James Keir Hardie (1856 - 1915)

Keir Hardie rose from very humble beginnings to become one of Britain's most notable politicians and the first Labour leader. James Keir Hardie was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland on 15 August 1856, the illegitimate son of a servant, Mary Keir. His mother later married David Hardie, a carpenter. Keir Hardie was sent to work as a baker's delivery boy aged eight without any schooling, and was the sole wage-earner of the family. By the age of 11, he was a coal miner. By 17 he had taught himself to read and write. His career in politics began with the establishment of a worker's union at his colliery, and in 1881 he led the first ever strike of Lanarkshire miners. In 1892, Keir Hardie was invited to stand as the Independent Labour Party candidate for West Ham in east London. He won and took his seat in parliament. He marked himself out as a radical both by his dress - he wore a tweed suit when most members of parliament wore more formal dress - and the subjects he advocated, including women's rights, free schooling and pensions and Indian self-rule. He was heavily criticised for appearing to attack the monarchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in the 1895 election. Despite this, he continued to rise through the ranks of Scottish union officials and in 1893 he was among the group who formed the Independent Labour Party. At the opening conference, he was elected chairman and leader. In 1899, the Labour Representation Committee was formed, which eventually developed into the Labour Party. After a long battle to win another seat, he was finally elected MP to Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 and was one of only two Labour MPs in parliament. But by 1906 this number had increased to 26. Keir Hardie was elected leader of the party in the House of Commons, but was not very good at dealing with internal rivalries and he resigned from the post in 1908. From then on he devoted his energy to promoting the Labour Party and championing equality, particularly in the cause of women's suffrage. In 1910, 40 Labour MPs were elected to parliament and Keir Hardie gave up the party leadership to George Barnes. During the first year of World War One, Keir Hardie was an outspoken pacifist. He died on 26 September 1915 in Glasgow.

Ramsay MacDonald (1866 - 1937)

Macdonald was the first British Labour prime minister, but his decision in 1931 to lead a coalition government was considered a betrayal by many in the party he had done much to create.

James Ramsay MacDonald was born on 12 October 1866 in Lossiemouth, Morayshire, the illegitimate son of a crofter. He worked as a teacher locally and then moved to London where he became a clerk and then a journalist. He joined the Independent Labour Party in 1893. He stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate in 1895 and rose through the party ranks. He became leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in 1911. The early PLP was a largely unimaginative grouping of ageing trade-unionists, but MacDonald sought to give the new party a distinct ideology, and wrote on the relationship between socialism and parliamentary democracy, and between labourism and the Liberal tradition. In 1914, MacDonald resigned as party leader because of his opposition to Britain's participation in World War One. He officially became leader again only in 1922. By this time, Labour had replaced the Liberals as the main anti-Conservative party, and in 1924 took office for the first time, with the support of the Liberals. The 1924 Labour government was overwhelmed in less than a year by various 'red scares', manufactured by the press and by opposition parties. MacDonald, however, had achieved his main ambition - that of demonstrating that Labour could govern responsibly and effectively. In 1929, MacDonald returned to power, but his government was soon faced with a worldwide economic recession, for which it was not prepared. MacDonald and other leading ministers, notably the chancellor Philip Snowden, felt they had no alternative but to cut public expenditure, including unemployment benefit. The cabinet split, and MacDonald formed a National Government with Conservative, and some Liberal, support. The subsequent general election decimated the Labour Party but left MacDonald and his tiny handful of 'National Labour' members of parliament in power - although as little more than a front for a Conservative-dominated administration. MacDonald soldiered on as prime minister until 1935. He was, however, an increasingly forlorn and unhappy figure, treated with contempt by Conservatives and with hatred by members of the party of which he had once been the unchallenged and charismatic leader. He was on a ship on his way to America, in an attempt to restore his health, when he died on 9 November 1937.

Clement Attlee (1883 - 1967)

Attlee was the British Labour Party leader for 20 years, and presided over the 1945 1951 Labour government. This was the most significant reforming administration of 20th century Britain. It introduced the National Health Service, nationalised one fifth of the British economy, and granted independence to India. Attlee was born on 2 January 1883. He had a conventional middle-class upbringing, and after going to Oxford University began a career as a barrister. However, he abandoned

this to become a social worker in the East End of London, and later joined the Labour Party. He served in the army in World War One. Attlee rose through the rank and file of the Labour Party which gave him a knowledge of Labour's culture and ethos that others from a similar social background, such as Hugh Dalton and Stafford Cripps, lacked. Attlee became member of parliament for Stepney in 1922 and served as a junior minister in the 1924 and 1929 - 1931 MacDonald governments. He became party leader in 1935, largely by default as many of his more charismatic rivals had lost their seats in the 1931 election. His quiet, unassuming personality led many to underestimate him. Plots to replace him were a regular occurrence throughout the next two decades, but Attlee had the self-assurance not to be perturbed by the machinations of Herbert Morrison or Ernest Bevin. During World War Two, Attlee was a highly successful deputy prime minister in Churchill's coalition government. Then in 1945, when Labour swept to power in a landslide election victory, his combination of social conscience and staunch patriotism encapsulated Labour's experiment in democratic socialism. This led to the creation of the National Health Service and the nationalisation of coal mining and the steel industry. Attlee saw his role of premier as that of an umpire, reconciling the opinions of a cabinet composed of powerful personalities such as Morrison, Bevin and Aneurin Bevan. He played a critical role in supporting Bevin's Cold War diplomacy, and in accelerating independence for India, a cause which he had supported for many years. After Labour's defeat in the general election of 1951, Attlee's effectiveness dramatically declined, his authority broken by factional fighting within the party. He resigned as leader in 1955 and accepted a peerage. He died on 8 October 1967.

Ernest Bevin (1881 - 1951)

Between the 1920s and 1950s, Bevin was a central figure in the British labour movement and in British foreign policy, serving as foreign secretary in the late 1940s. Bevin was born on 9 March 1881 in Somerset. He received little formal education and was orphaned at the age of eight. He began work at 11 in the Bristol docks but soon exhibited an extraordinary gift for organisation. He became involved in the Dockers' Union and was instrumental in the creation of the Transport and General Workers Union, of which he became general secretary in 1922. This was a monumental achievement, given that it required bringing together, and holding together, men and women from an enormous range of different jobs into a single, integrated union structure. In the inter-war years, Bevin was, despite being outside parliament, a leading figure in the development of Labour Party strategy and ideology and was responsible for ensuring that the claims of organised labour were made central to the ethos and policies of the Labour Party of the time. His powerful speech at the 1935 party conference was

responsible for George Lansbury's replacement by Clement Attlee as party leader. In 1940 Bevin was appointed minister of labour by Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, and he shortly afterwards became member of parliament for Central Wandsworth. This appointment proved to be one of Churchill's most imaginative and effective actions as premier. Bevin succeeded in transforming Britain into a total war economy, in which all human and material resources were focused on the war effort. In 1945, Bevin became foreign secretary in Clement Attlee's Labour government. In the fluid and unstable political environment of the immediate post-war years, he carved out a clear and unambiguous role for Britain as a staunch ally of the USA in the Cold War against the USSR. He also helped to shape vague pronouncements from the US State Department into what became the Marshall Plan - a crucial plank in the restructuring of post-war Europe - and became the central figure in the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1949. His policies revealed some critical flaws, notably a failure to understand Britain's diminished power in the world after 1945, which was revealed in the decision to develop Britain's own nuclear weapons programme. But Bevin was rightfully lauded as one of the most important of the creators of the post-war world when he died on 14 April 1951.

