The notion of a post-war consensus covered support for a coherent package of policies that was developed in the 1930s and promised during the Second World War, focused on a mixed economy, Keynesianism, and a broad welfare state.[2] Historians have debated the timing of the weakening and collapse of the consensus, including whether it ended before Thatcherism arrived with the 1979 general election.[3] They also suggest that the notion might not have been as widely supported as some claim, and that the word consensus might be inaccurate to describe the period. Embedded liberalism has been applied to describe the post-war consensus on a global stage, around the same period from World War II to the crisis of the 1970s, and contrast it with the paradigm shift led by neoliberalism that followed.[4]
Origins of post-war consensus
The thesis of post-war consensus was most fully developed by Paul Addison.[5] The basic argument is that in the 1930s Liberal intellectuals led by John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge developed a series of plans that became especially attractive as the wartime government promised a much better post-war Britain and saw the need to engage every sector of society.
The foundations of the post-war consensus can be traced to the Beveridge Report. This was a report by William Beveridge, a Liberal economist who in 1942 formulated the concept of a more comprehensive welfare state in Great Britain.[6] The report, in shortened terms, aimed to bring widespread reform to the United Kingdom and did so by identifying the "five giants on the road of reconstruction": "Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness".[7] In the report were labelled a number of recommendations: the appointment of a minister to control all the insurance schemes; a standard weekly payment by people in work as a contribution to the insurance fund; old age pensions, maternity grants, funeral grants, pensions for widows and for people injured at work; a new national health service to be established.
The post-war consensus included a belief in Keynesian economics,[6] a mixed economy with the nationalisation of major industries, the establishment of the National Health Service and the creation of the modern welfare state in Britain. The policies were instituted by all governments (both Labour and Conservative) in the post-war period. The consensus has been held to characterise British politics until the economic crises of the 1970s (see Secondary banking crisis of 1973–1975) which led to the end of the post-war economic boom and the rise of monetarist economics as championed by Milton Friedman. The roots of Keynes's economics, however, stem from critique of the economics of the interwar period depression. Keynes's style of economics encouraged a more active role of the government in order to "manage overall demand so that there was a balance between demand and output".[8] It was claimed that in the period between 1945–1970 (consensus years) that unemployment averaged less than 3%, although the legitimacy of whether this was solely down to Keynes remains unclear.
The first general election since 1935 was held in Britain in July 1945, giving a landslide victory for the Labour Party, whose leader was Clement Attlee. The policies undertaken and implemented by this Labour government laid the base of the consensus. The Conservative Party accepted many of these changes, and promised not to reverse them in its 1947 Industrial Charter. Attlee, using the Beveridge Report and Keynes economics, laid out his plans for what became known as "The Attlee Settlement".[9]
The coalition government during the war, headed by Churchill and Attlee, signed off on a series of white papers that promised Britain a much improved welfare state after the war. The promises included the national health service, and expansion of education, housing, and a number of welfare programmes. It included the nationalisation of weak industries.
In education, the major legislation was the Education Act of 1944, written by Conservative Rab Butler, a moderate, with his deputy, Labour's James Chuter Ede, a former teacher who would become Home Secretary throughout the Attlee administration. It expanded and modernised the educational system and became part of the consensus.[10][11] The Labour Party did not challenge the system of elite public schools – they became part of the consensus. It also called for building many new universities to dramatically broaden educational base of society. Conservatives did not challenge the socialised medicine of the National Health Service; indeed, they boasted they could do a better job of running it.[12]
In terms of foreign policy, there is much evidence to suggest that there was a shared set of views that were rooted in role of the recent history. Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris emphasise the importance of the Second World War, and war time cabinet, in yielding a set of values that were shared amongst the major parties rooted in the events leading up to the war: "Atlanticism, the development of an independent nuclear deterrent, the process of imperial disengagement and reluctant Europeanism: all originated in the 1945 Labour Government and were subsequently continued...by its successors".[13] However, there were some disagreement on areas of foreign policy, such as the introduction of the Commonwealth where "Labour opposed the conservative 'imperial rhetoric' with the idealism of multicultural Commonwealth" or, in the same vein, decolonization, which became "an important theme of partisan conflict" in which Conservatives showed a reluctance to give back colonial possessions as well as the gradual process of independence.[14]
It is argued that from 1945 until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, there was a broad multi-partisan national consensus on social and economic policy, especially regarding the welfare state, nationalised health services, educational reform, a mixed economy, government regulation, Keynesian macroeconomic policies, and full employment. Apart from the question of nationalisation of some industries, these policies were broadly accepted by the three major parties, as well as by industry, the financial community and the labour movement. Until the 1980s, historians generally agreed on the existence and importance of the consensus. Some historians such as Ralph Miliband expressed disappointment that the consensus was a modest or even conservative package that blocked a fully socialised society.[15] Historian Angus Calder complained bitterly that the post-war reforms were an inadequate reward for the wartime sacrifices, and a cynical betrayal of the people's hope for a more just post-war society.[16]
However, it is still important to note that there was not total agreement between the two major parties and there were still policies which the Conservatives did not support, such as how the National Health Service would be implemented. Henry Willink, who was the Conservative minister of health from 1943–1945, opposed the nationalisation of hospitals. This could indicate that the post-war consensus may have been exaggerated, as many historians have argued.[17][18][19]
Labour revisionism
The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland, published in 1956, was one of the most influential books in post-war British Labour Party thinking.[20] It was the seminal work of the 'revisionist' school of Labour politics.[21] A central argument in the book is Crosland's distinction between 'means' and 'ends'. Crosland demonstrates the variety of socialist thought over time, and argues that a definition of socialism founded on nationalisation and public ownership is mistaken, since these are simply one possible means to an end. For Crosland, the defining goal of the left should be more social equality. Crosland also argued that an attack on unjustified inequalities would give any left party a political project to make the definition of the end point of 'how much equality' a secondary and more academic question.
