Western Civilization - History Of European Society

626Chapter 31

dustries. This had been a central objective of European
socialists since the late nineteenth century and a cor-
nerstone of Labour programs since 1918. The idea had
gained respectability in the 1920s when a conservative
government had created the British Broadcasting Cor-
poration as a state corporation. Nationalization gained
further appeal during the depression of the 1930s when
big business was widely blamed for the terrible unem-
ployment. The Attlee government compensated the
owners of private firms that were nationalized into
“public corporations,” and the Tory Party made only
limited protests when Attlee nationalized the Bank of
England in 1945 and civil aviation in 1947 (creating the
parent corporation of British Air). Conservatives more
vigorously contested the nationalization of the coal
mines (1946) and the iron and steel industries (1950);
when Churchill returned to power in 1951, his govern-
ment allowed most of Labour’s nationalizations to
stand, denationalizing only iron and steel and road
haulage. A broad conservative attack on the policies of
the Attlee years did not come until the Margaret
Thatcher era, beginning in 1979, when both denation-
alization and the dismantling of the welfare state de-
fined her government.
Subsequent Labour governments under Harold
Wilson (1964–70 and 1974–76) expanded the new
sense of British democracy by legislating equal rights:
The Race Relations Act (1965) outlawed racial discrimi-

nation, and the Sexual Offenses Act (1967) legalized

homosexual acts by consenting adults. An Abortion Act

(1967), an Equal Pay Act (1970), and the Equal Oppor-

tunities Act (1975) legislated the three chief aims of the

women’s rights movement. These Labour reforms of the

Wilson era survived Thatcher’s conservatism better

than Attlee’s reforms.

The French Fourth Republic: Jean

Monnet and the Planned Economy

The reestablishment of a French republic also involved

the rejection of a famous wartime leader. General de

Gaulle’s provisional government, which returned in the

aftermath of D-Day, prepared the constitution of a

Fourth Republic. De Gaulle feared a Communist coup

in France because many of the leaders of the wartime

Resistance had been Communists. To block the

Communists, De Gaulle chose dramatic steps: He

adopted the socialist program of nationalization that

Léon Blum had begun in the 1930s. The state now took

control of energy and the utilities (gas, oil, and coal);

most insurance companies and banking; and some

prominent industrial companies, such as Renault and

Air France. Twenty percent of the French economy had

been nationalized by the late 1940s—a program of

Illustration 31.3

The Welfare State. The British lived with food rationing until

1954. To improve the health of British children, the postwar
      Labour government in 1946 included a provision for free milk for
      schoolchildren in the welfare program it introduced. This photo
      shows boys at a grammar school in Manchester taking their daily
      milk break. Such programs were a dramatic success at improving
      the children’s health, but they also became a visible symbol of the
      welfare state. When Margaret Thatcher set out to dismantle the
      welfare state, free milk was one of her first targets.