Clement Attlee’s Ministry (1945-1951)
During the years that followed, Labour, led by Clement Attlee, sought to build a socialist Britain, while surviving postwar austerity, dismantling the empire, and adjusting to a cold war with the USSR. The two measures that established a welfare state in Britain, the National Insurance Act of 1946 (a consolidation of benefit laws involving maternity, unemployment, disability, old age, and death) and the National Health Service, set up in 1948, were widely popular. Both drew on the wartime reports of Sir William Beveridge, a Liberal. The nationalization of the Bank of England, the coal industry, gas and electricity, the railroads, and most airlines proved relatively noncontroversial, but the Conservatives vigorously if vainly opposed the nationalization of the trucking and the iron and steel industries. In 1948 Labour eliminated the last remnants of plural voting (that is, voting in more than one constituency) and reduced the delaying powers of the House of Lords from two years to one. These changes were instituted in the midst of a postwar era of austerity. The national debt had tripled, and for the first time since the 18th century Britain had become a debtor nation. With the end of U.S. lend-lease aid in 1945, the British import bill had risen abruptly long before military demobilization and reconversion to peacetime industry had been accomplished. Wartime regulations, therefore, had been kept; food rationing in 1946 and 1947 was more restrictive than during the war.
Postwar Germany was divided into occupation zones among the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France, but efforts to reach agreement on a peace treaty with Germany broke down as it became clear that the USSR was converting all of Eastern Europe into a Soviet sphere. Britain, assisted by the U.S.-sponsored Marshall Plan (1948-1952), joined other Western powers and the United States in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 in order to counter the Soviet threat. The British government felt less able, however, to play an independent role in the Middle East, and in 1948 it gave up its Palestinian mandate, which led to the establishment of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli War. Aware of Britain’s depleted coffers and sympathetic toward their nationalist causes, the Labour government granted independence to India and Pakistan in 1947 and to Burma (now known as Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948.
Conservative Rule (1951-1964)
Its program of social reform apparently accomplished, the Labour government’s parliamentary majority was sharply reduced in the general election of 1950, and the election of 1951 enabled the Conservatives under Winston Churchill to slip back into power. Except for denationalizing iron and steel, the Conservatives made no attempt to reverse the legislation or the welfare-state program enacted by Labour, and the early 1950s brought steady economic recovery. As income tax rates were reduced and the framework of wartime and postwar regulation largely dismantled, housing construction boomed and international trade flourished. With a veteran world statesman heading Britain’s government, the accession of a young queen drew the attention of the world to London for the coronation of Elizabeth II in June 1953. During these years Britain perfected its own atomic and hydrogen bombs and pioneered in the generation of electricity by nuclear power. Churchill’s hopes for another diplomatic summit meeting were disappointed, but Stalin’s death in 1953 led to an easing of the Cold War.
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Eden and Macmillan
Churchill’s successor, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, led his party to a second election victory in the spring of 1955. In the same year he helped negotiate an Austrian peace treaty and participated in a summit conference at Geneva.
Eden’s tenure as prime minister, however, was cut short by the crisis that followed Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956. British forces had been withdrawn from the canal only a year earlier, and an Anglo-French reoccupation in 1956 was halted by Soviet-U.S. pressure. The episode led both to the loss of much of Britain’s remaining influence in the Middle East and to Eden’s resignation. His successor, Harold Macmillan, presided over a period of renewed consumer affluence. In 1959 he led the Conservatives to their third successive election victory—the fourth time in a row that the party gained parliamentary seats.
Decolonization
In Africa, Macmillan’s government followed a deliberate policy of decolonization. The Sudan had already become independent in 1956, and during the next seven years Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Kenya followed suit. Most of these states remained members of a highly decentralized multiracial Commonwealth, but the Union of South Africa, dominated by a white minority of Boer descent, left the Commonwealth in 1961 and declared itself a republic. Independence was also given to Malaysia, Cyprus, and Jamaica during Macmillan’s tenure.
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Even as imperial ties loosened, tens of thousands of immigrants—especially from the West Indies and Pakistan—poured into Britain. Their arrival caused intermittent social strife and led to efforts to limit further immigration sharply, while ensuring legal equality for the immigrants and their descendants.
As Britons turned their attention away from their overseas empire, they became increasingly aware that their economy, although prospering, was growing less rapidly than those of their Continental neighbors. In 1961 Macmillan applied for British membership in the European Community (EC), or Common Market (now called the European Union). Many Britons felt unprepared to cast their lot with continental Europe, but for the moment their feelings proved immaterial, because the application was vetoed by President Charles de Gaulle of France. In 1963 Macmillan was replaced as Conservative prime minister by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. In the general election of 1964, however, the latter was narrowly defeated by the Labour Party, headed by Harold Wilson.
