[6], War-time debates over national finance centred around the feasibility and probable consequences of employing either loans or increased taxation to meet the enormous expense of prosecuting the war. There is, however, a third possibility - that Britain's early start left her with fewer Defence became one of the divisive issues for Labour itself, especially defence spending, which reached 14% of GDP in 1951 during the Korean War. Social class rigidities interference with progress. Keynes’s critique of British policy centred around the social and political difficulties of securing Britain’s return to gold at the pre-war rate. Labour governed until 1951, … 807-829. See Cox, Harold: The Public Purse, in: Edinburgh Review 234 (July 1921), pp. : Taxation and the Working Class, 1915 - 24, in: Historical Journal 33 (1990), pp. 192-194; Cox, Harold: Franchise Reform, in: Edinburgh Review 246 (July 1927), p. 197. The deadline for booking a place on this course has passed. Daunton, Martin: Just Taxes. rapidly up to 1973, although there was a slow-down thereafter. The main thing which stands Realising the unpopularity of rationing, in 1948–49 the government ended the rationing of potatoes, bread, shoes, clothing and jam, and increased the petrol ration for summer drivers. Dr Till Geiger is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Manchester, UK. [141][142], While the new law formed a part of the widely accepted Post-war consensus agreed to in general by the major parties, one part generated controversy. Instead Conservatives decried the inefficiency and mismanagement, and promised to reverse the treatment of steel and trucking. flashcard sets, {{courseNav.course.topics.length}} chapters | After this her position improved somewhat, although she was still in the bottom 157-181. . Political Freedom and the Rule of Law in Britain, 1914-1945, Oxford 2001, pp. [164], This article is about the social outline of the history of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1979. arrested. Polls in 1968-9 showed public opinion moving in favour of equal pay for equal work; nearly three-quarters of those polled favoured the principle. The Labour Party, led by wartime Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee, won the 1945 postwar general election in an unexpected landslide and formed their first ever majority government. Gearty, Conor / Ewing, Keith: The Struggle for Civil Liberties. scientific and technological knowledge. The country was bankrupt after the war. David F. Smith, "Delinquency and welfare in London: 1939–1949". A staunch conservative, Thatcher guided Britain through a difficult economic period. 77-94; French, David: The Military Background to the Shell Crisis of May 1915, in: Journal of Strategic Studies 2 (1979), pp 192-205; Adams, R.J.Q. This article explores the massive impact that four years of war had on Britain through six key themes: (1) the development of the war-time economy; (2) the nature of war-time finance and the political economy of post-war national debt; (3) political revolution and the partition of Ireland; (4) post-war industrial disputes; (5) the dark shadow of post-war unemployment; and (6) the return to the gold standard in 1925. Following a similar line of argument, Tomlinson focused on the internal interests of the Bank of England, arguing that the bank’s push to return Britain to gold in 1925 reflected its desire to regain control over short-term rates in the London money markets.