workers and
manufacturers to combine in various cartels
that restricted competition and reduced
efficiency.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
0

 Thatcher’s analysis also mentioned the natural
complacency of a nation grown used to more
than a hundred years to ‘top dog’ status (mainly
in the nineteenth century).
 Also the economic ‘cushion’ provided by Britain’s
vast overseas investments (equal in 1914 to
186% of GNP).
 The deceptive might of an empire which
continued to expand until 1919 but which cost
more to defend than it contributed to national
wealth.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
1

1) For 30 years or so after the Second World War,
social democratic, statist solutions to Britain’s
relative decline were applied from Attlee’s
government of 1945 to 1951 through to
Callaghan’s government of 1976 to 1979.
2) The solutions represented a centralizing,
managerial, interventionist style of government.
3) High rates of tax on work, enterprise,
consumption and wealth transfer were applied.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
3

 Thatcher’s verdict (in her memoirs) was: ‘No
theory of government was ever given a fairer test
or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic
country than democratic socialism received in
Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every
respect.’
 ‘Declinism’ was the key reference point in
political argument from the 1960s to the 1990s,
when under Blair’s premiership Britain became
the fastest-growing economy in Europe.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
5

1) The Conservative governments of the 1950s
emphasized the growth agenda and Tory-
inspired expansion was contrasted with the
socialist restrictions of the Attlee governments.
2) Freed from wartime and post-war controls the
capitalist economy could raise consumption
standards for everyone, and in doing so deliver
enough support from the working-class
electorate to keep the Conservatives in power.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
7

 Unprecedented expansion of the British
economy in the 1950s and 1960s also
demonstrated faster expansion elsewhere,
especially in France, West Germany, and Italy.
 In relative terms the decline of Britain was
evident, even if in absolute terms Britain had
a higher GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per
capita than any of the above countries until
the late 1960s.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
40
9

 In the 1960s and 1970s a pervasive ideology
of declinism emerged which assumed that the
British economy was suffering from a
profound, long-term, growth-inhibiting
malaise.
 Recognition of ‘decline’ was fuelled by inter-
party rivalry. The Labour Party seized on the
slower growth in the late 1950s to contrast
success elsewhere in Europe with the
‘failures’ of Tory mismanagement.
N C Gardner MA PGCE
41
1

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