Aneurin Bevan (1897 - 1960)

Aneurin Bevan was one of the most important ministers of the post-war Labour government and the chief architect of the National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan was born on 15 November 1897 in Tredegar in Wales. His father was a miner and the poor working class family in which Bevan grew up gave him first-hand experience of the problems of poverty and disease. Bevan left school at 13 and began working in a local colliery. He became a trades union activist and won a scholarship to study in London. It was during this period that he became convinced by the ideas of socialism. During the 1926 General Strike, Bevan emerged as one of the leaders of the South Wales miners. In 1929, Bevan was elected as the Labour member of parliament for Ebbw Vale. In 1934 he married another Labour MP, Jennie Lee. During World War Two, Bevan was one of the leaders of the left in the House of Commons. After the landslide Labour victory in the 1945 general election, Bevan was appointed minister of health, responsible for establishing the National Health Service. On 5 July 1948, the government took over responsibility for all medical services and there was free diagnosis and treatment for all. In 1951, Bevan was moved to become minister of labour. Shortly afterwards he resigned from the government in protest at the introduction of prescription charges for dental

care and spectacles. Bevan led the left wing of the Labour Party, known as the 'Bevanites', for the next five years. In 1955, he stood as one of the candidates for party leader but was defeated by Hugh Gaitskell. He agreed to serve as shadow foreign secretary under Gaitskell. In 1959, Bevan was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party, although he was already suffering from terminal cancer. He died on 6 July 1960.

William Beveridge (1879 - 1963)

Beveridge was a British economist and social reformer, closely associated with the development of the welfare state. William Beveridge was born on 5 March 1879 in Bengal, India, where his father was a judge in the Indian Civil Service. He trained a lawyer but came to prominence during the Liberal government of 1906 - 1914 when he was asked to advise David Lloyd George on old age pensions and national insurance. During World War One, Beveridge was involved in mobilising and controlling manpower. In 1919, he became director of the London School of Economics where he remained until 1937. When, in 1941, the government commissioned a report into the ways that Britain should be rebuilt after World War Two, Beveridge was an obvious choice to take charge. He published his report in 1942 and recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the five 'Giant Evils' of 'Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness'. In 1945, the Labour Party defeated Winston Churchill's Conservative Party in the general election. The new prime minister, Clement Attlee, announced he would introduce the welfare state outlined in the 1942 Beveridge Report. This included the establishment of a National Health Service in 1948 with free medical treatment for all. A national system of benefits was also introduced to provide 'social security' so that the population would be protected from the 'cradle to the grave'. The new system was partly built on the national insurance scheme set up by Lloyd George in 1911. People in work still had to make contributions each week, as did employers, but the benefits provided were now much greater. In 1946, Beveridge was made a peer and became leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. He died on 16 March 1963.

Tony Blair (1953 - )

Blair was prime minister for a decade from 1997 - 2007. He is responsible for moving the Labour Party from the left towards the centre ground of British politics, resulting in an unprecedented three consecutive terms in power for the party.

Anthony Blair was born on 6 May 1953 in Edinburgh. Educated at Oxford University, he became a barrister and in 1983 was elected Labour member of parliament for Sedgefield. He soon became identified with a group of self-conscious party 'modernisers' (which also included Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson), who sought to make Labour more acceptable to the electorate by repudiating its association with the trade unions, unilateral nuclear disarmament, public ownership and high taxation. In 1994, following the unexpected death of then leader John Smith, Blair became Labour Party leader after Gordon Brown stood aside to avoid splitting the pro-modernising vote in the leadership ballot. Blair quickly attained unquestioned authority as leader, which was further underlined by Labour's landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43, he was the youngest premier since Lord Liverpool in 1812. He attempted to promote a youthful, modern image of Britain symbolised by BritPop, BritArt and the Millennium Dome. Some of his policies were genuinely radical, especially the constitutional reforms that delivered a measure of self-government to Wales and Scotland. But a promise to reform public services proved less easy to implement, and a controversial reliance on private enterprise initiatives did not seem to deliver the expected improvements in transport, education or health care. Blair was re-elected in 2001. His second term was more troubled, being dominated by a rift with his former ally, Chancellor Gordon Brown. In 2002 - 2003 Blair risked his personal authority by supporting the US government's 'war on terror', despite serious disquiet in his own party and among the wider public. Blair was re-elected in 2005, in an unprecedented third consecutive term for a Labour prime minister. The same year he chaired the G8 summit at Gleneagles and focused on two issues - climate change and Africa - which had become increasing priorities for him. Blair stepped down in June 2007 and was succeeded as prime minister by Gordon Brown. Blair and his allies succeeded in making the Labour Party electable again, after almost two decades in opposition. To his critics, this achievement was made at the cost of abandoning the party's principles. To his supporters, he was a man willing to risk public unpopularity in the pursuit of policies (most notably the war in Iraq) that he felt were morally justified.

Changing population
Britain and the British have changed profoundly since 1945. A principal driver of change has been a major growth in population, matched by rapidly rising expectations about lifestyle. Demands for mobility (cars) and space (houses) have ensured the transfer of land from agriculture and natural landscape to roads and housing, with multiple consequences for the environment and for the human experience. Large-scale immigration has made the population ethnically far more diverse, with important cultural consequences.

The composition of the population has undergone a marked transformation, due primarily to advances in medicine. In line with a general trend around the developed world, life expectancy has risen greatly for both men and women. This has meant that the average age has risen, a process accentuated by the extent to which the birth rate has remained static. Furthermore, large-scale immigration, particularly from the West Indies and South Asia, but also from other areas such as Eastern Europe, has made the population ethnically far more diverse, with important cultural consequences. In 1970 there were about 375,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in Britain. By 1993 the figure was about 1,620,000, with the rise in the number of Muslims being particularly pronounced.

Moral codes
Social and cultural change has also reflected the extent to which the population has become more individualistic and less deferential. The moral code that prevailed in 1945 broke down, a process formalised by legal changes in the 1960s. Abortion and homosexuality became legal, capital punishment was abolished, and measures were taken to improve the position of women. By the 1990s, only one in seven Britons was an active member of a Christian church. These changes were linked to shifts in religious practice. By the 1990s, only one in seven Britons was an active member of a Christian church, although more claimed to be believers. But for most believers, formal expressions of faith became less important. The failure in the 1990s of the heavily church-backed 'Keep Sunday Special' campaign (to prevent shops from opening on the sabbath) confirmed the general trend. More generally, the authority of age and experience were overthrown and, in their place, came an emphasis on youth and novelty. This was seen in politics with, for example, the lowering of the voting age to 18; in the economy, with the rise of the youth consumer; and in culture, with marked changes in popular music. The 1960s destroyed a cultural continuity that had lasted since the Victorian period. Alongside the apparent continuity in popular culture of works such as the James Bond films, the novels of Dick Francis and the radio soap 'The Archers', there were also important shifts, for example in popular music.

