Postwar UK

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This post-war UK article covers the period of UK history from 1945 to 1979. See also History of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1921 to Present).

The immediate post-war years of World War II were tough - a period of austerity , the last food rationing was not lifted until 1954. The treasury was near bankruptcy and depended on loans and grants from the United States. As a first priority, the bombed out cities and the export industry had to be rebuilt. There was also a sense of national pride and confidence in a positive future. The Labor Party surprisingly won the 1945 elections with a landslide victory. Under Prime Minister Clement Attlee , she promised a planned economy that would use every power of national government to guarantee full employment , expand the welfare state , return to prosperity, and reduce social inequality . The main instrument was the nationalization of key industries, which was largely achieved by 1950. Unemployment and inflation were kept low, and by 1953 prosperity had returned in time to properly celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's coronation . By then, however, the Labor Party had been divided by bitter wing fighting, clearing the way for the return of Winston Churchill and the Conservatives in 1951.

Britain was one of the winners of the war, but it lost India in 1947 and gave up almost all of the rest of the British Empire by 1960 . The last major decision was the surrender of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. Great Britain was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945 , with a veto on the Security Council . It worked closely with the United States during the post-1947 Cold War and helped build NATO as a military alliance against the Soviet Union in 1949 . It fought in the Korean War against North Korea and China from 1950 to 1953 . After a long discussion and initial rejection, it joined the European Union in 1973 . Prosperity returned in the 1950s and London remained a world center for finance and culture, but the nation was no longer a world power.

Austerity, 1945–1950

The first post-war years were called the “age of austerity measures”. The British economy at the end of the war was heavily geared towards war production (around 55% of GDP ) and had drastically reduced its exports. The state was almost bankrupt as a result of the war. However, Britain still maintained huge armed forces (almost a million strong in the late 1940s) and conscription ( national service ) in an attempt to remain a world power . When the USA suddenly and without warning stopped lending under the Lending and Lease Act on August 29, 1945 to September 1, national bankruptcy threatened . The government asked for help and received a $ 3,750,000,000 loan from the United States in December 1945 at 2% interest. The cost of reconstruction required drastic austerity measures in the country to maximize export earnings, while the British colonies and other partner countries were urged to hold their reserves in pounds sterling as sterling balances. Other non-repayable funds came from the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1950 ; these were linked to the condition that Great Britain modernize its business processes and remove trade barriers. Britain was an avid supporter of the Marshall Plan and used it as a lever to promote European unity and the NATO military alliance that was formed in 1949.

Social conditions

Conditions were dire: rationing and conscription continued into the post-war years, and the country suffered one of the worst winters ever in 1946–1947. The war-related rationing was continued and extended to bread for the first time in order to be able to feed the German civilians in the British sector of occupied Germany. During the war, the government banned ice cream and rationed sweets such as chocolate and confectionery; Sweets were rationed until 1954. Most people grumbled, but the poorest benefited from rationing because their diet was more nutritious than it was before the war. Housewives organized to fight austerity. The Conservatives saw their opportunities and renewed their political capital by attacking socialism, austerity, rationing and economic controls; they were back in power in 1951.

Some bright spots brightened up the dark years. Morale was lifted by the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and the Festival of Britain in 1951. The Summer Olympics were held in London in 1948. Reconstruction had started in the ailing host city, but there was no funding for new facilities. All venues for the games were made available by private or public organizations with little effort.

Labor government

The Labor Party's victory in 1945 reflected pent-up frustrations: the strong feeling that all British had made their contribution to a “people's war” and now deserved a reward animated voters. But the Treasury Department was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the nationalization programs were expensive. The pre-war standard of living was not reached again until the 1950s. The most important reform was the establishment of the National Health Service on July 5, 1948. The program promised the whole population, regardless of income, medical care free of charge.