Crosland also developed his argument about the nature of capitalism (developing the argument in his contribution 'The Transition from Capitalism' in the 1952 New Fabian Essays volume). Asking, "is this still capitalism?", Crosland argued that post-war capitalism had fundamentally changed, meaning that the Marxist claim that it was not possible to pursue equality in a capitalist economy was no longer true. Crosland wrote that:
The most characteristic features of capitalism have disappeared – the absolute rule of private property, the subjection of all life to market influences, the domination of the profit motive, the neutrality of government, typical laissez-faire division of income and the ideology of individual rights.
Crosland argued that these features of a reformed managerial capitalism were irreversible. Others[who?] within the Labour Party argued that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan brought about its reversal.
A third important argument was Crosland's liberal vision of the 'good society'. Here his target was the dominance in Labour and Fabian thinking of Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb, and a rather grey, top down bureaucratic vision of the socialist project.
"Butskellism" was a somewhat satirical term sometimes used in British politics to refer to this consensus, established in the 1950s and associated with the exercise of office as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Rab Butler of the Conservatives and Hugh Gaitskell of Labour. The term was inspired by a leading article in The Economist by Norman Macrae which dramatised the claimed convergence by referring to a fictitious "Mr. Butskell".[22][23]
Debate about consensus
There is much discussion over the extent to which there was actually a consensus, and it has also been challenged as a myth. Many political thinkers and historians have argued both for and against the concept of consensus. Paul Addison, the historian most credited with developing the thesis, has engaged in discussions on the subject with figures such as Kevin Jeffreys, who disagrees. Jeffreys says that "Much of Labour's programme after 1945, it must be remembered, was fiercely contested at the time" using the example of the Conservatives to vote against the NHS.[24] He attributes to the War the reason for the 'shock' result of the 1945 general election. Addison addresses many of Jeffreys' claims, such as the argument that if the Conservatives could have capitalised upon the Beveridge report they would have been the ones with a powerful mandate for pursuing policy, not the Labour party. Addison also changes his stance in this article, stating how he "exaggerated the extent to which 'middle opinion' already prevailed on the front benches" and determining that, in fact he "agree(s) with much of Dr Jeffreys' analysis".[25]
There are also a number of other interpretations of the consensus which many historians have discussed such as Labour Historian Ben Pimlott. He says this idea is a "mirage, an illusion which rapidly fades the closer one gets to it."[26] Pimlott sees much disputation and little harmony.[27] He notes the term "Butskellism" meant harmony of economic policy between the parties, but it was in practice a term of abuse, not celebration.[28] In 2002, Scott Kelly claimed that there was in fact a sustained argument over the use of physical controls, monetary policy and direct taxation.[29] Political scientists Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris defend the concept, arguing that clear, major continuities existed regarding policies toward the economy, full employment, trade unions, and welfare programs. There was agreement as well on the major issues of foreign policy.[30]
Dean Blackburn offers a different argument about the accuracy of the consensus. He proffers that the so-called consensus did not stem from ideological agreement, rather, an epistemological one (if any). He makes clear the ideological differences between the Conservatives and the Labour Party; the latter openly wanting an equal and egalitarian society, while the former was more reluctant, for example.[31] Rather, he suggests that an examination of parties' shared epistemological beliefs – "similar ideas about appropriate political conduct", a "shared a common suspicion of the notion that politics could serve fixed 'ends', and...believed that evolutionary change was preferable to radical change" – would offer a better insight into whether or not there was a consensus or not. Blackburn summarises this saying that instead of "being rooted in common ideological beliefs about the desirable 'ends' of political activity, the consensus may have stemmed from epistemological assumptions and the political propositions that followed from them".[32]
Keynesianism itself seemed no longer to be the magic bullet for economic crises of the 1970s. Mark Kesselman et al. argue:
Britain was suffering economically without growth and with growing political discontent... the "winter of discontent" destroyed Britain's collectivist consensus and discredited the Keynesian welfare state.[34]
