1. Britain, 1945 - 1991 Emphasis on Domestic Policy rather than Foreign Policy

2. Topic Areas  Consensus Politics from Labour to Thatcher  Britain & Decline? Performance of the economy, 1945-91  Social change and multiracial society  Britain & Europe (Links to Ireland, Europe & World)

3. What was Britain like in 1945?  Changing nature of global position  Britain between the wars, 1919-1939  How was Britain affected by WWII?

4. Britain between the Wars: Poverty or Affluence?

5. George Orwell, 1936, Road to Wigan Pier ‘through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs…She had a pale round face, the usual exhaused face of the slum girl who is 25 and looks 40, thanks to miscarriages & drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate hopeless expression I have ever seen’.

7. Benefit of Hindsight…  Britain recovered relatively quickly from the ‘Great Crash’, 1929-31.  Between the years 1932 - 1937 -national income rose by 20% -Industrial production rose by 40% -Income per head of the population by 18%

8.  Orwell’s view does not tell the whole truth, but should not be dismissed.  According to Richard Hoggart: ‘There was a deep and gross divisiveness at the very heart of British society which radically separated the consciousness of the Lancashire mill worker – underschooled, underhoused, underpaid, undercared for in almost all respects and with no reasonable hope of betterment, from an Old Etonian – sure of a good job in the City, sure of a world which embraced the best clubs, Ascot, Lords, an attractive house and a wife to match it all.’

10. How does war affect a country?

11. Why did the Labour Party win the election of 1945?  Periods of warfare – that is to say of violence, brutality and general mayhem – are often followed by outbreaks of tender idealism whose most common symptom is the vision of a fairer society. As in 1918, with ‘a country fit for heroes to live in’, so in 1945, when the Labour party was closely associated with hopes for a better future and a welfare state...Labour did not have to win the election but merely avoid losing it Robert Pearce, 1994

13. An extract from Let us face the Future, the Labour Party’s 1945 Manifesto  The nation needs a tremendous overhaul, a great programme of modernisation and re-equipment of its homes, its factories and machinery, its schools, its social services. All parties say so – the Labour Party means it. For the Labour Party is prepared to achieve it by drastic policies of replanning and by keeping a firm constructive hand on our whole productive machinery; the Labour Party will put the community first and the sectional interest of private business after. The Labour Party is a socialist party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, public spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.

14. The 1945 election result VotesSeats% Vote Conservative9,988,30621339.8 Liberal2,248,226129 Labour11,995,15239347.8 Communist102,78020.4 Others751,514203

15. Reasons for Labour’s Landslide Victory  A feeling that the interwar political establishment had not understood the needs of the people  Conservative’s mismanagement of the economy  Appeasement  ‘A land fit for heroes’?  The progressive spirit of the Labour Party  Churchill  Conservative election campaign  Labour experience gained in wartime coalition