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“revolution” of 1945: the inauguration of the “welfare state.” One of the most powerful arguments against Labour’s plans was that the country could not afford the luxury of welfare programs because of its battered economy. To the governing party the goal of social reform was too important to set aside, and its radical policies were implemented over the next few years. Some contemporaries called it socialism, but it was far short of the expropriation and governmental control that true socialist states demanded. British politics from 1945 to the end of the century was in fact a vigorous two-party democracy contained within the traditional constitutional monarchy, one that generated a large bureaucratic structure alongside an increasingly “presidential” executive.

British democracy is based on an open electorate operating within a strictly regulated campaign system (short campaigns, spending limits on candidates, and party political broadcasts paid for by the public). When voters went to the polls in 1945, all men and women aged 21 or older were entitled to vote. This was the third election (after 1929 and 1935) in which women participated, and in the postwar years there would be further fine-tuning to make the system more democratic. An act of 1948 ended plural voting (one vote in a place of business or a university, another in a place of residence). In 1969 the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.

The major political parties, Conservative and Labour, are joined by many smaller parties: Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationalists), Greens, Communists, National Front, and others. General elections are required at no more than five-year intervals. From 1945 to 2001 there were 16 elections, with only three occasions where they were at very short intervals (1950–51, 1964–66, and two elections in 1974); the average time between elections was 3.5 years. Two long Conservative “reigns” (1951–64 and 1979–97) were offset by shorter and more contentious periods of Labour government. The Liberal Party won from six to 12 seats as a rule until 1981 when it formed an alliance with right-wing Labourites; and this Social Democratic Party took 23 seats in 1983 (on 26 percent of the vote). By 1990 this alliance had collapsed, and the Liberal Democrats, descendants of the old Liberals, won 20 seats in 1992 and 46 in 1997. The minor parties are at a great disadvantage because their total voting strength does not translate into an equivalent number of seats. The “first past the post” system, where the leading candidate, regardless of percentage of the vote, wins the seat, gives a disproportionate weight to parties that can contest all 650 seats. Liberal Democrats have thus been inclined to support systems of “proportional representation,” which allocates seats according to voting strength, as in the system used in the Republic of Ireland.

Clement Attlee’s government held power from 1945 to 1950, and it narrowly won reelection, but its slim majority forced Attlee to hold another election in 1951. The Conservatives won, and although they received 230,000 fewer votes, they took 321 seats to 295 for Labour. Winston Churchill returned to office, but due to his advanced age he retired in 1955. Anthony Eden, the longtime foreign secretary, took over and won the 1955 election with an increased margin. He resigned after the Suez crisis in 1956, allowing Harold Macmillan to take the helm. Macmillan won the next election in 1959 with

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children’s weddings were also public spectacles—and thanks to the tabloid press, so were the marital problems that followed. The divorces of three of the queen’s children, including that of the heir to the throne and his popular bride, Princess Diana, brought unwanted exposure and criticism. In 1993, after a fire had ravaged parts of Windsor Castle, raising the prospect of costly public expense for repairs, the queen agreed to pay taxes on part of the royal income, and she opened part of Buckingham Palace to tourists to raise added funds. The overall effect of these events is difficult to gauge. There had been harsher criticisms of the monarch in the 19th century, but now—thanks to the press—the institution came under even closer scrutiny. With measures to limit the power of the House of Lords and questions about the continued state sanction of the Church of England, a trend may have already begun to reduce the role of the sovereign, although its outcome is far from clear.

The scope and control of civil government grew markedly in the late 20th century. Its most visible additions were in nationalized industry: the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was formed in 1926, London Transport in 1933, and British Airways in 1939. The Bank of England was nationalized in 1946, as were the coal mines. Railways were nationalized in 1947, along with roads, docks, and inland waterways; to these were added electricity in 1947, gas in 1948, and iron and steel in 1949—in all, about 20 percent of the nation’s economy. The form of control in most cases was an autonomous public corporation, nominally not a government body, whose shares were usually available to former private owners, often on generous terms. This form of state intervention was popular at first, though by the 1980s it had lost that support, and by 1995 it was all but extinguished.

