Well, it's certainly not a good thing, as you say, but they were different times. His "addiction" was to amphetamines and was caused by the botched operation on his bile duct. It was basically an addiction to a prescription drug, and presumably the side effects were not fully understood. In short, it was probably considered "safe" at the time, as was Thalidomide.
A Better Britain: POD 1944
- Thread starter Chris Nation
- Start date
I think the point Garrison basically makes is that the majority of the people wanted social change, not just economic betterment; not being "looked down on by their betters". The British class system was very rigid, and in my view did not actually change much until the 1980s, when Thatcher made money the determinant rather than status. It is only in the past few years that the Sunday Times Rich List has a majority of people who "made their own money rather than inherited it". It has been said that the 1930s continued until the 1960s.I'm sorry to have upset you. There was a specific commitment to the creation of a national health service in the real-life Tory manifesto in 1945. It's also worth mentioning that the Tory proposal was actually closer to the proposal found in the Beveridge Report, because voluntary hospitals would have been retained. I understand that this is an emotive topic with present-day implications, but I am simply trying to look at this from the perspective at the time.
And, at the time, the Labour proposals on health were not regarded as the most important issue in the 1945 general election. You can say that, with hindsight, the NHS is the most important innovation of the Attlee government. You'd probably be objectively right. But, at the time, it was viewed differently. When asked about the Beveridge Report, a poll in 1943 revealed that its proposals for health reform were listed as a distant third in terms of its most appealing proposals. A different poll in 1943, which left out the specific reference to the Beveridge Report found that half of Britons were opposed to "any major change on the health front".
This changed after the NHS formed. It became seen as much more important than other Labour reforms, almost immediately. A poll in 1949 showed that the NHS was "the best single initiative the government had taken since coming into office". But, again, at the time, in 1945, it was a different situation.
However, I will point out, and I have no real strong personal opinion on the NHS, as strange as that might sound, that a poll in the 50s found that just over half of respondents thought that their personal healthcare was "about the same" as it was in 1948.
Health reforms, opinion polls and surveys: myths and realities
<p>Attitudes to NHS reform today are shaped by a largely imagined past of poor healthcare prior to the NHS, according to Dr Nick Hayes in a new H&P policy paper. An Ipsos Mori poll in conjunction with King's College London confirmed Dr Hayes' research - finding a fear of reform, particularly the...www.historyandpolicy.org
Did We Really Want a National Health Service? Hospitals, Patients and Public Opinions before 1948
OPPOSING the Conservative-led government’s planned ‘modernising’ health reforms in 2011, Dr Mark Porter, the Chair of the British Medical Association’s hospitalacademic.oup.com
But if you insist on knowing the "benefit" to not immediately establishing an NHS in this timeline: it's the same reason that it took Labour three years to do in real life: it cost too much, and it cost far more than it was expected to. In the first year of it's operation, expenditure on just the provision of services in the NHS (i.e. not including the cost to actually nationalize the entire British healthcare system) was nearly double what it had been projected to be.
It meant his judgement was impaired, as occurred during the Suez fiasco...
I once worked for a University Sociologist as a programmer. He maintained that British social system wasn't rigid at all. If you had the money and were willing to make more of it, you could quickly enter into the ranks of the aristocracy. Whether they wanted you or not. It was always about money since the 19th century.
A good point, but the opportunities for the working classes to actually make money were extremely limited. None of them already "had the money", most had only a rudimentary education and access to funds to exploit commercial opportunities was negligible. So the rigidity of the class system was supported by the financial system.
And yes, Eden's addiction almost certainly affected his judgment but neither was recognised.
Nice timeline, i have a couple question for this timeline if you don’t mind answering, first could we see britain gain nuke much faster than otl, since if i remember correctly one of the reason why the Us didn’t share it to britain in otl is becouse they didn’t really trust attle government, second could the royal navy completed the four Audacious-class aircraft carrier, and third could the uk be expanded ie: Malta or Newfoundland and Labrador join the uk, btw once again nice timeline
AIUI the refusal of the US to share the nuke was partially down to the exposure of some British scientists who had been sending material on the program to the Soviets and partially down to Truman and the Congress of the time being either unaware or uncaring of the contribution of the British and French to the project. Both would still likely be there even with Churchill as PM.
