BRITAIN IN THE POST-WAR WORLD

[This is the first of 6 articles I will write on the subject of the respective places of Britain, USA, France, Germany, Russia and China in the Post-War World]

Prime Ministers:

1945-51 Clement Attlee                                  1973-76 Harold Wilson

1951-55 Winston Churchill                             1976-79 James Callaghan

1955-57 Anthony Eden                                   1979-90 Margaret Thatcher

1957-63 Harold MacMillan                            1990-97 John Major

1963-64 Sir Alec Douglas-Home                    1997-2007 Tony Blair

1964-70 Harold Wilson                                   2007-10 Gordon Brown

1970-73 Edward Heath                                  2010-     David Cameron

The Aftermath of war and Reconstruction

Although in 1945 Britain was one of the main Allied victors of the Second World War and her international prestige and self-confidence were high, she had sustained severe physical damage and was exhausted financially. She was overshadowed by her US ally and soon felt threatened by her erstwhile co-belligerent, the Soviet Union. A long period of austerity and rebuilding stretched ahead.

Yet the British public wanted much more than that. In the last weeks of the war it had elected a Labour government by a landslide, pledged to massive reform. A comprehensive National Insurance system was introduced providing universal pension and unemployment benefits. Ambitious plans were laid for large-scale state house-building, when materials became available.  Almost all hospitals were brought under public ownership and most doctors contracted to operate the National Health Service providing universal free health care. Although soon modest prescription, dental and optical charges were introduced, the NHS remains a cherished corner-stone of the Welfare State and a huge boon to the people.

Clement Attlee

Another leg of Labour’s programme was the nationalisation of coal mining and steel, road transport, railways and public utilities. There was much ebb and flow in this area but Britain ran a “mixed economy” for about 35 years, accepted by all parties with close cooperation with the trades unions. This was the “post-war consensus” and was combined with Keynesian economic policies often dubbed “Butskellism” after two vigorous chancellors, Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell and Conservative Rab Butler.

The mixed economy stuttered and stumbled. Initially it was highly centralised and micro-managed, with food and clothes rationed, everything subject to planning permission – proclaiming “the man in Whitehall knows best”. By the mid-50s a more free economy emerged, credit became widely available and MacMillan was able to boast “You never had it so good”. While this was maybe true for many Britons, other nations in Europe and North America had it much better.  Despite early promise from computers, jet engines and nuclear power, Britain seldom successfully exploited its technological expertise, its products were often over-engineered, industrial management was weak and labour relations deplorable.

 The Outside world

This poor economic performance exacerbated existing weaknesses and limited Britain’s room for manoeuvre. Externally Britain faced huge challenges. A founder member of NATO, she maintained an army in Germany confronting the Soviet threat. In 1947, weary of trying to hold the ring between the irreconcilable Jews and Arabs, she effectively surrendered her Mandate over Palestine and withdrew.  In August 1947, after years of generally peaceful agitation, the British Raj made way for the independent Republic of India, which was partitioned amid murderous communal rioting as Pakistan was also created. The jewel of the Empire was lost.

Britain tried to exert herself as a world power but her economy would not allow it. She withdrew her troops from Greece supporting the Royalists in the civil war and handed over to the US. She sent her soldiers to join the UN intervention in Korea, but it was essentially an American show. A jungle war in Malaya, the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya and EOKA terrorism in Cyprus stretched her resources unmercifully. Eden’s ill-judged attempt to regain the Suez Canal in 1956 after Nasser seized it, ended in humiliating failure. Britain had long decided to become a nuclear power and great treasure was spent on missiles, aircraft and submarines as military platforms evolved, to ensure “a seat at the top table”, but Britain was a very junior partner to the US.

By the 1960s Britain had decided to withdraw East of Suez and to complete the decolonisation of Africa, a largely peaceful and rapid process associated with Iain Macleod. Only Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was unresolved until 1980. In an attempt to rejuvenate her economy Britain finally negotiated her entry to the European Economic Community in 1973 under Edward Heath. Benefits did flow, but Britain needed an IMF rescue in 1976 and as Europe now moves towards closer fiscal union, Britain’s basis of membership is still closely debated.

Life in Britain

Despite all these problems, Britain was rather a fun place to live in at least from the mid-50s. It was lively artistically with Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis and Angus Wilson in good literary form; after an entertaining court case, Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover became publishable; John Osborne electrified the stage; Laurence Olivier, Paul Schofield and a host of others trod the boards with great panache. The film industry greatly amused its large audience with first the Ealing and then the Boulting Brothers comedies. Period dramas were a speciality with David Lean progressing from Oliver Twist to Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia and Albert Finney charming us as Tom Jones. High art was provided by Henry Moore and Lucien Freud. The BBC (ignoring its elitist 3^rd Programme) progressed from community-based entertainments like Workers’ Playtime and Have a Go! to the more cerebral Panorama and Kenneth Clark’s seminal Civilisation.

Popular culture was unrestrained. Packed dance-halls pulsated to the strains of rock n’ roll; everyone sang along with Alma Cogan or Tommy Steele until the thunderclap of The Beatles and a myriad of Liverpool sounds captivated the world. The Profumo scandal – a heady cocktail of sex in high places, espionage, slum landlordism, pimping and hypocrisy – gave much amusement. Trendy Mini cars and delicious Mini-skirts heralded Swinging 60s London and a good time was had by all. Olde England with its formal values was dead forever.