On another front, government control was boosted somewhat by wartime mobilization and more so by postwar expectations. It became accepted doctrine that the planned use and integration of resources and technology would produce more effective results for the economy. Whole ministries were devoted to this concept (Town and Country Planning, 1943; the Economic Planning Council, 1947; the National Economic Development Council, 1962; the Department of Economic Affairs, 1966). In fact, the story of economic planning agencies is one of drift and erratic movement, the consequence of severe economic pressures on the balance of international payments and disagreement over the aims of progressive planners. This has always been set against the traditional budget watchdogs, known to Labour leaders as the “mandarins” of the Treasury: the civil servants.

The most flourishing part of government in the second half of the 20th century was undoubtedly the bureaucracy. Its size and importance grew, not merely with the creation and growth of the welfare state, but in response to the increased intervention of modern government. The civil service began to grow in the 19th century, and it grew even more in the 20th. The Second World War produced a major increase, from 387,000 in 1939 to 704,000 in 1945. At the top of this large body of government workers is an elite of perhaps 700 administrators, their highest levels being the permanent secretaries of government departments. One effect of such a service is to maintain continuity, not always

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for many, augmented by a policy of full employment. There was general improvement in the living conditions of most of the population. These changes were accompanied by significant reforms in education, and while the class structure of British society was not shaken, there were many radical cultural changes by the end of the century.

The welfare state was a conscious effort to raise the level of material standards for the bulk of the British population. Partly a reaction to the 1930s, partly a recognition of wartime deprivation, and partly a fulfillment of the doctrines of the Labour Party, the program of national insurance set a subsistence level of household income that would be assured for all. State retirement pensions were expanded to cover more people. The National Health Service was established, against powerful lobbying by doctors. It provided free medical treatment and reorganized the varied types of hospitals into a rational, regionally managed system. The government also implemented its full employment policy. From 1948 to 1970 the level of unemployment was usually below 2 percent, and average wages nearly tripled, rising much faster than prices.

In these conditions, diet, health, and housing all showed signs of improvement. The revolution in domestic appliances brought stoves, refrigerators, and televisions to many homes. Those homes were increasingly owned rather than rented: in 1914 only 10 percent owned their houses; in 1939 that had risen to 35 percent and in 1981 to 59 percent. Private car ownership went up tenfold between 1945 and 1985. But in these years, the nation’s economy was only growing about 2.5 percent annually, whereas other countries’ rates were well above 4 percent. Thus the puzzle: was the country declining while individuals were advancing?

One of the most basic measures of a society’s health is in its population. Population decline had been the intermittent aspect of the years 1901–45 in Britain. After 1945 the fertility rate increased, at first as a postwar phenomenon, but over the next few decades it was the simple result of more marriages at earlier ages. The birth rate among women of childbearing age rose from 6 percent before the war to 9 percent in the 1960s. The general population of Britain increased from 48.9 million in 1951 to 53.9 million in 1971 and 56.2 million in 1991. One more population source, even more visible, was immigration from former colonies: West Indian, Asian, and African. From Commonwealth countries, the numbers rose from 597,000 in 1961 to 2,635,000 in 1991. This incoming wave was a source of anxiety for the formerly all-white society. There were immigration restrictions enacted in the 1960s, but there were also race relations acts designed to prevent discrimination. Racial mixing was an explosive subject but, given Britain’s imperial past, certainly not a novel one, and only from the most racist viewpoint was it a measure of decline.

“Secondary education for all” was the slogan of the Butler Education Act (1944). All students were to be placed in either grammar, technical, or “secondary modern” schools, and a state-funded education was guaranteed. The school-leaving age was raised to 15; but the “eleven plus” exam meant that working-class children still faced long odds on admission to grammar schools, and then entry to higher education. Consequently, the traditional class system

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Labour leader Harold Wilson, center, speaks to John Lennon of the pop group The Beatles.To his left are members of the band George Harrison and Paul McCartney.

(Hulton/Archive)

into the European Community. The pull of the empire was a force beyond reason. Imperial decline got a lot of its input from the victory in 1945, and on paper the empire was larger than ever. But this assessment was based on a wobbly structure that included occupied but uncontrolled areas of the Middle East; large and failing imperial regimes such as India; and very large and autonomous dominions such as Canada and Australia, as well as smaller dominions like South Africa. Only willful blindness could allow these supposed colonial areas to support great power notions. Yet such ideas lingered, either because they fit a perceived (Tory) image of greatness or because they gave some hope for postwar power and authority.