Chris,
1,) From my research and reading over the last few decades, I haven't quite seen the evidence for a substantial portion of returning British servicemen going into either tertiary education or retraining, which was more suited to the particular circumstances of the United States. There are other areas of expenditure of higher priority than university funding given the essentially limited national purse.
2.) My reference to road building programmes is the National Highways Act, which is pushing expenditure onto an area where Britain did not necessarily need it in the mid 1940s. Germany was a different country and isn't 'the standard' anymore than the USA was. It is something that is worth spending on in the mid 1950s after the initial wave of reconstruction and building houses when general affluence encourage more purchases of motor cars. You've got the (motorised) cart before the horse.
3.) Using Powell might be fun, but pushes your work well into the "story" territory as compared to a viable timeline. It simply comes across as a bit much.
4.) Overall on cost, you might benefit from examining details on government spending in the postwar period. I can definitely recommend https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/ for many periods. In particular, there is a fair bit available on postwar spending:
1945
Government Revenue 1945: £3698.8 million
Government Spending 1945: £6969.3 million
Deficit: 3270.5
(Defence 5153.3, Debt 571.6, Education 232.9, Welfare 169.4, Fuel/Energy 144.7, Health 140.9, Transport 138.7, Post Office 123.4, Housing 72, Protection 63.3, Pensions 39.7, Other 25.5, General Govt 19.5)
1946
Government Revenue 1946: 3769.6 million
Government Spending 1946: £6460 million
Deficit: 2690.4
(Defence 4446.4, Debt 603.8, Education 299.3, Welfare 176.1, Fuel/Energy 160.6, Health 154.9, Transport 154.5, Post Office 124.3, Housing 93.5, Pensions 41.6, Other 39.8, General Govt 20.5)
1947
Government Revenue 1947: 3771 million (NI 186)
Government Spending 1947: £5284 million
Deficit: 1513
(Defence 1746, Food/Supply 663.2 Debt 629.4, Education 361.1, Welfare 250.6, Health 217.1, Housing 200.5, Fuel/Energy 195, Transport 154.5, Post Office 133.8, Pensions 96.9, General Govt 24.7)
1948
Government Revenue 1948: 4056 million (NI 257, Income Tax 1601, Indirect Taxation 1856, Business/Other Tax 356)
Government Spending 1948: 4695.2 million
Deficit: 639
(Defence 913, Education 430.5, Food/Supply 430.4, Welfare 380.4, Pensions 354.2, Transport 331.3, Housing 327.8, Health 256.2, Energy 220.1, Communication 146, Other 132.4, Protection 80, Water Supply 43.6, General Govt 27.2)
1949
Government Revenue 1949: 5012 million (NI 361)
Government Spending 1949: 4580.9 million (36% of GDP)
(Defence 820.5, Education 502.2, Welfare 399.4, Housing 377.6, Pensions 367, Transport 342.5, Food/Supply 310.8, Health 296.1, Other 155.9, Protection 102.4, Fuel/Energy 71, Water Supply 51.2, General Govt 29.1)
1950
Government Revenue 1950: 5378 million (NI 437)
Government Spending 1950: 4776.8 million (35.9% of GDP)
(Defence 804, Education 564.9, Food/Supply 437.1, Welfare 402, Housing 374.5, Pensions 371.2, Health 353, Transport 332.6, Post Office 168.2, Other 131.5, Protection 119.4, Water Supply 58.7, General Govt 31, Fuel/Energy 9.5)
Notes for Thought:
- Income Tax didn't cover a huge amount
- National Insurance was fairly low in its initial years
- There was a very big cut in overall expenditure in 1946, but that doesn't mean that there was extra room for further tax cuts
- The bugbears of nationalisation costs...didn't factor into budgetary expenditure too much beyond a one year increase
- Education, Health and Housing all rose significantly and it would be a very courageous government to try and do otherwise
- Britain wasn't bankrupt as some would suggest, but chose to direct its limited assets to what the people had indicated they were in favour of.
- The large expenditure on Food/Supply was a function of continued rationing, the adjustment to the abrupt cessation of Lend Lease, finite shipping, the winter of 1946/47 and subsequent annus horribilis and quite a few other factors.