In the 1960s, pop music - not least that of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones - gave Britain a very different feel in the world to that it had enjoyed as the world's predominant empire. The Liverpool Sound, the Swinging Sixties, and the London of Carnaby Street created an image far removed from that of 1956 when, in a last major flourish of imperial power, Britain had unsuccessfully sought to intimidate Egypt in the Suez Crisis.

End of empire
In 1945, Britain still had the largest empire in the world. This empire had largely been granted independence by 1964, beginning with independence for India and Pakistan in 1947. Fragments remained. A war was successfully fought with Argentina in 1982 when the latter attacked the Falkland Islands, a colony inhabited by British settlers since 1833. The most populous of Britain's remaining colonies, Hong Kong, was only handed over to China in 1997. Britain became an active member of international organisations, not least the United Nations. As empire receded fast, Britain seemed a diminished power. Nonetheless, it became the third state in the world to gain the atom bomb in1952, followed by the hydrogen bomb in 1957. Defence in the post-war era largely consisted of the protection of Western Europe against the threat of Soviet invasion, and Britain played a key role in this confrontation which became known as the Cold War. Britain became an active member of international organisations, not least the United Nations, of which it was a founder member and held a permanent seat on the Security Council. Britain was also a founder member of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949, and sent a contingent of troops to take part in the Korean War (1950 - 1953) against Communist North Korea. Closer to home, troops were deployed in Northern Ireland from 1969 in response to an outbreak of sectarian violence, which rapidly became a major terrorist challenge. In the 1990s, a peaceful end to the 'Troubles' was negotiated, but tension continues.

Domestic policies

In contrast to the situation in Northern Ireland, Welsh and Scottish nationalism remained essentially non-violent, and in 1997 each gained a devolved assembly exercising a considerable amount of local control. At times, Britain itself appeared to be going the same way, as entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) - later European Union (EU) - in 1973 led to a marked erosion of national sovereignty and to a transfer of powers to Europe. At the national level, government was controlled by the Labour Party (1945 - 1951, 1964 - 1970, 1974 - 1979 and 1997 onwards) and its Conservative rival (1951 - 1964, 1970 1974, 1979 - 1997), with no coalition ministries. The Labour and Conservative parties shared major overlaps in policy. These two parties shared major overlaps in policy throughout the post-war period, for example in maintaining free health care at the point of delivery - the basis of the National Health Service. But there were also major contrasts, particularly between 1979 and 1990 when Margaret Thatcher held power as the country's first female prime minister. The Conservatives tended to favour individual liberties and low taxation, while Labour preferred collectivist solutions and were therefore happier to advocate a major role for the state. This was particularly evident in Labour 's support for the nationalisation of major parts of the economy during their pre-1979 governments. Most, in turn, were denationalised again under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997.

Manufacturing
Uncertain public policy in the post-war period played a role in the marked relative decline of the British economy, which was particularly pronounced in the field of manufacturing. This contributed to a sense of national malaise in the 1970s, which also owed much to very high inflation and to a sense that the country had become ungovernable, as strikes by coal miners led to the failure of government policies on wages. Spending became a major expression of identity and indeed a significant activity in leisure time. Manufacturing decline was matched by the rise in the service sector, resulting in a major change for many in the experience of work. This rise was linked to a growth in consumerism that also owed something to an extension of borrowing to more of the population.

Spending became a major expression of identity and indeed a significant activity in leisure time. The move to 24-hour shopping and the abolition of restrictions on Sunday trading were symptomatic of this shift. Shopping patterns also reflected social trends in other respects with, for example, a major change in the diet, as red meat declined in relative importance, while lighter meats, fish and vegetarianism all enjoyed greater popularity. So too did products and dishes from around the world, reflecting the extent to which the British had become less parochial and readier to adopt an open attitude to non-British influences. Increased foreign travel and intermarriage were other aspects of a relatively unxenophobic and continually-changing society - trends that continue to this day.

Politics in peacetime
Between 1940 and 1945 Winston Churchill was probably the most popular British prime minister of all time. In May 1945 his approval rating in the opinion polls, which had never fallen below 78 per cent, stood at 83 per cent. With few exceptions, politicians and commentators confidently predicted that he would lead the Conservatives to victory at the forthcoming general election. ... it is hard to imagine anyone who could have played the role of national leader with greater success than Churchill ... In the event, he led them to one of their greatest ever defeats. It was also one for which he was partly responsible, because the very qualities that had made him a great leader in war were ill-suited to domestic politics in peacetime. Politicians are often rejected by voters because they have failed in office. But one of the reasons why Churchill lost the general election in 1945 was because he had succeeded in completing the almost superhuman task he had taken on in 1940, and in a way this made him redundant. His first act as prime minister in 1940 was to invite the leaders of the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties - Attlee, Sinclair and Chamberlain - to serve in a Coalition Government. This became the administration, robustly surviving external shocks and internal quarrels, that mobilised the British for total war, and it is hard to imagine anyone who could have played the role of national leader with greater success than Churchill did at that time. The conduct of the war, however, was his overriding passion, and military victory was by far the most important of his goals - thus everything else, including party politics, was secondary. As a result, when the war came to an end and party politics resumed, Churchill suddenly found himself without a clear sense of purpose or direction.

Competing claims
It was not from a commitment to party, but in order to consolidate his authority as a war leader, that Churchill had assumed the leadership of the Conservatives in succession to Neville Chamberlain in October 1940. He thought of the party much as a knight in medieval times thought of his horse, as a mount on which to go into battle. Never was a party so leaderless as the Conservative Party is today ... This single-mindedness could, of course, be seen as a great asset in a period of national emergency, but there is no doubt that Churchill neglected Conservative interests during the war years. 'Never was a party so leaderless as the Conservative Party is today', wrote one Conservative backbench MP in October 1944. Meanwhile the Labour Party and its allies in the media ran an effective propaganda war on the home front. They vilified members of the pre-war Conservative party as having been appeasers of Hitler, and of having been responsible for the failure to re-arm Britain. And they painted the 1930s in dismal colours as an era of poverty and mass unemployment. At the same time, they held out the prospect of a new social order that would ensure better housing, free medical services and employment for all.

Beveridge and reform

The movement for social reform reached a climax in December 1942, with the publication of the Beveridge Report. The author of this, Sir William Beveridge, was an ambitious man, whose report went far beyond the terms of reference he had been given by the government. He produced what amounted to a comprehensive manifesto of social reform, including social security, a National Health Service, a full employment policy and other advances. In his early years as a politician Churchill had been a Liberal and a social reformer. The report achieved instant fame and approval, and the political agenda was transformed. Henceforth until the end of the war, British politics were dominated by questions of social reform. Though Labour ministers were constrained by the need to maintain the unity of the wartime coalition, Labour politicians - and sympathisers outside the government - campaigned vociferously for the adoption of the Beveridge Report. This was in opposition to the Conservatives, who were accused with some justice of delaying and obstructing it. In his early years as a politician Churchill had been a Liberal and a social reformer. He had worked with the young Beveridge in introducing labour exchanges, and the Beveridge Report itself could be construed as an extension of reforms that Churchill himself had introduced between 1908 and 1911. The Beveridge Report, therefore, presented the Prime Minister with a golden opportunity to reinvent himself as the leader of a party seriously concerned with social questions.