The election immediately at the end of the war brought the Labor Party under Clement Attlee a landslide victory. The election manifesto was a manifesto for more social justice with measures such as the creation of free medical care for all (National Health Service), an expansion of social housing, and the nationalization of major industries.

Clement Attlee: Labor Prime Minister, 1945–1951

When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the coalition was dissolved and general elections took place on July 5, 1945. The counting of votes was delayed for another three weeks until the votes of those doing military service were received. To the surprise of many observers, Labor won 50% of the vote and a majority of 145 seats in the House of Commons. Attlee himself proclaimed: "This is the first time in the history of the country that a labor movement with a socialist policy has received the approval of the voters."

The exact reasons for the victory remain controversial. During the war, opinion polls showed that public opinion was moving left and advocating radical social reform. There was little public urge to return to the poverty and mass unemployment of the interwar period, which was attributed to the Conservatives.

Economic challenges

The Treasury Department, led by Hugh Dalton as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was facing urgent problems. Half of the war economy was devoted to mobilizing soldiers, fighter planes, bombs, and ammunition; now a transition to a peacetime budget was urgently needed while minimizing inflation. Financial aid from the United States' Lending and Lease Act suddenly and unexpectedly ended in September 1945. New loans from the US and Canada were essential to keep living conditions tolerable. In the long run, Labor was committed to nationalizing industry and nationally planning the economy. A higher taxation of the rich and less of the poor, and the hope for a better future through a welfare state, above all free medical care for all, were part of the program.

Nationalizations

Martin Francis (1995) argues that there was a consensus between the national executive committee and the Labor party congresses that socialism implies both moral and material improvement. The Attlee government aimed to rebuild British society as an ethical community, and public property and controls served to reduce the extremes of wealth and poverty. Labor ideology contrasted sharply with the contemporary Conservative Party's emphasis on individualism and its defense of inherited privileges and income inequality.

The Attlee government proved to be one of the most radical British governments of the 20th century. She realized the economic ideas of the liberal economist John Maynard Keynes and nationalized important industries and utilities. She developed the welfare state "from cradle to grave" of the liberal economist William Beveridge and introduced it. To this day, Labor considers the UK 's publicly funded National Health Service, created in 1948 under Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan , to be its proudest achievement.

Labor party experts searched the documents for the detailed plans for the nationalizations. To her surprise, there were no plans. The leaders of the party and government realized that they had to act quickly in order to take advantage of the momentum of development. They started with the Bank of England , civil aviation, coal, and telecommunications. Then came the railways, the shipping canals, freight and truck transport, electricity and gas. Finally came iron and steel, which were a special case because they were manufacturing industries. In total, around a fifth of the economy was taken over. Labor dropped its plans to nationalize the agricultural land.

The nationalization process was developed by Herbert Morrison , chairman of the Industrial Socialization Committee. He followed the model that had already been used in 1927 when the public corporation was established for the BBC broadcasting company . The private company owners and shareholders were compensated with government bonds. The government took full ownership of each affected company and consolidated them into state monopolies. The managers of the companies remained the same, only they were now civil servants and worked for the government. For the Labor Party leadership, nationalization was a way of taking economic planning into their own hands. The aim was not to modernize the old industries, to make them more efficient, or to adapt their organizational structures. There was no money to upgrade, although the Marshall Plan , operated independently by American planners, forced many British companies to use modern management techniques.

The old school socialists were disappointed as the nationalized industries appeared to be identical to the old private companies. National planning was made practically impossible by the financial constraints the government was facing. Socialism was a reality but didn't seem to make much difference. The workers and ordinary members of Labor had been motivated by stories of mistreatment of workers by foremen and management. Now the master and managers were the same men as before with the same power over the workplace. There was no worker control over the industry. The unions resisted government efforts to set wages. Before the general elections in 1950 and 1951, Labor had no success in nationalizing industry. Instead, it was the Conservatives who denounced the inefficiency and mismanagement and pledged to reverse the nationalization of steel and transportation.