In 1972, Chancellor of the Exchequer Anthony Barber introduced a tax-cutting budget. A brief "Barber Boom" followed but ended in stagflation and (effectively[lower-alpha 1]) devaluation of sterling. Global events such as the 1973 oil crisis put pressure on the post-war consensus; this pressure was intensified by domestic problems such as high inflation, the three-day week and industrial unrest (particularly in the declining coal-mining industry). In early 1976, expectations that inflation and the double deficit would get worse precipitated a sterling crisis. By October, the pound had fallen by almost 25% against the dollar. At this point the Bank of England had exhausted its foreign reserves trying to prop up the currency, and as a result the Callaghan government felt forced to ask the International Monetary Fund for a £2.3 billion loan, then the largest that the IMF had ever made. In return the IMF demanded massive spending cuts and a tightening of the money supply. That marked a suspension of Keynesian economics in Britain. Callaghan reinforced this message in his speech to the Labour Party Conference at the height of the crisis, saying:
We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.[35]
A cause of the supposed collapse of the post war consensus is the idea of the state overload thesis, chiefly examined in the UK by political scientist Anthony King. He summarises the chain of events as saying "Once upon a time, then, man looked to God to order the World. Then he looked to the market. Now he looks to government".[36] It is suggested that due to the increased demand on the government during the consensus years, that an imbalance grew between what was possible to deliver and the demands that had been created. The process is defined as being cyclical: "more demands means more government intervention, which generates yet more expectations".[37] It is believed that these qualms with the consensus are what led, in part, to the emergence of the New Right and Margaret Thatcher.
Thatcher reversed other elements of the post-war consensus, as when her Housing Act 1980 allowed the residents to buy their flats. Thatcher did keep key elements of the post-war consensus, such as nationalised health care. She promised Britons in 1982 that the National Health Service is "safe in our hands."[38]
Economists Stephen Broadberry and Nicholas Crafts have argued that anticompetitive practices, enshrined in the post-war consensus, appear to have hindered the efficient working of the economy and, by implication, the reallocation of resources to their most profitable uses.[39] David Higgins says the statistical data support Broadberry and Crafts.[40]
The consensus was increasingly seen by those on the right as being the cause of Britain's relative economic decline. Believers in New Right political beliefs saw their ideology as the solution to Britain's economic dilemmas in the 1970s. When the Conservative Party won the 1979 general election in the wake of the 1978–79 Winter of Discontent, they implemented New Right ideas and brought the post-war consensus to an end.
New Zealand
Outside Britain, the term "post-war consensus" is used for an era of New Zealand political history, from the first New Zealand Labour Party government of the 1930s until the election of a fundamentally changed Labour party in 1984, following years of mostly New Zealand National Party rule. As in the UK, it was built around a 'historic compromise' between the different classes in society: the rights, health and security of employment for all workers would be promised by government, in return for co-operation between unions and employers. The key ideological tenets of governments of the period were Keynesian economic policy, heavy interventionism, economic regulation and an extensive welfare state.[41]
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill, and Leader of the Opposition twice from 1935 to 1940 and from 1951 to 1955. He remains the longest serving Labour leader.
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell was a British politician who was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955 until his death in 1963. An economics lecturer and wartime civil servant, he was elected to Parliament in 1945 and held office in Clement Attlee's governments, notably as Minister of Fuel and Power following the bitter winter of 1946–47, and eventually joining the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Facing the need to increase military spending in 1951, he imposed National Health Service charges on dentures and spectacles, prompting the leading left-winger Aneurin Bevan to resign from the Cabinet.
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge, was a British economist and Liberal politician who was a progressive, social reformer, and eugenicist who played a central role in designing the British welfare state. His 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services served as the basis for the welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected in 1945.