What was more, acceptance of the report was not the only option - the party could have decided to devise and publicise an alternative prospectus. Churchill, however, completely missed the opportunity. Absorbed in the conduct of the war he was resentful of what he thought of as distractions, and especially of the raising of issues likely to cause disputes within the coalition. Besides, his radical days were far behind him, and he spoke of Beveridge in private as 'a windbag and a dreamer'. He therefore ruled that while preparations for social reform could be made in wartime, decisions must await the outcome of the first post-war general election. The outcome was that the coalition government issued a series of White Papers on post-war policy, but put through very little legislation.

Public opinion
It seems likely that the result of the 1945 general election could have been predicted long in advance. During the opening months of World War Two the opinion polls showed a Conservative lead. But when polling was resumed in June 1943, Labour were ahead of the Conservatives by 10 per cent. ... it was generally believed that Churchill the war hero would be unbeatable ... By February 1945, the Labour lead was 18 per cent. Opinion polls, however, were a novelty which had yet to prove their value, and it was generally believed that Churchill the war hero would be unbeatable - as David Lloyd George had been in 1918, following his leadership of the country through World War One. World War Two in Europe ended on 8 May 1945. On 23 May the parliamentary wartime coalition broke up, and Churchill returned at the head of a predominantly Conservative 'caretaker' government for the duration of the election campaign. Polling took place on 5 July, but in order to allow time for the ballot boxes to be collected from servicemen overseas - by RAF Transport Command - the count did not begin until 25 July. The Conservative campaign was built around the personality of Churchill, on whom there fell almost the entire responsibility of presenting the Conservative case. Here was a last opportunity to get across the message that the prime minister was not only a warlord, but also a constructive peacetime statesman.

Campaigning
It was all the more important that he should do this, since the Labour Party was fighting a strong campaign, hammering home its policies on the nationalisation of industry, full employment, social security and the issue which, according to the opinion polls, was most important in the minds of voters - housing. Churchill, however, decided that scare tactics would be more effective.

I've tried them with pep and I've tried them with pap ... In the opening broadcast of the campaign, on 4 June, he warned that the introduction of Socialism into Britain would require '... some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.' This preposterous allegation, apparently inspired by Friedrich Hayek's book Road to Serfdom (1944), was likely to impress no one except the most loyal and unquestioning of Tories. There is no evidence, however, to suggest that it cost Churchill many votes, still less that it cost him the election. In a second broadcast he emphasised improvements in health and nutrition, and extolled the coalition government's plans for social insurance. But after this he reverted to negative tactics by exploiting the 'Laski affair'. In a statesmanlike gesture, Churchill had invited Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party, to accompany him to the Potsdam Conference (held to discuss international policy following the defeat of Germany), which was taking place at the same time as the British election campaign. He did this to ensure continuity in the event of a change of government half way through the conference. But the chairman of the Labour party's National Executive, Harold Laski, put out a statement declaring that Attlee's presence at Potsdam could not bind the party to any decisions reached there. Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook - the newspaper owner and one-time minister in Churchill's cabinet - played on this embarassing rift for all it was worth, with allegations that the Labour Party was run by a sinister body, the National Executive, which claimed the right to dictate to Parliament. Churchill, however, sensed that he was out of his depth. At one point during the campaign he gave Attlee a lift in his car and, speaking of his electoral tactics, confessed: 'I've tried them with pep and I've tried them with pap, and I still don't know what they want.'

Defeat
Churchill's fame as a war leader was now a very mixed blessing. The repeated emphasis he gave to the need to finish the war against Japan suggested once more that war was his only real interest. The East End of London was flooded with rumours that he was planning a war against Russia. The result plunged him into depression ... but it was not quite as bad as it seemed. After polling on 5 July, Churchill and Attlee returned to Potsdam while the service vote was collected. On 25 July they returned home to await the results, which began to come in the following morning. By the afternoon it was apparent that Labour had won by a landslide - with 393 seats and an overall majority of 183 in the House of Commons.

The notion that the Conservatives were defeated by 'the forces vote' is mistaken - as the opinion polls showed, the civilian vote was strongly pro-Labour - but war weariness was probably a factor against Churchill among civilians and servicemen alike. The result plunged him into depression and his party into shock, but it was not quite as bad as it seemed. The first-past-the-post system gave an exaggerated picture of Labour's triumph, disguising the fact that just over half the electorate had voted against them. Churchill soon recovered his spirits. He reinvented himself as a global statesman, doggedly retained the leadership of the Conservative Party, and confidently awaited what he saw as the inevitable reaction against Socialism. He had, in fact, performed one great service for Conservatism. After the failure of appeasement and the disrepute into which the pre-war leaders of the Conservative party had fallen, he had restored the party's patriotic credentials and saved it from the possibility of a defeat far worse than it in fact suffered in 1945.

The mixed economy of welfare

The theme of most welfare histories is 'the coming of the welfare state' as though all previous forms of welfare were temporary and incomplete, that it was inevitable Britain's welfare should be ultimately dominated by state provision, and that, somehow, the journey is now at an end. However, if we step back only 100 years - and use this as a vantage point to look forward - we would have a very different perspective. In the 19th century Britain's welfare was characterised by voluntary provision, with mutual and friendly societies delivering a whole range of benefits. Local authorities and voluntarily run hospitals, together with a national system of panel doctors were financed from health insurance contributions, which were set by the state and collected through mutually owned societies. If we move back further still we gain yet another perspective of how welfare was delivered collectively, free of the state. In mediaeval times many hospitals were church run, though the word hospital should not be understood in today's terms. Back then such places were communities where the elderly and frail in particular were looked after. Parishes, the first basic administrative units in Britain, also had a responsibility to their poor. The Elizabethan Poor Law enshrined this right with the practice of sturdy and less sturdy beggars being sent back to their parish of origin ostensibly for help. This system, although modified, remained largely intact until the offensive launched by the Utilitarian reformers. For them, no fiddling with the facts was beyond the pale if it could discredit the old regime. The new poor law of 1834 was the result of this campaign, and where the principle of 'less eligibility' was enforced - help in the new system would only be offered if a person came into the 'House', as the poor law institution was known - a standard of living awaited them which was below that on which the poorest labourer could survive.