Labor weakness

When the rosy dreams of 1945 gave way to the harsh reality of the late 1940s, Labor fought doggedly for support. In the years 1948–1949, when the unpopularity of the measures could no longer be overlooked, the government ended the rationing of potatoes, bread, shoes, clothing and jam and increased the gasoline ration for summer travelers. However, meat continued to be rationed and was very scarce and available at high prices. The minds heated up and the rhetoric became shrill. Militant socialist Aneurin Bevan, Minister of Health, said at a party conference in 1948

"No amount of cajolery ... can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party ... They are lower than vermin."

"No amount of flattery ... can extinguish from my heart the deep burning hatred of the Tory Party ... they are lower than bugs."

Bevan, son of a miner, had gone too far in a country that prides itself on self-control and understatement; he never got over this disagreement.

Labor narrowly won the 1950 general election with a five-seat majority in the House of Commons. Difficulties increased and Attlee lost his ability to hold the party wings together. Defense policy has become one of the most controversial issues for Labor. Defense spending reached 14% of GDP in 1951 during the Korean War . These costs put a huge strain on public finances and forced savings elsewhere. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell , introduced the prescription fee for NHS dentures and glasses. Bevan and Harold Wilson (President of the Board of Trade) resigned because of the watering down of the principle of free treatment in the NHS. A decade of turmoil followed in the party, to the advantage of the conservatives, who won again and again and with increasingly larger majorities.

David Kynaston argues that the Labor Party under Prime Minister Clement Attlee was led by Conservative MPs who worked with constitutional parliamentary procedures. They saw no need for large demonstrations, boycotts or symbolic strikes. The result was a solid expansion and coordination of the welfare system, especially the concentrated and centralized National Health Service. The nationalization of the private sector was limited to older, declining industries, especially coal mining. Labor kept promising systematic economic planning but did not know how to put adequate mechanisms in place. Much of the planning was imposed by the Marshall Plan, which insisted on modernizing business processes and government regulations. The Keynesian model accepted by Labor stressed that planning is done indirectly through national spending and tax policies.

Foreign policy

Great Britain faced severe financial crises and there was very little money for urgently needed imports. It responded by reducing its international ties, as in Greece, and by collectivizing the burdens in the “age of austerity”. Great Britain supported the Marshall Plan in 1948 with its no-repayment grants. It served to rebuild and modernize infrastructure and business practices, and lowered trade barriers within Europe. Fears that Washington would veto the nationalization or social policy turned out to be unfounded.

In the Attlee cabinet, foreign policy was the domain of Ernest Bevin , who was on the lookout for innovative ways of bringing Western Europe together in a military alliance. An early attempt was the Dunkirk Treaty with France in 1947. Bevin's commitment to the Western European security system led him to the signing of the Brussels Pact in 1948. The treaty led Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg into an arrangement for collective security and opened the way for the formation of NATO in 1949. Targeted primarily as a defensive measure against Soviet expansion, NATO also brought its members closer together and enabled them to modernize their military forces in a coordinated manner; and it encouraged arms purchases from Britain.

Bevin began the process of dismantling the British Empire when it granted independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, followed by Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1948. In January 1947 the government decided to continue developing the British To pursue nuclear weapons program to improve Britain's security and superpower status. A handful of selected cabinet members had made the decision secretly, omitting the remainder of the cabinet, to bypass the Labor Party's pacifist and anti-nuclear left wing.

Widespread dissatisfaction

By the late 1940s, the Conservative Party had exploited and incited the growing public anger at ration cards , scarcity, controls, austerity, and the ubiquitous state bureaucracy. They used the dissatisfaction with the socialist and egalitarian politics of the Labor Party to win support from the middle class and initiate their political comeback. So they won the general election of 1951. Their advertising was particularly effective with housewives who were faced with more difficult purchasing conditions after the war than during the war.