The Thatcher Revolution

1970s Britain was rather dismal with coal strikes galore causing temporary power cuts and a 3-day week, coupled with an oil crisis, a rigid incomes freeze and feeble economic performance justifying jibes at the “sick man of Europe”.  But salvation was at hand. Charmless Heath failed managerially and was dumped by the Tories in favour of Margaret Thatcher. Harold Wilson had once promised to harness “the white heat of the technological revolution” but had not delivered; he gave way to avuncular but ineffective Callaghan, who was defeated in the 1979 election, after the grey 1978/9 “Winter of Discontent”

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher was a conviction politician, suffering no fools gladly and determined to galvanise her nation. Keynesian demand management had failed and she embraced the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman and the market liberalism of Friedrich Hayek. She smashed “the post-war consensus” by privatising many state corporations, abolishing exchange controls and ignoring the trades unions. She declined to bail-out failing companies. After a sharp recession Britain’s economy raced forward; the miners, led by cocksure Arthur Scargill misjudged their strength and were comprehensively crushed after a bitter strike in 1984/5. Restraints on the financial sector were eased by Big Bang in 1986 and for 20 years the City became a gold-mine. National morale visibly swelled. Thatcher won 3 elections but finally over-reached herself in her growing hostility to Europe and was deposed in 1990. She was however easily Britain’s most successful and inspirational leader in the post-war era.

The Thatcherite prosperity outlived her regime and continued through the ministries of Major and Blair. Britain has now the 6^th largest economy in the world, slightly behind that of France. Labour allowed government expenditure to rise too much and was caught over-borrowed when the Economic Crisis struck in 2007. British banks had been highly imprudent and two of the largest needed to be rescued by the government. The mess has still to be cleared up and the miscreants brought to book.

Britain in the world now

Britain struggled from 1968 onwards with the vexed matter of Ulster. A civil rights campaign degenerated into an IRA terrorist insurrection initially tacitly supported by the Irish government. Murder, assassination and bombings were commonplace but elements in the majority Unionist community retaliated brutally in kind. Wiser counsels in Dublin and patient British diplomacy finally produced a settlement on Good Friday 1998. A painful boil had been lanced.

Britain was still exposed to colonial troubles. In 1982 the Argentine military dictatorship seized the faraway Falklands. Britain faced the indifference or hostility of Europe, the opposition of the US State Department and of course the enmity of the UN General Assembly. Mrs Thatcher was not deterred and had good relations with US President Ronald Reagan and Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger, whose help was invaluable as a British task force defeated the Argentines and regained the islands. Mrs Thatcher’s popularity soared. The final important asset of the Empire, Hong Kong, was returned to China on reasonable terms when its lease expired in 1997.

Mrs Thatcher’s good relations with Reagan assisted their mutual steadiness towards the USSR, eventually rewarded by the collapse of East Germany and the Eastern European communist dictatorships in 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR in 1991. The nightmare of nuclear war receded. Closeness to the US however meant that Britain could not avoid involvement in unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Relations with Europe tended to be fraught as the political elite were often euro-enthusiastic and the general public euro-sceptic. The move towards a common currency (ERM) burnt British fingers in 1992 and Britain did not join the Eurozone on its formation in 1999. Despite Blair’s enthusiasm, Gordon Brown did the nation a service by opposing entry as Chancellor and Prime Minister. A looser association with the EU may be a more logical course for Britain.

The Good Life

After the Beatles era, Britain still punched above her weight in pop music with bands like Human League, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd winning a large following. In literature Martin Amis wrote challenging novels (London Fields) and Alan Bennett was a thoughtful and witty commentator. Bennett (The History Boys) also enlivened the theatre, where he was joined by prolific Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular) and Michael Frayn (Noises Off, Copenhagen and recently Democracy), and versatile Willy Russell (Blood Brothers, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine).

Perhaps Britain’s greatest contribution was in children’s literature where Roald Dahl (Matilda) scintillated but the greatest success was in high fantasy with the largely posthumous popularity of JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and CS Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) soon overtaken by JK Rowling, who sold over 400m copies of her Harry Potter books.

The cinema had its usual diet of James Bond thrillers but Mama Mia!, using Abba songs was the highest grossing British film in history. TV was distinguished by wonderful David Attenborough nature documentaries (Life on Earth) and Britain’s distinctive period pieces from Upstairs Downstairs to Downton Abbey. The world of art was illuminated by the paintings of Francis Bacon and the ingenuity of Tim Berners-Lee gave us all the World Wide Web.

Sport was a national obsession and while England won the football World Cup in 1966, its subsequent success was at club level in Europe with trophies regularly won by Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. David Beckham and Wayne Rooney became international celebrities. Cricket and Rugby fortunes fluctuated from the sublime to the ridiculous but in golf a long list of champions emerged including Tony Jacklin, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo and Rory McIlroy. Britain had plenty to cheer.

  The Future

Britain has made great strides since 1945 but there are as ever many challenges. The divorce rate has increased 20-fold since 1945 and the prison population 7-fold. Britain has more teenage mothers and children born out of wedlock than any other European country. 13% of the working population claim disability benefit compared to 5% in the US and 3% in Japan – there is a large social underclass. Educational standards are indifferent in too many state schools.

Mo Farah wins 5,000 and 10,000 metres Olympic Gold for Britain, London 2012

Yet there are so many positives. Fine universities and many excellent public and state schools; a tolerant society protecting minorities; the rule of law; a competent civil service generally free of corruption; a country of surpassing beauty; a cherished monarchy; a talented people; acceptance of a reduced status in the world but pride in being multi-ethnic as exemplified by the splendid staging of the Olympic Games in London

It is an honour to be a citizen of such a country.

S M Donald

19.08.12
Text Copyright Sidney Donald 2012