Advent of state welfare

Lloyd George did not therefore invent the welfare state. As we have seen it was already very much in existence. But he did, along with a young Winston Churchill, refine the concept and drive it forward into the arms of the state - surprising for a Liberal politician. But we have jumped too far ahead in our story. ...a means-tested old age pension was introduced for those of 70 or more. At the time average life expectancy for men was 48 years! The 1906 landslide victory of the Liberal Government was not based on a programme of welfare reform. Indeed, it did its best not to discuss it. But reform came. In order to protect the friendly societies a non-contributory, means-tested old age pension was introduced for those of 70 or more. At the time average life expectancy for men was 48 years! National health and a more limited coverage, unemployment insurance, were introduced by the 1911 Act. Contribution and benefit levels were laid down by Parliament, but friendly societies and mutually-owned bodies operated the health scheme. The insurance principle was advanced to finance this new welfare because the Liberal Government was anxious not to raise income tax and alienate the bedrock of its support. It therefore followed Bismarck's lead. In Germany Bismarck had faced even greater resistance to a tax-based welfare. The German Chancellor did not then have the power to levy taxes on income. The insurance principle, now regarded as a crucial aspect of state welfare, was originally met with considerable hostility. Lloyd George won over the initial opposition with his tripartite financing from worker, employer and taxpayer. Hence his cry to the workers of '7d for 3d'. Neville Chamberlain added to this insurance base with the Widows', Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act of 1925. Pensions were paid from 65 and widow's benefit introduced. But these inter-war years were dominated by unemployment. And it was the financial chaos resulting from botched attempts to provide income for the mass unemployed, while maintaining an insurance fund, which helped reposition trade unionists, and others, on the question of state or voluntary based welfare. The use of a household based means-test for unemployment assistance added grist to the mill for this campaign.

Enter Beveridge
An enquiry was established in 1941 to propose how best to tidy up state welfare. Beveridge seized the opportunity, rewrote the script, and then redesigned the contours of British welfare. The publication of his report was fortuitously delayed. When it was produced in November 1942 it followed hard on the heels of the Allies' first major victory of World War Two. Implementing Beveridge was immediately seen as part of winning the peace.

The prize was security 'from the cradle to the grave'. Although largely a synthesis of ideas (including Beveridge's) which had been around for some time, it was the blueprint for conquering Want, one of the five giants Beveridge declared should be slain by way of post-war reconstruction. Each giant was countered by: The 1944 Butler Act which reformed schooling, the commitment to full employment in the same year. The Family Allowance Act of 1945. The 1946 National Insurance Act The 1948 National Health Act, aimed at achieving that very objective, and established for the first time a national minimum. But, as always, the world did not stand still. Although for sometime in the 1950s and 1960s welfare provision did just that. How to finance the NHS increasingly became a key political issue. Insurance benefits were not paid at a high enough level to prevent many pensioners from becoming poor, and by the 1970s full employment began taking a battering which it has had to endure until recently. The political caravan had once again moved off in search of new ideas.

Thatcherism
There was never a coherent Thatcherite approach to welfare. Following the main haemorrhage of manufacturing jobs in the 1981-82 recession (exacerbated by the inept handling of the exchange rate), the formal abandonment of a full employment goal looked like a mere precaution against future political failure. The NHS budget continued to increase, driven upwards by a growing demand set by a combination of rising expectations, by health consumption becoming a lifestyle-type choice, by advances in medical technology, and by a rapid growth in life expectancy. The NHS budget continued to increase... Welfare bills were confronted in two ways. Insurance benefits were hacked back with an ever-growing number of individuals pushed on to means-tested support rising from one in six of the population in 1979, to one in three in 1997. But the biggest savings for taxpayers (paid for by less generous pensions) came in 1980 with the switch to increasing the state retirement pension only in line with prices, and not by earnings if these were rising faster - as they invariably did. By 1979 occupational pensions had grown from the modest initiatives recalled earlier into the great welfare success of this country. Alongside these pensions the Tories planted individually owned schemes, known as personal pensions. The advent of these schemes was their major welfare innovation. This advance, however, has been hampered by miss-selling - i.e. persuading people to leave occupational schemes almost invariably against their best interest - often accompanied by the imposition of very high charges and the absence of an employer's contribution. Even so, by 1979, Britain had

more assets owned by occupational and personal pension schemes than the whole of the asset portfolio owned by other European Community schemes combined. And yet welfare bills continued to escalate in an apparently unstoppable fashion. Welfare was about to undergo another major rethink.

Welfare and character

When welfare was run by friendly societies and mutually owned organisations few questioned the fact that welfare affected how people behaved. Welfare was not simply strictly policed; the range of benefits full recognised the danger that some people would claim benefit to which they were not entitled if the regime was slack. Welfare was seen not merely as a means of meeting a need, but by its organisation, and the means by its delivery, it was conceived as a tool for building good character. The biblical view of human nature - its fallen status, yet conceived to be redeemed - was lost sight of in left-wing intellectual circles by the 1960s. Welfare was by them seen primarily as an act of altruism and this paternalistic view was advanced behind the cover of politically correct statements, so much so that even the Right lost the confidence to mouth, let alone act on, the broader, age-old understanding of mankind. The resulting paralysis of both will and mind resulted in little concern for how different types of welfare (insurance or means-tested) affected behaviour; and to raise the question of fraud was to be automatically deemed politically unbalanced. 'Thinking the unthinkable' was the task for Labour's final years in opposition before 1997, and was part of the strategy of making Labour electable. It was never meant to be an activity undertaken in government. Thinking the unthinkable in Opposition took place across five inter-related areas. It was not simply a question of the size and the rate of growth of social security expenditure. The key issue was the growth of means-tested welfare and in particular how this form of provision affected the actions of recipients. Welfare was not therefore seen as a neutral agency operating in society. Rather it was one, which, for good or ill, helps determine motivation, shape action and thereby determine character. Welfare had to work with the grain of human nature. Self-interest, one of the most powerful of human instincts, had to be the cornerstone around which welfare reform was built. A clear distinction had to be maintained between the means and the ends of welfare policy. In order to gain adequate universal pension coverage for instance, new partnerships between the private and mutual sector were necessary. Welfare reforms were not merely an add on to the government's constitutional reform programme. Proposals for building up membership organisations which are separate

from the government on the one hand, and privately owned companies on the other, would have a central role in rebuilding civil society which itself was an aim of welfare reform.

A health warning
The present Government has now embarked on its programme of welfare reform. Time will tell how well it succeeds in implementing the unthinkable. Making reform workable is a more important objective. As I resigned as Welfare Reform Minister I will inevitably be seen as a biased observer. And bias in the welfare debate is something about which readers should continually be on their guard. One notable academic observed that to study welfare was to highlight the values of the society within which that welfare was provided. I would argue that our values determine to a large extent what we observe. Hence it was observers believing in state collectivist solutions who have generally written up the story of the coming of the welfare state and the final arrival of state provision. Any deviation from this model is seen not just as defeat, but as essentially retrogressive. That view is now under attack. As one of those who first questioned the inevitability, let alone the desirability of state provision being welfare's final stop, and who seeks to present welfare developments as a continuous story, I am open to the charge by those who believe in the correctness of state welfare solutions, of being equally biased.