The empire was also part of the strategic yearning of the 1950s and early ’60s: a Britain dependent on American handouts was either too proud or too stubborn to accept the implications of such penury and demotion, so her governments cultivated their strategic assets. When the United States declined to share atomic secrets (fearing British spies), Britain went ahead with a costly independent program to develop atomic weapons. On similar lines, British governments, both Labour and Conservative, tried to maintain a military power well beyond their means, and they kept a National Service program of conscription in place until 1960. But great power status was impossible to maintain for long. As the cold war began, the shrinking imperial economy, plus the shifting world trade structure and the British currency’s place in it, conspired to undermine Britain’s power.

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In 1945 Britain entered a world dominated by two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Despite the country’s precarious financial condition, Labour leaders maintained an army of nearly a million men and pushed ahead with weapons development, trying to maintain an independent voice in world affairs. Ironically, this effort succeeded only in making Britain an adjunct to U.S. power while it deprived the British economy of resources that might have speeded recovery. This effort was concluded in the early 1960s, when it was recognized as futile. Meanwhile, Britain had been embarrassed and exposed as a second-rank power by the Suez Crisis of 1956.

Britain had previously agreed to withdraw its troops from Egypt. When President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, Prime Minister Anthony Eden, seeing signs of communist expansion, wanted to take military action to prevent loss of British influence. Rather than mounting a direct assault, a secret plan was made whereby Israel would attack Egypt, while Britain and France would intervene in the guise of peacemakers, thereby gaining access to the canal. When British troops landed in November, there was a major rift with the United States, and Britain was forced to withdraw, her troops replaced by a U.N. contingent. This vividly demonstrated the loss of British power and marked the last such venture into a strategically vital part of the world.

The imperial economy remained critical to Britain well into the postwar era. Nearly half of British exports went to the empire in 1950. At the same time, her inflated defense spending and her heroic efforts to maintain sterling, the Commonwealth’s monetary standard, were incredibly heavy burdens. By 1950 Britain had been forced to leave India (1947), Ceylon and Burma (1948), and Palestine (1949). There was simply no affordable way to maintain colonial governments in so many places. Some liberated colonies chose to remain in the Commonwealth and thus retained important trading connections with Britain. Elsewhere there were colonial wars, for instance in Malaya and Kenya. There were also growing numbers of nationalist movements in other colonies, all seeking to escape from British rule. Yet it is surprising how quickly, and peacefully, the rest of the empire dissolved. In the short period of 1957–67 most of the remaining colonies were given up. In the simplest terms, the only alternative was to imagine a British government with the will and the resources to govern, say, Nigeria, a country with four times the area of the United Kingdom and a roughly equal population. The better option clearly was some form of devolution of power. But these were not the only realities. There was also an increasingly attractive prospect of closer relations with Europe.

In 1945 Britain was not interested in European cooperation. A French offer of economic partnership in 1949 was spurned, as was an invitation to join the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950. Britain did participate in Marshall Plan aid and in the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, 1949), because in both cases those moves served their interests. But when the move to unify Europe and create a common market really gathered steam, Britain was chilly to the prospect. The Treaty of Rome of 1957 inaugurated the Common Market without British participation. The new organization

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enjoyed the advantages of reduced tariffs and restrictions and led to increasing trade and accelerating economic growth.

Britain in the 1960s was falling behind; consequently, in 1963 the first attempt was made to join Europe. Harold Macmillan found his Conservative party divided on the idea, as was the Labour party. This effort was blocked by French president Charles de Gaulle because of his annoyance at Britain’s close strategic partnership with the United States. A similar scenario played out in 1967, as de Gaulle once again prevented Britain’s entry into the Common Market. With the 1970 election of Edward Heath, a vigorous supporter of European union, coupled with the 1969 resignation of de Gaulle, a third British application went ahead and was accepted. The Treaty of Brussels of 1972 authorized British entry. However, there was considerable debate over the entry terms, and after some renegotiation a referendum on membership passed in 1975. British entry had finally been settled.