Churchill's return

The reorganization of the Conservative Party was rewarded with its 1951 election victory. It had regained its credibility in economic policy with the Industry Charter, drafted by Rab Butler , who emphasized the importance of removing unnecessary government controls but went well beyond the laissez-faire attitude of the old school towards industrial social problems. Churchill was party leader, but he needed a party chairman to renew the rotten institution. Lord Woolton was a successful department store owner and Secretary of Food during the wartime. As party chairman from 1946 to 1955, he built up the local party organizations, with an emphasis on membership, finances and uniform national advertising with critical questions. In order to expand the base of potential candidates, the national party provided financial aid to candidates and assisted local organizations in raising funds. In his rhetoric, Lord Woolton described the political opponent as "socialist" and not as "Labor". The libertarian influence of Professor Friedrich Hayek's 1944 bestseller Path to Servitude was evident in the younger generation, but it took another quarter of a century to gain political influence. By 1951, Labor had lost its middle class support and its wings were engaged in fierce fighting. The Conservatives were ready to rule again.

The Conservatives narrowly won the election in October 1951; Churchill was back. Most of Labor's new programs have been taken over by the Conservatives. This gave rise to the “ post-war consensus ” that lasted until the 1970s. The Conservatives finally ended rationing and reduced controls. They were conciliatory towards the unions, but they reversed the nationalization of the steel industry and road haulage in 1953.

The media

The powerful press barons had less political power after 1945. Koss explains that the decline was caused by structural shifts: the big Fleet Street newspapers were bought out by large, diversified corporations that were more interested in profits than politics. The provincial press had practically collapsed, only the Manchester Guardian still played a national role; growing competition has arisen from non-political journalism and from other media such as the BBC. Press moguls emerged who acted independently of the parties and the leading politicians.

The prosperity of the 1950s

At the beginning of the 1950s, the reconstruction continued, at the same time a steady flow of immigrants from Commonwealth countries began, mostly from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. The shock of the 1956 Suez Crisis made it brutally clear that Britain had lost its role as a superpower. It was already clear beforehand that it could no longer afford to control the territory of the British Empire . This led to decolonization and the withdrawal from almost all of its colonies by 1970 .

The 1950s and 1960s were times of increasing prosperity ( post-war boom ). A further modernization of the economy took place, as it is z. B. showed in the construction of the first highways. Great Britain increased its role as an international financial center. The English language allowed its educational system to attract students from all over the world. Unemployment was relatively low during this period and the standard of living continued to rise; more new apartments were built, both private and social housing, and the number of “slum” apartments decreased. The Conservatives largely continued the Labor Party's welfare state policy. During the “golden age” of the 1950s and 1960s, unemployment in Great Britain averaged 2%.

With the return of prosperity, the British began to focus more on the family. Leisure activities became accessible to more and more people. Holiday camps, first opened in the 1930s, became popular vacation destinations in the 1950s. More and more people also had money to pursue their personal hobbies. BBC television received a huge boost in 1953 with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, with twenty million viewers worldwide, plus tens of millions of radio listeners. While 1% of households owned a television set in 1950, it was 75% by 1965. When austerity measures were abandoned after 1950 and consumer demand grew steadily, the Labor Party found itself in an unfavorable position with its demand for no consumption; it viewed consumerism as the antithesis of socialism.

Small shops in the residential areas have increasingly been replaced by chain stores and large shopping centers , with their greater variety of offers, powerful advertising and frequent special offers. Cars became a vital part of the British way of life, making traffic jams normal on urban roads. The urban sprawl began along the major arteries. These problems led to the idea of ​​the green belt around the city, supposedly to protect the countryside from urban sprawl.