Introduction
The twentieth century will, without doubt, be viewed by historians as the Woman's Hour. A girl born in 1899, as my grandmother was, had little chance of evading the role that was considered her destiny - to marry young, stay home and raise a family. Her forbears in the late nineteenth century had struggled hard to improve her chances of an education. Campaigners like Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garret Anderson had carried out a personal and largely peaceful struggle to open professions like medicine to women. Yet still, only the privileged few, whose fathers or husbands were enlightened enough to permit it, got a foot on the ladder of opportunity. In the early part of the century the suffragists argued powerfully, but peacefully for the vote. They were unsuccessful in their immediate objective, although they still exist in the form of one of the country's main research and lobbying groups working on behalf of women, the Fawcett Society. It was the suffragettes who would really make a difference. The term was first employed in the Daily Mail on the 10th January 1906 and by March of that year it was in general use as a means of differentiating the militant campaigners of the Women's Social and Political Union from the suffragists. The WSPU was formed in Manchester in 1903 by a small group of women led by Emmeline Pankhurst. When a London office was opened in 1906, her daughters Sylvia and Christabel joined her as leaders of a movement which dedicated itself to securing the vote for women to enable them to take full part in the

democratic process. They were to achieve this by any militant means, drawing the line at any threat to human life. So they would break windows, throw stones, burn slogans on putting greens, cut telephone and telegraph wires, destroy pillar boxes and burn or bomb empty buildings. Emily Wilding Davison was the martyr of the movement, prepared to give her life for women's rights. Like many of the arrested suffragettes she went on hunger strike in Holloway prison and in 1912 she tried to kill herself by leaping over a stair railing there. Her death came a year later when, with the WSPU flag sewn into her coat, she threw herself in front of the King's Horse at Epsom and died from her injuries. Her coffin, draped in the suffragette colours of white, green and purple, was followed by 2,000 uniformed suffragettes. She was buried near her home in Morpeth in Northumberland and inscribed on her gravestone was 'Deeds not Words'.

Women at war
The WSPU called off its militant action whilst there was a common enemy - Germany and recruited women to the munitions industry. By 1918 it was impossible to deny women's contribution to the war effort and The Electoral Reform Bill of that year granted voted rights to all women property owners of thirty or more. It was not until 1928 that the age limitation became the same as that for men - 21. So let it never be said that women were given the vote - it was hard fought for and won! The first woman MP was elected in 1918, although Constance Markievicz, a supporter of Sinn Fein and the cause of Irish Nationalism, refused to take her seat in the House of Commons. Nancy Astor thus became the first woman to take her seat in the British parliament in 1919 as member for Plymouth South. The next major breakthrough for women in politics was in 1929 when Margaret Bondfield became the first woman cabinet minister. There were those like my gran - and subsequently my mother - who were in no position to take advantage of the changing climate. In a small mining village in Yorkshire the politicisation of the female population created barely a ripple until the vagaries of the miners strike in the eighties drove them into collective action and later the need to become breadwinners. The women in my family joined a long line of tough Yorkshire matriarchs who ran the home and the family budget with the cool efficiency and high moral standards of a Mother Superior. In the second world war they did their bit, taking in evacuees and working in the food office whilst women in other parts of the country took on the tasks that only men were believed capable of carrying out.Heavy factory work, driving huge vehicles, arduous agricultural duties - there was nothing by the end of that war that women couldn't do to keep a country running smoothly. But, as happens frequently in conflicts around the world, women in Britain were seduced into thinking their place on or close to the front line would inevitably give them an equal share in the post war running of things. More commonly, when the country ceases to need them, they're summarily sent back to the kitchen sink and there were indeed a few glitches in the fifties and sixties when the national mood demanded a return to the domestic status quo. The returning soldiers were to be given jobs and women again would keep the home fires burning. A significant number, though, had tasted the

freedom of the new ways. One old friend told me her first wage as a war worker acted on her like a drug, she couldn't give up her financial independence.

1944 Education Act

In the family, wives and mothers wanted a renegotiation of the old order. They argued for a form of democracy in the home where rights and responsibilities would be equally shared. In the work place they wanted equal rights, equal opportunity and equal pay. The lives of my mother and grandmother remained unchanged - they continued to be devoted to their domestic responsibilities, but when my turn came they pushed and cajoled me through an education system and into a job market to which they believed I had every right. It's now estimated that without the quotas, in mixed grammar schools, two thirds of all the classes would have been occupied by girls It never occurred to me, with their encouragement, that I was anything other than an equal citizen and it was only when I researched my book "The Woman's Hour - The story of women in Britain since the second world war" that I discovered that, even for a girl born in 1950, there was, for instance, no equal access to education. The 1944 Education Act established the principle of free education for all from primary to secondary, but at eleven plus there were quotas for admission to grammar school. The Hunts Post of 1954 published an article headlined "Girls Brainier Than Boys". It informed its readers that too many girls had been passing the exam and education authorities had decided to limit numbers. It's now estimated that without the quotas, in mixed grammar schools, two thirds of all the classes would have been occupied by girls. The quotas persisted in Birmingham and Northern Ireland until the late eighties when the High Court ruled them discriminatory. In 1968, the year I went to university, came the second wave of feminism. The women's movement of the second part of the century began to bubble in the mid sixties as American women like Betty Friedan wrote of their dissatisfaction with their lot as wives and mothers. For anyone other than the upper classes, childcare and the running of the home was still considered woman's work, forcing women to choose between their talents and their family lives. The composer Elizabeth Lutyens described it as a ghastly tyranny of choice for someone who wanted to do what men did as a matter of course - her work and her family.

Late 60s and early 70s

To be a young woman in the late sixties and early seventies was unimaginably exciting In 1968 the women's liberation movement had its first major raft of publicity when women demonstrated at the Miss America competition and threw their stiletto heels in the bin (Betty friedan, who was there, told Woman's Hour, in 1971, that no-one ever

burned a bra - that was just media hype.) But whatever the hated symbols of oppression were, women were saying that what is most personal is political and they were questioning and redefining their roles as wives, mothers, workers and lovers in the light of their own experience, rather than through men's eyes. In her book, Sexing the Millennium, Linda Grant reports that some of the women felt the sexual revolution of the sixties had given them the right to say yes, feminism told them it was OK to say no. To be a young woman in the late sixties and early seventies was unimaginably exciting. Feminist light bulbs, as the American author, Gloria Steinem described them, were coming on all over the place as women faced a problem and forced change. At the BBC women weren't allowed to wear trousers, as Susannah Simons discovered. In 1969 she was one of that year's intake of new studio managers. Her pride and joy was a white polo neck sweater, white trousers and knee length jerkin. A senior executive pointed out her transgression in the Broadcasting House lift, so she removed the trousers, leaving herself only the shortest of mini skirts. The rules were soon changed. A young Australian, Carmen Calil, realised that fiction by women was not being published and classics from the past were out of print. Around her kitchen table in 1973 she formed the first feminist publishing house, Virago. Her countrywoman, Germaine Greer, who published The Female Eunuch in 1970 had already whetted the appetite for work by women. It was also one of those rare moments in history when a grass roots movement of immense power and energy meets a sympathetic politician with similar interests. In 1970 the first British conference of the Women's Liberation movement in Oxford resolved to press for employment legislation. That same year Barbara Castle as Secretary of State for Employment introduced the Equal Pay bill. It was enacted in 1975 together with the Sex Discrimination Act. The laws have not proved perfect, but they provided a legal framework for change. So, when I applied for a mortgage in 1976 and was told I needed my father's signature on the form, my irate response and invocation of the Act quickly made the Building Society manager back down for fear of legal action!