- That could be a bit of a muddle from the website, as there is an absence of Debt Interest payments in the last three years of 48-50
- Between feeding the population and paying the interest on the national debt in 1947 alone, you are approaching almost 20% of total government expenditure. That is the area where the money went and that is the area where a longer term approach could be very interesting.
- GDP, percentages of government spending and GDP growth are important areas of concern, but just as significant was the issue of the British current account and where it owed debt; might be an area of interest.
- Britain didn't have a postwar boom, but a flatter recovery that was somewhat arrested by Korean rearmament. The roots of that are wartime and prewar.
- Even with a very high level of peacetime defence spending, Britain hit big troubles in what it could afford; it couldn't pay the price of superpower status off the GDP of Great Britain and Northern Ireland alone.
There was a finite amount of money around at the time and that is better directed towards reconstruction and industry. Nationalisation of coal, railways and other bits and pieces didn't cost a huge amount.
I don't believe you are off base in terms of seeing the benefits of improving infrastructure, but you are better off going back before the war and spreading things out over a much longer period. That way, you avoid the issue of cramming everything in one fell swoop.
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Speed was everywhere in the '50s.
Diet pills, pep pill, even inhalers for nasal decongestant for Colds, and popular for air travel.
Benzedrine wasn't made prescription only til 1959, and not a controlled substance til 1971
As I said upthread, I think that recent revelations of Churchill's most private correspondence show, in conjunction with a few acerbic remarks he did let slip during his lifetime (I noted the ones about regretting losing the old Japanese alliance and blaming that on Yankee attitudes) that he kept very very tight rein on his actual views, and controlled the image he projected to cater to what he regarded as necessary political expedience. He in fact had a long lasting and general resentment of Yankee highhandedness and what he regarded as irresponsibility alongside arrogance, but he systematically curried favor with American audiences because he felt it was painfully obvious Britain was deeply dependent in this age on Yankee favor. It is enough to make me wonder whether he actually liked FDR at all for instance...but he was quite successful in projecting an image of close friendship and amity anyway; whether that means a special soft spot and genuine admiration for Roosevelt, or just consummate political acting, I'd want to dive deeper into the source material than I've had a chance to to figure out, if it can be done at all.
With Churchill in charge, he will antagonize Americans only to the extent he thinks Britain can afford to, which in this period is zero and a negative number relative not only to the most Blimpish bile but what I judge a reasonable Briton might have wanted to express.
Some of the exasperation of OTL came out during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK's envoys to Britain and Germany conveyed Kennedy's zero tolerance attitude toward missiles deployed in Cuba, stating that Americans felt it intolerable to live under such an immediate nuclear threat. The British and German responses were along the lines of "Well of course you lead the anti-Soviet alliance we are committed to, and we won't tie your hands in any way, but darn it all, here we have been living under precisely that same threat of annihilation for decades and you haven't had us running to you demanding you spend all your treasure removing this Soviet threat we live with day in and day out. You could live with it too and understand the pressures we are under, and we aren't happy you are playing chicken in a way that could trigger common catastrophe for all of us--but mostly us, not you as you remind us!"
Charles DeGaulle on the other hand, responded with "The people of France back you without reservation, do as you feel you must and know France is with you." I don't know if he actually equated himself with all France in such a Louis XIV fashion, but the point is, there were none of those recriminations in it coming from him.
Meanwhile in the later '40s, Britain remains dependent on US good will. Tory policy (at least until Thatcher, and I think she kept up a lot of this spirit too) consistently sought to wiggle away from utter dependence on US patronage, while (for all my deep favor of Labour) it does seem Labour was often willing to follow the American lead rather slavishly. But Churchill knows how to weasel what he can and put a smiling face on exasperating frustration. As he ages and gets closer to senility he might lose his grip in this pressure cooker, but I think there shall be no demonstrative breaks with apparent Yankee solidarity. Just a line by line, grassroots insistence on British independence wherever he can get it without causing such a rupture.
One weapon in his arsenal is his ability to appeal to the American Right and discredit American leftism in his polemics directed at the USA. Whether or not he wants to damn the whole transAtlantic republic root and branch, he can and will play on his positive reputation there and won't mind in the least if American leftists start to reconsider whether he is or ever was their friend--if meanwhile he is consolidating his reputation as a hero on an American right that gains power there. Since that is the general direction of motion OTL 1945-1960 or so in US politics mostly, he will probably be well satisfied with this mode of manipulating US policy in a pro-British direction.