The post-war period saw a dramatic increase in the standard of living, marked by a 40% increase in average real wages from 1950–1965. Workers in traditionally poorly paid, semi-skilled and unskilled occupations experienced a particularly marked improvement in their wages and living standards. There was more equality in terms of consumption, especially as the landed gentry were forced to pay their taxes and therefore had to reduce their consumption. As a result of the wage increases, private consumption rose by around 20% at the same time, while economic growth was around 3%. In addition, food rationing was lifted in 1954. In the same year, control of hire-purchase and installment transactions was relaxed. This made it possible for a large part of the working population to participate in consumption for the first time. The entitlement to various fringe benefits has been improved. In 1955, 96% of artisans and unskilled workers had two weeks of paid leave, compared with 61% in 1951. By the late 1950s, Britain was becoming one of the world's wealthiest countries. In the early 1960s, the British had a level of prosperity previously only known to a small minority of the population. For the first time in decades, the young and unattached had money left over for leisure, clothing and luxury. In 1959, Queen magazine declared that "Britain has reached an age of incomparable lavish lifestyles". Average wages were high, there were more than enough jobs, and people saw their personal wealth increase even further. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan claimed, "What used to be luxuries for the rich are now everyday goods for the poor". The historian Robert Unstead summed it up as follows: “If not immediately, then life chances were distributed much more equitably than ever before, and especially the recipients of weekly wages (the weekly wages) reached a standard of living that would have been almost unimaginable in the 1930s . "

And Martin Pugh, guitarist and founding member of the Steamhammer group , noted: “Keynesian economic policies brought British workers a golden age of full employment. Combined with a more relaxed attitude towards working mothers, this led to the spread of the double-income family. Inflation was around 4 percent and wages rose from an average of £ 8 a week in 1951 to £ 15 a week in 1961. Home ownership was 35 percent in 1939 and rose to 47 percent by 1966, as credit controls eased the demand for consumer goods is skyrocketing. "

In 1963, 82% of all private households had a television, 72% a vacuum cleaner, 45% a washing machine and 30% a refrigerator. John Burnett notes that property was spread across all social classes, so that the difference between the consumption of higher professions and workers had narrowed considerably. Household appliances improved steadily in the late decades of the century. From 1971 to 1983 the number of households with their own bath or shower increased from 88% to 97%, and those with their own toilet increased from 87% to 97%. In addition, the number of households with central heating almost doubled from 34% to 64% over the same period. By 1983 94% of all households had a refrigerator, 81% a color television, 80% a washing machine, 57% a freezer and 28% a tumble dryer.

However, compared with developments in Europe, Great Britain did not keep up. Between 1950 and 1970 it was overtaken by most of the European Common Market countries in terms of the number of telephones, refrigerators, televisions, cars and washing machines per 100 inhabitants. Education grew, but not as quickly as in other nations. By the early 1980s, around 80% to 90% of school leavers in France and the Federal Republic of Germany received vocational training, compared with 40% in the United Kingdom. By the mid-1980s, over 80% of students in the United States and Germany and over 90% in Japan were in education by the age of 18, compared with just under 33% of British students. In 1987, only 35% of 16-18 year olds were in education, compared with 80% in the United States, 77% in Japan, 69% in France and 49% in the United Kingdom.

The riots in Northern Ireland

In the 1960s, Northern Ireland's moderate Unionist Prime Minister Terence O'Neill tried to reform the electoral system and give Catholics, who make up 40% of Northern Ireland's population, a bigger voice. Its targets were blocked by Protestant militants led by Pastor Ian Paisley . The increasing pressure from nationalists for and from unionists against reform ("No Surrender") led to the emergence of the civil rights movement among personalities such as John Hume , Austin Currie and others. The clashes escalated and the army was barely able to keep the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and the Ulster Defense Association under control. UK leaders feared a withdrawal would result in a “doomsday scenario” with widespread community fighting and the ensuing mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees. London closed the Northern Irish Parliament in 1972 and began to govern Northern Ireland directly. The Northern Irish riots were only ended in 1998 with the “ Good Friday Agreement ”.