The f-word
What has characterised the modern women's movement has been its ability to put everything up for discussion. And the crucial question that has been most hotly debated has been what it means to be a woman. We've examined what we wear. Shall it be dungarees, trousers, long skirts, short skirts, lipstick, high heels, flatties? We've concluded anything goes. How shall we give birth? Let's fight for choice. Should we shave our legs and armpits, be thin or fat. Conclusion? Whatever you want. Do we go out to work or stay at home and raise children? Whichever you choose. Can girls study maths and physics? Of course they can. Why are they doing badly? Not enough attention to the way they learn. Provide it. They do better. In every arena, in every sphere women have attended to their kind and made a difference.

...feminism - known in some quarters as the f-word - has become almost too shameful to admit The revolution has not been without its casualties. Relationships between men and women have frequently been stretched on the rack of unmatched expectations. Men have frequently been reluctant to embrace women's new found autonomy and have ridiculed new hopes and aspirations, clinging like dinosaurs to the old ways where man was master and woman served. Men at the end of the century still earn on average 30 per cent more than women and research carried out in 1999 by the Equal opportunities Commission has shown that this has nothing to do with the fact that many women chose part time work to enable them to juggle their family and their work. It begins at school leaving age in manual trades and post higher education for professionals. Women are still sacked for being pregnant and are sexually harassed at work. A Professor of Sociology, Jonathon Gershuny has identified a late twentieth syndrome among professional couples which he calls Allerednic - Cinderella backwards, or the fairy tale in reverse. An equal princess marries her handsome prince and he turns her into his scullery maid. There's still a way to go as the Millennium turns. And of course feminism - known in some quarters as the f-word - has become almost too shameful to admit, with lots of women prefacing their opinions with 'I'm not a feminist but.....' The Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood came up with a definition with which most of those women might have found a comfort. 'Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up'. It's an echo of what Rebecca West said in 1913, 'I myself have never able to find out precisely what a feminist is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.'

Consensus
Britain emerged from the 1939-1945 war triumphant, but economically exhausted. It was one of the top three superpowers, although in reality a distant third behind the United States and the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, its political system and the British state had been vindicated by success in war, and over the next few years Britain emerged as a model social democracy, combining planning and collectivism with civil liberties. The 1945 Labour government was largely responsible for what is called the 'post-war consensus'. However, some of the key elements can trace their origins to the war-time coalition government and the influence of Liberals like William Beveridge and the economist John Maynard Keynes. There was a belief that government could play a positive role in promoting greater equality through social engineering. The major features of domestic politics included:

1. Governments accepted a commitment to maintain full employment by Keynesian techniques of economic management. Ministers would use their levers, such as cutting taxes and boosting state spending, to increase the level of economic activity. 2. Acceptance and some encouragement of the role of the trade unions. In contrast to the pre-war years, governments recognised and consulted them regularly on workplace relations and economic policy. The unions access to government was increased partly by full employment and partly by governments turning, post-1961, to income policies as a way of curbing inflation. 3. The mixed economy, with a large role for state ownership of the utilities (such as gas, electricity, coal, rail, etc) and intervention and planning in the economy. 4. The welfare state. The object of the national insurance system and the National Health Service was to provide an adequate income and free health when a familys income was hit by, for example, sickness, old age, unemployment or death of the main breadwinner. The services were provided out of general taxation, or insurance, and represented social citizenship. 5. There was a belief that government could play a positive role in promoting greater equality through social engineering, for example, by progressive taxation, redistributive welfare spending, comprehensive schooling and regional policies. Abroad, the parties agreed on: the transition of the empire to the British Commonwealth, an association of independent states; British membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato); nuclear weapons, (regarded as a mark of being a major power); and, on balance, that Britain should join the European Community. These policies were pursued by both Labour and Conservative governments, the latter because they thought it was necessary to gain working class support to win general elections and gain the consent of the major interest groups. Consensus is not an ideal term because it may be read as suggesting that there were no differences between the parties. In fact, the above ideas and policies were often challenged by the left of the Labour party and by the free market or right wing of the Conservatives. But much of the political elite the media, civil service and the leaderships of the parties, particularly when they were in government - shared many of these ideas.

Economic decline
Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1971

During the 1960s and 1970s, the main parties

competed to reverse Britains relative economic decline. There was a growing awareness that the economic league tables showed that Britain was at the wrong end for figures regarding strikes, productivity, inflation, economic growth and rising living standards. Virtually all European countries, except for Britain, had so-called 'economic miracles'. Britain was often described as the 'sick man of Europe'. The targets for blame included:

failure to invest in new plant and machinery; restrictive working practices and outdated attitudes on the shop floor ('us and them'); amateurish management; loss of markets; and rise of competition. It seemed that the UK was ungovernable and that no government had an answer to inflation. Britain appeared to be the weak link in the international liberal capitalist economic system, plagued by high inflation, low growth and irresponsible trade union power. Governments of both parties turned to incomes policies as an answer to inflation. They tried to agree a 'norm' for annual wage rises with the unions. This was always difficult for the unions, for their purpose is collective bargaining. This policy managed to keep prices down for a time, but collapsed when powerful groups broke the 'norm'. They failed dramatically with the Edward Heath government in 1973-1974 and again with the Labour government in 1979. Measures to boost economic activity and reduce unemployment sucked in extra imports, thereby worsening the trade balance, and seemed to lead to unacceptable rises in inflation. The financial markets loss of confidence meant a sharp slide in the value of sterling, which in turn led to the International Monetary Fund's 'rescue' in 1976. The IMF granted a loan to the British government in return for spending cuts and continued antiinflation policies. That this happened at a time of high unemployment seemed to signal the end of the era of following Keynesian economic policies. The 'Winter of Discontent' in 1979 was a key event. The rash of strikes in crucial public services against the Labour governments income policies seemed to show that the country was ungovernable and that no government had an answer to inflation. It destroyed the governments reputation for prudent economic management and its ability to gain the cooperation of the unions. Just as the Heath government had come to grief following the miners damaging strike against its incomes policy and subsequently lost the February 1974 general election, so the Labour government lost office in 1979 on pretty similar grounds. There were two responses to this failure. From the right, the new ideas of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman - advocating monetarism, a greater scope for markets and limited government - won out over the ideas of the left for more state ownership and protection of industry following a withdrawal from the European Community.

Thatcherism
Much of so-called Thatcherism actually evolved as circumstances allowed, and was helped by the failures of the opposition. For example, privatisation, a flagship policy, was not mentioned in the 1979 manifesto.

