Twentieth-century Britain: a very short introduction by Kenneth O. Morgan

Author:Kenneth O. Morgan [Morgan, Kenneth O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192853974
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2000-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

7. The Labour Cabinet under Attlee, 23 August 1945. The front row contains ( left to right) Lord Addison, Lord Jowitt, Sir Stafford Cripps, Arthur Greenwood, Ernest Bevin, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton, A. V. Alexander, James Chuter-Ede, and Ellen Wilkinson. Labour was returned with a huge majority of more than 150

y Britain

ownership, as spelt out in the 1945 Labour manifesto, come to be challenged.

entieth-Centur

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There was also the great extension of publicly financed social welfare, popularly dubbed ‘the welfare state’. The most spectacular and controversial feature of this was the National Health Service introduced by Bevan in 1946, and coming into effect in July 1948. The Health Service generated much debate at the time, and much resistance from doctors who viewed with alarm attempts to implement a salaried system to make them State employees, and to abolish the sale of private practices. However, the public consensus after the war was sufficiently powerful to force the bill through, and to enable free medical attention for all citizens to come into effect. Other notable measures included the national insurance system introduced in 1946, very much on the lines of Beveridge’s wartime proposals; a new drive for State-subsidized

‘council’ houses which yielded well over a million new and temporary dwellings up to 1952; increased old age pensions; a raising of the school-leaving age; and child allowances.

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These measures were by no means greeted with such unanimous acclaim at the time as is sometimes alleged. The government made many concessions to its critics. Bevan himself had to allow the retention of private practice by the medical profession, and ‘pay beds’ within the nationalized hospitals, a typically British compromise. In secondary education, the public schools flourished side by side with the State grammar schools. Indeed, the years of socialist rule after 1945 saw Eton and other privately endowed educational institutions never more thriving, with their charitable status protected by the Inland Revenue. Public housing schemes were whittled down by pressures to encourage homes for sale and the principle of a ‘property-owning democracy’. With all its limitations, however, the welfare State gained a broad measure of support, and was accepted as a vital attribute of the Th

balanced, compassionate society over the next 20 years. Despite a e P

o

ministerial fracas in April 1951, which led to the resignation of Aneurin st-W

Bevan and two other ministers over charges on dentures and spectacles, ar W the underlying principles of a publicly supported, comprehensive orld

welfare State survived largely unscathed. So, too, did the commitment to full employment and new regional policies that gave renewed life to once derelict areas such as the Welsh valleys, Durham, Cumberland, and the central industrial belt of Scotland. In the light of these benefits, trade unionists were prepared to accept wage freezes, devaluation, and disagreeable hardships. Their loyalty to their own government survived all rebuffs.

Changing Living Standards

Later legend made this era one of austerity and general gloom. So in some ways it was. From the outset, Britain faced a huge post-war debt. There were continuous shortages

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