The crisis of the 1970s

In the 1970s, the exuberance and radicalism of the 1960s subsided. Instead, there has been an increasing series of economic crises, particularly marked by union strikes, as the UK economy lagged further behind European and global growth. The crisis culminated in 1978/79 in the Winter of Discontent . The result was a serious political crisis and the emergence of an entirely new political and economic approach under the strong hand of Margaret Thatcher , who became Prime Minister in 1979.

The Common Market (EEC) and EU membership

Britain's desire to join the Common Market - as the European Economic Community was called in Britain - was first expressed by the Macmillan government in July 1961. Negotiations took place under the direction of Edward Heath as Lord Seal Keeper , but were blocked in 1963 by a veto by French President Charles de Gaulle . After initial hesitation, Harold Wilson's Labor government submitted Britain's second application to join the European Community , as it was now known, in May 1967 . As in the first time, de Gaulle vetoed in November of the same year.

In 1973 accession negotiations took place again under Prime Minister Heath, chairman of the Conservative Party. Great Britain finally joined the community in the same year, along with Denmark and Ireland. The Labor Party, in opposition, was deeply divided, despite the fact that its chairman, Harold Wilson, was in favor. Before the 1974 elections, the Labor Party promised in its manifesto that, in the event of a Labor majority, it would renegotiate the terms of Britain's membership of the EC and then hold a referendum on it. This practice was unprecedented in British history. In the referendum campaign that followed, members of the government (and the Conservative opposition) were allowed to freely express their views for and against, contrary to the normal British tradition of “collective responsibility”, under which the government takes a political position that is shared by all members of the Cabinets have to support publicly. The referendum took place on June 5, 1975 and the motion to continue membership was approved by a large majority.

See also

literature

  • Paul Addison, Harriet Jones (Eds.): A Companion to Contemporary Britain: 1939-2000 . 2005; excerpt and text search , 30 essays on broad topics by scholars
  • Paul Addison: No Turning Back: The Peaceful Revolutions of Post-War Britain . 2011; excerpt and text search
  • Andy Beckett: When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies . 2009; excerpt and text search .
  • Jeremy Black: Britain since the Seventies: Politics and Society in the Consumer Age . 2012; excerpt and text search
  • John Cannon (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to British History . 2003; historical encyclopedia; 4000 entries in 1046pp excerpt and text search
  • David Childs: Britain since 1945: A Political History . 2012; excerpt and text search
  • Peter Clarke: Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-2000 . 2nd Edition. 2004, 512 p .; excerpt and text search
  • Chris Cook, John Stevenson (Eds.): Longman Companion to Britain Since 1945 . 1995, 336 pp.
  • Laurel Foster, Sue Harper (Eds.): British Culture and Society in the 1970s: The Lost Decade . Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2010, 310 pp.
  • Brian Howard Harrison: Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom, 1951-1970 . New Oxford History of England, 2011, excerpt and text search ; social history
  • Brian Howard Harrison: Finding a Role ?: The United Kingdom 1970–1990 . New Oxford History of England, 2011, excerpt and text search
  • RF Holland: The pursuit of greatness: Britain and the world role, 1900-1970 . Fontana history of England, 1991
  • Harriet Jones, Mark Clapson (Eds.): The Routledge Companion to Britain in the Twentieth Century (2009) excerpt and text search
  • David Kynaston : Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 . 2008, excerpt and text search , social history
  • David Kynaston: Family Britain, 1951-1957 . 2009, excerpt and text search , social history
  • Stephen Lee: Aspects of British Political History: 1914-1995 . 1996
  • FM Leventhal: Twentieth-Century Britain: An Encyclopedia . 2nd Edition. 2002, 640 p .; short articles by scholars
  • David Marquand, Anthony Seldon (Eds.): The Ideas That Shaped Post-war Britain . 1996; history of political ideas
  • Andrew Marr: A History of Modern Britain . 2009; also published as The Making of Modern Britain . 2010, covers 1945–2005
  • Charles Moore: Margaret Thatcher: From Grantham to the Falklands . 2013, vol. 1
  • Kenneth O. Morgan: Labor in Power 1945-1951 (1985), influential study
  • Kenneth O. Morgan: The Peoples Peace: British History 1945-1990 . 1990
  • TG Otte: The Makers of British Foreign Policy: From Pitt to Thatcher . 2002, excerpt and text search
  • Martin Pugh: Speak for Britain !: A New History of the Labor Party . 2011, excerpt and text search
  • John Ramsden (Ed.): The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century British Politics . 2005, excerpt and text search
  • Edward Royle: Modern Britain: A Social History 1750-2010 . 2012
  • Anthony Seldon (Ed.): Blair's Britain, 1997-2007 . 2007, essays by scholars, excerpt and text search
  • Alan Sked, Chris Cook: Post-War Britain: A Political History . 1979
  • Jim Tomlinson: Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 . 2002, Excerpt and text search
  • Alwyn W. Turner: Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s . 2008