The Permissive Society
During the 1960s, Britain experienced a widespread mood of rebellion against the conventions of the past—in dress, in music, in popular entertainment, and in social behavior. The phenomenon had its positive consequences in helping to make “swinging” London a world capital of popular music, theater, and, for a time, fashion. Among the negative side effects, however, were a rising crime rate and a spreading drug culture.
Harold Wilson’s Labour government sympathized with some of these trends. It sought both to expand higher education opportunities and to end a high school system that separated the academically inclined from other students. During the later 1960s, laws on divorce were eased, abortion was legalized, curbs on homosexual practices were ended, capital punishment was abolished, equal pay for equal work was prescribed for women, and the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.
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In economic life the Labour government became more rigorous. A persistent trend toward inflation, unfavorable balance of trade, and unbalanced government budgets led to a wage-and-price freeze in 1966 and attempts thereafter to secure “severe restraint.” These actions eased certain economic problems but at the price of alienating many of Labour’s union supporters, and in 1970 the Conservatives returned to power under Edward Heath.
Battle Against Inflation
A major theme of British history since the mid-1960s has been the battle to eliminate double-digit inflation. Heath’s policy of deliberate economic expansion did not accomplish that goal, however, and the attempt to curb the legal powers of labor unions in 1971 evoked a mood of civil disobedience among union leaders. More working days were lost because of strikes in 1972 than in any year since the general strike of 1926. Heath hoped to solve economic problems by “floating the pound,” that is, by freeing Britain’s currency from earlier fixed rates of exchange with other currencies, and by again seeking British admission to the EC. Britain did join in 1973, and two years later the first national referendum in British history approved the step by a 2-1 margin. An attempt by Heath in 1972 and 1973 first to freeze and then sharply to restrain wage and price increases was defied by the miners. When Heath appealed to the public in the general election of February 1974, the results were indecisive. A revival in the popular vote of the Liberal Party, however, enabled Harold Wilson to form a minority Labour government that lasted five years under his leadership and that of James Callaghan.
Irish and Scottish Problems
During the 1970s, successive British governments also faced difficulties in Ireland and Scotland. A civil rights movement supporting social equality for the Roman Catholic minority in Northern Ireland clashed violently with Protestant extremists. In 1969 the British government sent troops to keep order, and in 1972 it abolished Northern Ireland’s autonomous parliament. A campaign of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) followed; its aim was to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic in defiance of the wishes of a majority of the Northern Irish people. British measures gradually curbed but could not totally halt the wave of bombings and killings in Northern Ireland and England. In Scotland, a Scottish Nationalist Party scored impressive gains in the elections of 1974, and Callaghan’s ministry attempted to set up a semi-independent parliament in Edinburgh. When only 33 percent of the Scottish electorate supported the plan in a 1979 referendum, the project died, at least temporarily.
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Economic Woes Under Labour
The Labour government of 1974 to 1979 began by ending all legal restrictions on wage and price rises, but after the annual inflation rate topped 25 percent in 1975, the government did succeed in obtaining some trade union restraints on wage claims in return for an end to some voluntary restraints on wage claims; the inflation rate declined somewhat between 1976 and 1979. In return, union leaders demanded an end to legal restraints on union power and more government subsidies for housing and other social services. By the late 1970s, British politics seemed to be polarizing between left-wing Labourites, who sought an ever larger role for the state in order to impose social equality, and Conservatives, who hoped to restore a greater role to private enterprise and individual achievement. By the beginning of 1979, Callaghan’s government was dependent on two minor parties. A winter of labor unrest undercut his claims to be able to deal successfully with the unions, and a vote of no confidence in March 1979 went against him.
The Thatcher Decade
In the elections of April 1979 the Conservatives, led by Margaret Thatcher, emerged with a substantial majority of parliamentary seats and with the first woman prime minister in British or European history. She was to remain in office for the next 11 years, making hers the longest continuous prime ministership since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Thatcher’s first years were difficult. She sought to halt inflation by a policy of high interest rates and government budget cuts, rather than of wage and price freezes. By 1981 and 1982 those policies were showing some success, but only at the cost of the highest unemployment rates since the 1930s. The government was jolted in April 1982 when Argentina forcibly occupied the Falkland Islands, a British-held archipelago in the South Atlantic that Argentina had long claimed. When U.S. mediation efforts failed, Thatcher sent a British counterinvasion fleet, and in June that force succeeded in recapturing the islands.