The Great Depression in the United Kingdom also known as the Great Slump, was a period of national economic downturn in the 1930s, which had its origins in the global Great Depression. It was Britain's largest and most profound economic depression of the 20th century. The Great Depression originated in the United States in late 1929 and quickly spread to the world. Britain did not experience the boom that had characterized the U.S., Germany, Canada and Australia in the 1920s, so its effect appeared less severe. Britain's world trade fell by half (1929–33), the output of heavy industry fell by a third, employment profits plunged in nearly all sectors. At the depth in summer 1932, registered unemployed numbered 3.5 million, and many more had only part-time employment. However at the same time, from 1929 to 1933 employment dipped only to 94.9% relative to 1929 employment metrics and recovery was seen as early at 1933. The positive trend continued across real national income and wages. New houses built increased by 33% from 1929 to 1933, while profits, prices, export volume and value, and imports volume and value dropped. Overall, while all these metrics were concerning to parliament and businessmen along with devastating industrial regions, the common person especially in areas around London did not experience major hardship and even prospered.
The 1945 United Kingdom general election was a national election held on Thursday 5 July 1945, but polling in some constituencies was delayed by some days, and the counting of votes was delayed until 26 July to provide time for overseas votes to be brought to Britain. The governing Conservative Party sought to maintain its position in Parliament but faced challenges from public opinion about the future of the United Kingdom in the post-war period. Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed to call for a general election in Parliament, which passed with a majority vote less than two months after the conclusion of the Second World War in Europe.
Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison,, was a British medical doctor and politician. A member of the Liberal and Labour parties, he served as Minister of Munitions during the First World War and was later Minister of Health under David Lloyd George and Leader of the House of Lords under Clement Attlee.
In the United Kingdom, the word liberalism can have any of several meanings. Scholars primarily use the term to refer to classical liberalism. The term can also mean economic liberalism, social liberalism or political liberalism. It can simply refer to the ideology and practises of the historic Liberal Party (1859–1988), or in the modern context, of the Liberal Democrats, a UK party formed after the original Liberal Party's demise.
Clement Attlee was invited by King George VI to form the Attlee ministry in the United Kingdom in July 1945, succeeding Winston Churchill as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party had won a landslide victory at the 1945 general election, and went on to enact policies of what became known as the post-war consensus, including the establishment of the welfare state and the nationalisation of 20 percent of the entire economy. The government's spell in office was marked by post-war austerity measures; the crushing of pro-independence and communist movements in Malaya; the grant of independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon, and Burma; the engagement in the Cold War against Soviet Communism; and the creation of the country's National Health Service (NHS).
Paul Addison, was a British historian known for his research on the political history of Britain during the Second World War and the post-war period. Addison was part of the first generation of academic historians to study the conflict and is most notable for The Road to 1945 (1975) which traced the origins of the post-war consensus into the wartime period.
The Future of Socialism is a 1956 book by Anthony Crosland. It was one of the most influential books in post-war British Labour Party thinking. It was the seminal work of the 'revisionist' school of Labour politics.
The Beveridge Report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services, is a government report, published in November 1942, influential in the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. It was drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge – with research and publicity by his wife, mathematician Janet Philip – who proposed widespread reforms to the system of social welfare to address what he identified as "five giants on the road of reconstruction": "Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness". Published in the midst of World War II, the report promised rewards for everyone's sacrifices. Overwhelmingly popular with the public, it formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as the welfare state, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the National Health Service.
The British Labour Party grew out of the trade union movement of the late 19th century and surpassed the Liberal Party as the main opposition to the Conservatives in the early 1920s. In the 1930s and 1940s, it stressed national planning, using nationalisation of industry as a tool, in line with Clause IV of the original constitution of the Labour Party which called for the "common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service".
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and supports a gradualist, reformist and democratic approach towards achieving socialism. It takes a form of socially managed welfare capitalism, and emphasizes economic interventionism, partial public ownership, a robust welfare state, policies promoting social equality, and a more equitable distribution of income.
The Industrial Charter: A Statement of Conservative Industrial Policy was a 1947 pamphlet and policy statement by the United Kingdom Conservative Party. The Charter is widely regarded as representing a seminal moment in the history of post war Conservatism as the party reconciled itself with many of the economic and social policies introduced by Clement Attlee's Labour government following the 1945 United Kingdom general election.
The Labour Party is a social democratic political party in the United Kingdom that sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. It is the governing party of the United Kingdom, having won the 2024 general election, and is currently the largest political party by number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons. There have been seven Labour prime ministers and fourteen Labour ministries. The party traditionally holds the annual Labour Party Conference during party conference season, at which senior Labour figures promote party policy.
Gaitskellism was the ideology of a faction in the British Labour Party in the 1950s and early 1960s which opposed many of the economic policies of the trade unions, especially nationalisation and control of the economy.