statistics

  • AH Halsey (Ed.): Twentieth-Century British Social Trends . 2000 excerpt and text search ; 762 pp of social statistics
  • BR Mitchell: British Historical Statistics (2011); first edition was Mitchell and Phyllis Deane. Abstract of British Historical Statistics (1972) 532pp; economic and some social statistics

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Piers Brendon, The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire (2010)
  2. ^ Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1900–1990 (1996) chs 7, 8
  3. ↑ David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008)
  4. ^ Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis led Germany from Conquest to Disaster, (London, 2008), p. 333
  5. ↑ BBC News: Five years that shaped the British military , March 10, 2015 (accessed January 15, 2020)
  6. ^ Philip A. Grant Jr., "President Harry S. Truman and the British Loan Act of 1946," Presidential Studies Quarterly (1995) 25 # 3 pp 489-96
  7. ↑ Kenneth O. Morgan, Labor in Power: 1945-1951 (1984) pp 269-77
  8. ↑ Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consumption, 1939–1955 (2002)
  9. ^ R. Gerald Hughes: Britain, Germany and the Cold War: The Search for a European Détente 1949-1967 . Taylor & Francis, 2007, p. 11.
  10. ↑ Richard Farmer, "'A Temporarily Vanished Civilization': Ice Cream, Confectionery and Wartime Cinema-Going," Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, (December 2011) 31 # 4 pp 479-497.
  11. ↑ James Hinton, "Militant Housewives: The British Housewives' League and the Attlee Government," History Workshop , no. 38 (1994), pp. 128-156 in JSTOR
  12. ↑ Ina Zweiniger-Bargileowska, "Rationing, austerity and the Conservative party recovery after 1945," Historical Journal, (March 1994), 37 # 1 pp 173-97 in JSTOR
  13. ^ Alfred F. Havighurst : Britain in Transition: The Twentieth Century. (1962) chap. 10
  14. ↑ Sefryn Penrose, "London 1948: the sites and after-lives of the austerity Olympics," World Archeology (2012) 44 # 2 pp 306-325.
  15. ↑ David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008)
  16. ↑ Kenneth O. Morgan, Labor in Power: 1945-1951 (1984) ch 4
  17. ↑ Jim Tomlinson, Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951 (2002)
  18. ^ David Kynaston: Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010, p. 75.
  19. ^ AJ Davies, To Build A New Jerusalem: The British Labor Party from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair , (1996)
  20. ↑ Kenneth O. Morgan, Labor in Power: 1945–1951 (1985) ch 1
  21. ↑ Ben Pimlott, "Dalton, (Edward) Hugh Neale, Baron Dalton (1887–1962)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  22. ^ Martin Francis, "Economics and Ethics: The Nature of Labor's Socialism, 1945–1951," Twentieth Century British History (1995) 6 # 2 pp 220-243.
  23. ↑ See Proud of the NHS at 60 ( Memento of the original from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Labor Party. Retrieved March 15, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.labour.org.uk
  24. ^ Alan Sked and Chris Cook, Post-War Britain: A Political History (1979) pp. 31-34
  25. ↑ Samuel H. Beer, British Politics in the Collectivist Age (1965) pp. 188-216