Today the British government and people remain sharply divided over most European policies—for example, deciding not to adopt the new European currency (the euro) and showing great aversion to further steps toward European political unification. This tendency was accentuated by Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980s. Yet by the time she was first elected in 1979, the basic illusion of Britain as a “great power” had been fully exposed. She might show scorn for foreigners, denouncing the European Community at every turn and even launching a colonial war to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentina (1982). But even that venture proved expensive for Britain, and it did little for the nation’s status as a world power.

REVIVING NATIONS

Although Britain lost her status as a great power, so had most others who aspired to that rank in 1939. But none of them made the efforts Britain did to regain that status. After 1945 only the Soviet Union and the United States had real pretensions to the rank of world power; and by 1989 the Soviet Union had forfeited its claim. There was no single state approaching the United States’ capacity. There was no doubt that in the league of world powers, Britain’s rank had fallen sharply. But that was not the only measure being used. In terms of income, productivity, trade and other indices, Britain was being compared with the countries of Europe, and found wanting. The simple fact was that after the war many states enjoyed a significant revival. Even Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses within a generation of their defeat, and other countries that the British felt were inferior showed signs of beating Britain in some statistical areas. By the 1970s there was talk of a British “disease” of low productivity and economic weakness. This was the most galling view of British decline. A frequent comparison used to demonstrate the decline is in the “league table” of European states. For instance, the numbers for 1991 in per capita gross national product (GDP) ranked Britain eighth on the list, behind Italy and just ahead of Spain.

Since the 1960s, most of the measurements of British economic performance have been poor relative to other countries, despite many signs of prosperity in

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British society. There have been innumerable explanations, none of which has seemed satisfactory. On large measures, Britain’s place has fallen. For example, between 1950 and 1983 British growth rates of 2–3 percent per annum were lower than in the United States (3.3 percent), Western Europe (4.5 percent), and Japan (7.9 percent). British manufacturing accounted for 25 percent of the world total in 1880; it was about 4 percent in 1980. In trade of manufactured goods, the numbers fell from 40 percent to 9 percent. These changes were due to the emergence of powerful industrial giants and to a leap in the numbers of competitors. Those elements overpowered the once-dominant British economy, because its population and resources were no match for the others.

The decline in once-great British industries made a powerful impression on most people. The coal industry fell on hard times in the 1920s, and with competition from oil and, later, natural gas, lagging British mines were forced to close. Desperate government efforts to ban imports and increase usage in the 1960s were futile. The national economy was given a lift by the discovery of oil in the North Sea during the 1970s, but this was another blow to the old energy industry, which was also adversely affected by the advent of nuclear power. Its declining years were marked by a violent struggle between the miners’ union and the Thatcher government in the 1980s. The government won.

In cotton textiles the decline was also evident in the 1920s. By 1958 there was actually a net import surplus in cotton goods. Iron and steel were overwhelmed by large competitors. The nationalizations of 1950 and 1967 did not help, and Britain was reduced to a small share of world production in specialized sectors. Shipbuilding was also in decline, as Japan emerged as the greatest competitor. Yards had to close, and shipbuilders went bankrupt. British car makers were profitable until the 1960s. Then a series of mergers failed to stem falling sales and profits.

While industry stagnated and faltered, services and finance seemed to thrive. This was not cause for cheer to many, as it was inconceivable that Britian could be an economic success without producing material goods. But economists were divided. For one thing, only about 43 percent of the workforce were in manufacturing, mining, and construction in the middle of the 19th century. The number did not change before 1970. But by 1975 it was 30 percent, and, in 1995 it fell to 20 percent. Yet no one can tell exactly what this structural change will mean.

Students of this subject have offered a variety of explanations for Britain’s economic decline. One theory is that elite British culture did not accept the industrial lifestyle; another is that the British entrepreneur lacked sufficient enterprise; another said that organized labor thwarted efficient production; yet another found fault with interfering government policies; and yet another saw the dominant financial community to blame. Of course, none of these features was unique to Britain, and most kinds of general explanation have proven to be unsatisfactory.

When looking at the relative economic weakness of the United Kingdom, one should also consider the impacts of the parallel forms of devolution the country experienced between 1950 and the end of the century: the decolo-