At the 1983 general election, in spite of unemployment doubling to some three million, the government won a landslide victory thanks in large part to Labours divisions and its left-wing policies. Thatcher's government insisted that it could no longer be a universal provider. It is interesting to consider the fate in the 1980s of the five features of the post-war consensus outlined previously. 1. Trade unions now operated in a tighter legal framework, including: the requirement for pre-strike ballots; the end of the 'closed shop' (union membership as a precondition of employment in a specific industry); and making unions liable for damages incurred in illegal strikes. They were hardly consulted by the government and their influence waned in part because of the abandonment of income policies and rising unemployment. 2. The spread of privatisation of the major utilities altered the balance of the mixed economy. Gas, electricity, telephony, British Airways and later British Rail were all privatised. There was also a huge sale to tenants of council housing. 3. The government abandoned its commitment to full employment, stating this was the responsibility of employers and employees, and accorded priority instead to keeping inflation low. 4. Welfare state benefits were increasingly subject to means-testing. 5. Government insisted that it could no longer be a universal provider. More should be left to the market, the voluntary sector and self-help.

Thatcher's mandate
There was no great endorsement of Thatcherism in 1979. As late as October 1978, Labour was still ahead in some opinion polls, but the 'Winter of Discontent' turned the public against Labour and the unions. The election was more of a rejection of Labour than an endorsement of Thatcherism. The recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982 was important for the success of the Thatcher project. It coincided with an improvement in the public standing of the government and of Thatcher herself. The victory seemed to vindicate her claims in domestic politics that she could provide strong leadership and stand up for the nation. The war rhetoric could now be turned against the enemies within - particularly the trade unions. There are academic disputes about the extent to which military success boosted Conservative chances in the 1983 election. There were signs of a revival in the polls and greater economic optimism even before the capture. But what if the Falklands had been lost? Would the government have survived?

Labour could not exploit dissatisfaction, because it was seen as weak and divided. Thatcher was respected but not liked by the British public. For all the talk of sweeping election successes, government only gained an average of 42% of the vote at general elections. But the peculiarities of the British electoral system and the split of the nonConservative vote between the Labour and Liberal-Alliance parties meant that the government was able to win over 60% of seats in the House of Commons. Surveys showed limited support for many of Thatchers values. Professor Ivor Crewes 'The Crusade that Failed' noted the lack of support for Thatchers policies on 'tax-andspend' and replacing the dependency culture with an enterprise culture. And there was greater approval for a more equal society and for social and collective provision of welfare as against Thatcher's vision of people looking after themselves. But Labour could not exploit this dissatisfaction, because it was not trusted on the economy or defence and was widely seen as weak and divided.

Labour conversion
Successive heavy general election defeats gradually convinced Labour to accept much of the new settlement. From outright repudiation of the policies at the 1983 general election, Labour steadily came to accept successive tranches of Thatcher's policies. Labour accepted the need to prioritise economic stability and encourage private enterprise. Some of these policies, including sales of cheap shares in privatising utilities, cutting direct taxes, and trade union reforms, were widely popular. Globalisation also meant that there were international pressures for national governments to pursue prudent economic policies. Labour gradually accepted the need to prioritise economic stability, low inflation and borrowing, and encourage private enterprise. In addition, de-industrialisation and the decline of the working class and trade union membership meant that Labours traditional electoral base was being eroded. Gaining the support of an increasingly middle class electorate was crucial for electoral victory as Britain underwent demographic and economic change.

Legacy
Despite British membership of the European Community, Britain's relationship with the US remains dominant. Forced to choose between the two, the first 'New' Labour prime minister, Tony Blair, followed Thatcher in allying Britain with the US, particularly around the issue of going to war.

And Thatcher may have actually helped 'New' Labour (the name given by Blair to his resurgent party to distinguish it from the discredited policies associated with 'old', weak, divided Labour) by weakening some of the more electorally unpopular interests Labour was associated with. John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are arguably 'Sons of Thatcher'. In terms of political style, Thatcher made the case for a strong premiership. Blair and his successor Gordon Brown have both sought to equip the prime minister's office to intervene more directly in the departments of government, and as a result the institution of the cabinet has continued its long-term decline. England (which missed out on devolution) is also more centralised. Local government has continued its post-1945 decline. Since its election victory in 1997, Labour has continued to cap local expenditure and allows local government to raise only 30% of its own funding. In the provision of public services, there are even more constraints on local autonomy via targets and reviews. For this reason, the journalist Simon Jenkins claims John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are Sons of Thatcher. But the Thatcher era also meant a massive under-investment in infrastructure, particularly railways, roads, schools and universities. Inequality increased. The winners included much of the corporate sector and the City, and the losers, much of the public sector and manufacturing.

A new consensus?
The Labour and Conservative parties continue to differ over the role of the state, particularly regarding spending, legislating and regulating, and society, particularly regarding the roles of families and voluntary groups. An economist from Mars would conclude that the same government had been in charge throughout the second half of the 1990s. But the convergence of many policies between the parties has occurred in two stages. Firstly Labour accepted the Thatcher settlement. This encompassed: making the control of inflation a priority, but not having income policies; giving a greater role to markets, including privatisation; flexible labour markets, but with a place for the minimum wage and the 'social chapter' (part of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty on European Union relating to workers' rights and other social issues); lower direct rates of tax; means-testing for some welfare benefits; and not restoring the up-rating of old age pensions and wage rises. The result has been, to quote The Times' political commentator Peter Riddell, that an economist from Mars 'would conclude that the same government had been in charge throughout the second half of the 1990s'.

Secondly the Conservatives accepted the Blair settlement. This has involved: accepting the governments planned public spending totals, notably for health and education; Bank of England independence; and many of Labour's constitutional reforms. In effect, the two main parties have accepted a neo-liberal model of policy as a means of coping with the constraints and opportunities of globalisation. Both also accept the need for reform of public services and for greater value for money if taxpayers are likely to be resistant to increasing the share of the national income much above 40% devoted to public spending

Conclusion
Some of the major social changes over the past 50 years include the loss of empire and of world power status, a weaker sense of collective British identity (devolution as both cause and consequence), an increase in immigration, first from the newer Commonwealth countries and now from new EU states, and the growth of multiculturalism and changes in the balance of the population ( the decline of manual work, the increase in the number of women in the workforce and rising numbers of the elderly) Despite rising living standards and greater opportunity for many, society has become more 'broken'. There has been a shift from the 'old' politics of parties and elections as reflected in falling membership and turnout. This may be a consequence of the decline in ideological divisions between the main parties, but there is still public interest in political issues. Prominent recent examples have been the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war and in defence of the countryside. Society has also become more individualistic, as seen in the passion for home ownership and in Blairs emphasis on choice in the public services. Britain's one-size-fits-all, post1945 pubic services are seen to be less responsive to consumers. There remains a northsouth (more accurately, London and the south east versus the rest) divide in terms of economic wealth and opportunity. London has gained greatly from the globalising economy, while the north remains heavily dependent on public spending for jobs and economic activity. And despite rising living standards and greater opportunity for many, society has become more 'broken' and an 'underclass' has emerged. Indicators of these trends are divorce, which has increased twentyfold, the prison population, which has increased sevenfold, and the fact that Britain has more births outside marriage and teenage mothers than any other European country