The decisive Conservative victories in the elections of June 1983 and June 1987 were the consequence not only of widespread popular support for the government’s Falklands policy, but also of a sharp division in the ranks of the political opposition. In 1980 a group of Labour Party members headed by Roy Jenkins and David Owen broke away and in 1981 formed the Social Democratic Party. The new party joined with the Liberals to constitute an influential alliance that ultimately won relatively few parliamentary seats but did garner 25 percent of the total popular vote in 1983 and 23 percent in 1987 (compared to 28 and 31 percent for Labour and 42 percent in both elections for the Conservatives).
The years between 1982 and 1988 were economic boom years in Britain. The living standards of most Britons rose and the rate of unemployment gradually ebbed. British industries became more efficient, and London maintained its role as one of the world’s top three centers of finance. The economic role of government declined as Thatcher promoted privatization—the turning over to private investors of government monopolies such as British Airways, the telephone service, and the distribution of gas and water. Public housing tenants were strongly encour********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************ble-digit inflation, the enactment of an unpopular “poll tax” (as a substitute for local government real estate taxes), and the alienation of some members of her cabinet over the prime minister’s increasingly critical attitude toward cooperation with her EC colleagues.
John Major
Thatcher was succeeded as Conservative Party leader and prime minister by John Major, who continued Thatcher’s policy of maintaining close ties with the United States. British troops fought as part of the multinational coalition led by the United States in the Persian Gulf War (1991). In 1992, despite an economic recession, Major led his party to victory in the April general elections, though with a reduced majority. Opposition leader Neil Kinnock, who had gradually moved his Labour Party back from the left toward the ideological center, resigned after the election. Following the Conservatives’ election victory, Major’s government faced a growing financial crisis as the pound weakened in the currency market, inflation and unemployment grew, and the nation entered a recession. As a result, Major received the lowest approval rating, 14 percent, of any prime minister in British history.
One of John Major’s main accomplishments in office occurred in 1993, when he was instrumental in opening a dialogue between the British government and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Major and Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds issued a statement requiring the IRA to cease terrorist activities for three months, after which time Sinn Fein, the organization’s political wing, would be invited to join talks on the future of Northern Ireland. In August 1994 the IRA announced a cease-fire, bringing to a halt the violence that is estimated to have killed more than 3000 people in the previous 25 years. In May 1995 representatives from the British government and the IRA met face-to-face for the first time in 23 years.
Despite this breakthrough, the Conservative Party continued to lose ground. Though beset by low opinion polls, large defeats in local elections in April and May 1995, and a series of scandals, its most serious problem was the growing rift within the party over policy toward Europe and the European Union (EU). Many Conservatives felt that closer British relations with the EU would undermine British sovereignty, and the constant internal conflict over this issue severely damaged the party. In July 1995, in an attempt to solidify the party, John Major resigned as leader of the Conservatives, forcing an election for a new leader. Major won against an anti-European opponent, but one-third of the party voted against him or abstained. Dissatisfaction with the progress of the Northern Ireland talks led the IRA to resume its campaign of violence in February 1996 by setting off a large bomb in London that injured more than 100 people.
In March and April of 1996 the government disclosed that a link may exist between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, commonly known as mad cow disease), an infection that had been found in some British cattle, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a degenerative human brain disorder. This disclosure led the European Union to ban British beef, which devastated the British cattle industry, further damaging the Conservatives’ popularity. In April the Conservatives suffered a substantial loss in local parliamentary elections to the opposition Labour Party, headed by Tony Blair. This loss trimmed the Conservative parliamentary majority to just one seat.
During the second half of 1996 and early 1997 Major struggled to regain support for his party, but was unsuccessful. The split within the party over the issue of European relations, most specifically the question as to whether the economic and monetary union (EMU) proposed by the European Union would damage the British economy, continued to widen. In national elections in May 1997 the Conservatives were swept out of office in a landslide. The Labour Party won almost 45 percent of the vote and came away with 419 seats and a 179-seat majority in the House of Commons. The Conservatives had their worst showing in over 150 years, receiving about 33 percent of the vote and losing almost half of their seats, to finish with 165. Labour leader Tony Blair became prime minister, and after the election, John Major announced that he would resign as head of the Conservative Party as soon as a replacement could be found.
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