  26. ^ WN Medlicott, Contemporary England: 1914-1964 (1967) p506
  27. ^ David Kynaston: Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 . 2008, p. 284
  28. ↑ Michael Foot: Aneurin Bevan: 1945-1960 . 1973, pp. 280-346
  29. ↑ David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008)
  30. ↑ Martin Pugh, State and Society: A Social and Political History of Britain since 1870 (4th ed. 2012) Chap. 16
  31. ↑ David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (2008) chap. 4th
  32. ↑ James Williamson: British Socialism and the Marshall Plan . In: History Today , 2008, 59 # 2, pp. 53-59.
  33. ^ John Baylis, "Britain and the Dunkirk Treaty: The Origins of NATO," Journal of Strategic Studies (1982) 5 # 2 pp 236-247.
  34. ^ John Baylis, "Britain, the Brussels Pact and the continental commitment," International Affairs (1984) 60 # 4 pp. 615-29
  35. ^ Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781–1997 (2010) chap. 13-16
  36. ^ Regina Cowen Karp, ed .: Security With Nuclear Weapons: Different Perspectives on National Security . Oxford UP, 1991, pp. 145-47.
  37. ↑ Ina Zweiniger-Bargileowska, "Rationing, austerity and the Conservative party recovery after 1945," Historical Journal (1994) 37 # 1 pp 173-97
  38. ^ Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Major (1997) pp 260-264
  39. ^ Richard Toye, “From 'Consensus' to 'Common Ground': The Rhetoric of the Postwar Settlement and its Collapse,” Journal of Contemporary History (2013) 48 # 1 pp 3-23.
  40. ↑ Kenneth O. Morgan: Britain Since 1945: The People's Peace: The People's Peace . Oxford UP, 2001, pp. 114-5.
  41. ↑ Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. Vol. II, The Twentieth Century (1981)
  42. ↑ David Kynaston, Family Britain, 1951–1957 (2009)
  43. ↑ Peter Gurney, “The Battle of the Consumer in Postwar Britain,” Journal of Modern History (2005) 77 # 4 pp. 956-987 in JSTOR
  44. ^ Willem van Vliet, Housing Markets & Policies under Fiscal Austerity (1987)
  45. ^ Paul Addison and Harriet Jones, ed. A companion to contemporary Britain, 1939-2000
  46. ^ Matthew Hollow: 'The Age of Affluence': Council Estates and Consumer Society 2011.
  47. ^ CP Hill, British Economic and Social History 1700–1964
  48. ↑ RJ Unstead, A Century of Change: 1837-Today (1963) p 224
  49. ↑ Martin Pugh, Speak for Britain! A New History of the Labor Party (Random House, 2011), pp 115-16
  50. ↑ John Burnett, A Social History of Housing 1815-1985 (1990) p 302
  51. ^ Brian Lapping, The Labor Government 1964–1970
  52. ↑ David McDowall, Britain in Close-Up
  53. ^ Anthony Sampson, The Essential Anatomy of Britain: Democracy in Crisis (1993) p. 64
  54. ↑ Marc Mulholland, Northern Ireland at the Crossroads: Ulster Unionism in the O'Neill Years, 1960–9 (2000)
  55. ^ Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace (2008)
  56. ↑ Christopher Farrington, Ulster Unionism and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
  57. ↑ Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (2008)
  58. ^ Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009) excerpt and text search .
  59. ↑ Thorpe, Andrew. (2001) A History Of The British Labor Party , Palgrave, ISBN 0-333-92908-X
  60. ↑ 1975: UK embraces Europe in referendum BBC On This Day