Conservatism in the United Kingdom is related to its counterparts in other Western nations, but has a distinct tradition and has encompassed a wide range of theories over the decades of conservatism. The Conservative Party, which forms the mainstream right-wing party in Britain, has developed many different internal factions and ideologies.
The United Kingdom was one of the victors of the Second World War, but victory was costly in social and economic terms. Thus, the late 1940s was a time of austerity and economic restraint, which gave way to prosperity in the 1950s.
Martin Francis is a British-American academic historian. He was Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati from 2003 to 2015, when he was appointed Professor of War and History at the University of Sussex.
When Britain emerged victorious from the Second World War, the Labour Party under Clement Attlee came to power and created a comprehensive welfare state, with the establishment of the National Health Service giving free healthcare to all British citizens, and other reforms to benefits. The Bank of England, railways, heavy industry, and coal mining were all nationalised. Unlike the others, the most controversial issue was nationalisation of steel, which was profitable. Economic recovery was slow, housing was in short supply, and bread was rationed along with many necessities in short supply. It was an "age of austerity". American loans and Marshall Plan grants kept the economy afloat. India, Pakistan, Burma, and Ceylon gained independence. Britain was a strong anti-Soviet factor in the Cold War and helped found NATO in 1949. Many historians describe this era as the "post-war consensus", emphasising how both the Labour and Conservative Parties until the 1970s tolerated or encouraged nationalisation, strong trade unions, heavy regulation, high taxes, and generous welfare state.
References
↑ Dutton, David (1997). British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus (2nd ed. Blackwell).
↑ Kavanagh, Dennis (1992). "The Postwar Consensus," Twentieth Century British History. 3#2 pp. 175–90.
↑ Toye, Richard (2013). "From 'Consensus' to 'Common Ground': The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse," Journal of Contemporary History. 48#1 pp. 3–23.
↑ Crosland sought to revise the Labour Party's constitutional commitment to the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, (Aims, Clause four, party four): "If Socialism is defined as the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, we produce solutions which deny almost all the values that socialists have normally read into the word". Quoted by Hattersley in Hattersley, Roy, To imagine Labour's future, rewind 50 years, The Times online, 15 September 2006, accessed 27 June 2007
↑ David M. Higgins, "British Manufacturing Financial Performance, 1950–79: Implications for the Productivity Debate and the Post-War Consensus," Business History (2003) 45#3 pp. 52–71.
↑ Joel D. Aberbach and Tom Christensen, "Radical reform in New Zealand: crisis, windows of opportunity, and rational actors." Public Administration 79#2 (2001): 403–22.
Further reading
Addison, Paul. The road to 1945: British politics and the Second World War (1975).
Addison, Paul, 'Consensus Revisited', Twentieth Century British History, 4/1, (1993) pp.91–94
Black, Lawrence, and Hugh Pemberton. An Affluent Society? Britain's Post-war 'Golden Age' Revisited (Gower, 2004).
Dutton, David. British Politics Since 1945: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Consensus (2nd ed. Blackwell, 1997). excerpt; political history seen from Consensus viewpoint
Harrison, Brian. "The rise, fall and rise of political consensus in Britain since 1940." History 84.274 (1999): 301–324. online
Jefferys, Kevin, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–45, (1995).
Jones, Harriet and Michael Kandiah, eds. The Myth of Consensus: New Views on British History, 1945–64 (1996) excerpt
Lowe, Rodney. "The Second World War, consensus, and the foundation of the welfare state." Twentieth Century British History 1#2 (1990): 152–182.
O'Hara, Glen. From dreams to disillusionment: economic and social planning in 1960s Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) online PhD version
Reeves, Rachel, and Martin McIvor. "Clement Attlee and the foundations of the British welfare state." Renewal: a Journal of Labour Politics 22#3/4 (2014): 42+. online
Ritschel, Daniel. "Consensus in the Postwar Period After 1945," In David Loades, ed., Reader's Guide to British History (2003) 1:296–97.
Toye, Richard. "From 'Consensus' to 'Common Ground': The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse," Journal of Contemporary History (2013) 48#1 pp.3–23.
Williamson, Adrian. "The Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy and the Post-War Consensus." Contemporary British History 30#1 (2016): 119–49.
Rollings, Neil. "'Poor Mr Butskell: A Short Life, Wrecked by Schizophrenia'?." Twentieth Century British History 5#2 (1994): 183–205.
Rollings, Neil. "Butskellism, the postwar consensus and the managed economy." in Harriet Jones and Michael Kandiah, eds. The Myth of Consensus: New Views on British History, 1945–64 (1996) pp.97–119 excerpt
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
