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Summary MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF POST-WAR CONSENSUS
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quick overview and easy study notes on post war consensus in Britain
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MAIN CHARACTERISTICS OF POST-WAR CONSENSUS:Commitment to maintain full employment by Keynesian techniques of economic
management (mixed economy, state intervention, planning, etc.): ministers would use
their levers, such as cutting taxes and boosting state spending, to increase the level of economic
activity.
Nationalisation and the mixed economy:
- Nationalisation programme put in place by Attlee: accepted overall + Conservatives did
little to change the balance of the mixed economy
- Committed to continuing state regulation of key industries, most of which remained
nationalised
The ‘Stop-Go’ policy:
- = If consumption & prices rose too quickly: gvt increased taxes & interest rates. If
production & exports were falling: gvt would lower taxes & interest rates.
- ⇒ Reactive rather than proactive style of government
Full employment: a common goal:
- How? → Both parties adopted Keynesian demand management techniques (= control
unemployment through gvt borrowing and spending)
- Butskellism → convergence of opinion regarding unemployment is emphasised on by the
combination of names of Rab Butler (Conservative Chancellor between 1951 and 1955)
and his predecessor Hugh Gaitskell (Labour Chancellor between 1950 and 1951).
Welfare state: services were provided out of general taxation, or insurance, and represented
social citizenship. Belief that gvt could play positive role in promoting greater equality, for
example through progressive taxation, redistributive welfare spending, comprehensive
schooling and regional policies.
The Welfare State:
- Attlee had laid out the Welfare State → Conservatives decided not to dismantle it, and
therefore largely accepted the main features of the welfare state.
- + Increase in the gvt’s social investment: from 39% in 1951 to 43% in 1955.
- ⇒ acceptance + enhancement of the welfare state
Foreign Policy: transition from the Empire to the British Commonwealth, an association of
independent states (decolonisation); British membership of NATO; nuclear weapons (Britain
as a major power); and, on balance, agreement that Britain should join the EEC.
⇒ Consistent broad line of British foreign policy from 1945 to the early 1990s: pro-American,
anti-Soviet, anti-imperialist.
Decolonisation: Commonwealth created, India granted independence in 1947 but still used
strategically by Britain + Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech in 1960...
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