The Labour government was as passionately
attached to parliamentary democracy, civil liber-
ties and the independence of the law as any pre-
vious administration. But it also showed a much
greater concern for social justice. The early post-
war years were an ‘age of austerity’ for the few
millions who before the war had enjoyed higher
standards of living, more varied food and cheap
domestic servants, but it was also an age during
which the much more numerous poor for the first
time were freed from the fear of unemployment,
the workhouse, sickness, hunger and a pauper’s
burial. As a nation the British people had never
enjoyed such good health, subsisting on adequate
rations that kept the people lean. Characteristic of
the period was the word ‘utility’ which was widely
stamped on furniture and clothing to denote
good standard quality without frills.
By pre-war standards, Britain made sound
progress as its factories switched to peacetime
production. A major problem was how to earn
enough dollars from exports to pay for the
imports Britain needed to feed its population, to
provide tobacco and to get industry moving. That
Labour recovered from the crisis year of 1947 was
due less to Attlee, who provided little leadership,
than to Stafford Cripps, who as chancellor of the
exchequer emerged as the strongman. His strict
economic policy, wage restraint and cuts in
spending put Britain back on course. But despite
Marshall Aid, Britain ran into renewed crises and
devalued the pound in 1949 from its pre-war rate
of $4.03 to $2.80. Bread was rationed for the first
time from 1946 to 1948. When Labour finally fell
from power in 1951, after winning the 1950 elec-
tion by so narrow a margin of seats that Attlee
decided to call another election, Britain was still
enjoying a higher standard of living than its con-
tinental neighbours. There was a small drift of
support from Labour to Conservative, 3 per cent
in 1950 and a further 1 per cent in 1951. It was
just sufficient to end the first Labour era of post-
war Britain.
The elections brought Churchill back to power,
the Conservatives holding 321 seats and Labour
- The swing was not remarkable given
Labour’s six years in office; the socialist leaders
were becoming old and sick. Sir Stafford Cripps
retired in October 1950 suffering from cancer,
Bevin died in April 1951 and Attlee also fell ill.
A split within the Labour movement also became
publicly known and weakened the party. The left-
wingers led by Aneurin Bevan were outraged by
the introduction of a charge for spectacles and
false teeth, which destroyed the principle of a
completely free National Health Service. Bevan
and Harold Wilson, a rising young star, there-
upon resigned from the government. But the
majority of Labour supporters did not wish to go
further on the road to socialism, and extending
nationalisation was not popular. Labour’s reform-
ing zeal had weakened in the face of the practi-
cal constraints of the slowly recovering economy.
While Labour declined, the Conservative Party
struck a note that appealed to the voters of ‘grey’
Britain, promising to rid the country (which was
tiring of uniformity and the continuation of
wartime rationing) of unnecessary restrictions and
regulations – but they also undertook to maintain
the new welfare state created by Labour. The most
important of their assurances was that they would
maintain full employment: the new Conservatism
was laying the ghosts of the 1930s. For all these
reasons – and a redistribution of constituency
boundaries had also aided the Conservatives –
they won power in 1951 and held on to it without
interruption for thirteen years until 1964.
Churchill was back at Number 10. Seventy-
seven years of age, he was still a statesman of
world stature who could speak on equal terms
with Truman and Stalin. This obscured the fact
that Britain had ceased to be a world power when
measured in terms of economic strength. With
R. A. Butler, who accepted all the Beveridge
Report stood for, at the Exchequer, the country
was assured there would be no return to pre-war
Toryism. Churchill’s Cabinet contained ministers
who wished to reshape Conservative ideology to
encompass more concern for the poor; they
believed in the healing power of consensus
politics, in the acceptance of the welfare state and
in the application of Keynesian economics to
counter the effects of cyclical depression. Butler,
the most senior member of the government after
Churchill, represented this now dominant wing of536 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s