Since the author has telegraphed that we probably won't see Labour come into power until 1960, I suppose the Suez crisis remains, and we know how Eden handled that OTL. With Churchill in charge--I think either he manages to persuade Ike to back the Anglo-French-Israeli initiative in advance, or find the American President responds much as in the case of Iran a few years earlier, and authorizes a US operation to neutralize Nasser on US terms, possibly taking Britain, France and Israel on board as junior but crucial partners in this. The tricky bit here is that US policy was still wooing the recently independent Arab nations (and keeping quite an arm's length distance from overt US support of Israel--Americans were aiding Israel, but largely through private-charity channels) and surely Ike had some dim notion that the high handed action against Mossadegh in Iran was not exactly reassuring in the Middle East. The question is, would US negotiators be able to persuade Nasser to back off in return for some positive US aid in some manner, or if not, would Eisenhower buy into the idea that Nasser was headed inexorably toward Soviet alliance and in Egypt itself anyway US policy had nothing to lose by replacing him? and if this meant a domino cascade of Middle Eastern nations into the Soviet-allied bed, might not the USA do better to back Israel more openly and to heck with wooing these others? Certainly in the mid-1950s, the USA itself was not nearly as vulnerable to an "oil squeeze" as would be the case 20 years later, and perhaps Churchill could persuade Ike that a firm line now would undermine these regimes as the various oil exporting Mideast nations (bearing in mind Iran was now firmly in the US camp under the Shah) would suffer a lot more from an embargo of western markets on their exports and pro-Western factions might line up for Western backed coups? Such a perception would not have to be true by the way; it is unclear to me how much latitude the various Arab nations had to throw the Palestinian exiles under the bus to patch over an anti-communist bloc including settling with Israel. (Also at this early date, Israel itself was under socialist government and had quite recently enjoyed Soviet favor, and might prove a less comfortable partner for a conservative US/UK/French bloc than Churchill would imagine).
A probable outcome is that Ike does not budge on his (hypocritical, in view of such actions as undertaken not just in Iran but say Guatemala quite recently as of the Suez crisis) pious line that nations were supposed to take grievances to the UN for resolution. But Churchill, as I suppose bitterly resenting the necessity but doing it gracefully because he does think it is necessary, would be asking permission, mother may I pretty please, through quiet channels to Washington for the contemplated action, and when he gets a firm "no you may not!" either informs the French and Israelis so they can drop it too, or just tiptoes out of the alliance to leave them to twist in the wind of Yankee hypocrisy, with British hands clean.
In the argument the author is having with Garrison and in the context of those who point out the author and their fans are coming from a plain ideological position too--I suspect if we do look at the numbers Churchill had a possible win in '45, though critics attacking the particularly "mimic Yankee conservatism" programs proposed might not cut it probably are right about these details. This win would of course not be swaying any deeply committed Labourites but might be sufficient for a skin of the teeth victory such as the author projects.
It is then quite another matter whether the sort of back-projected neoliberalism with a contemporary welfare-lite-human face the author and fans are plainly assuming is sure fire because they buy into neoliberal notions this is how the world works, will in fact work the way either the projected downtimer politicos or the uptime thread fans think it must. We'd be deep in controversial political-economic waters arguing about that!
It is one thing to admit that OTL Labour failed to deliver on the full sweep of the promises they made (with or without arguing, truthfully, they did accomplish quite a lot for British working people) and that Britain did head into a tailspin economically OTL. It is quite another to infer from that the Tories would therefore have done better. If they don't, Winston might expect to lose control of his Commons majority a lot sooner than 1960 and go down definitively as Tory leader then and there. Suez might in fact be a headache for Labour.
So what, it is OK to ask the common Briton to sacrifice to win a war, but not OK to ask the well-off of Britain to sacrifice to enable those long suffering common folk to prosper in the victorious peace?
The absolutes about what is and is not economically possible are relative to world-views about what is and is not morally proper, I think. Now I also think the USA could and should have been more generous, especially given we were asking the British to stand shoulder to shoulder with us (but much closer to Soviet bomber and missile launch bases--like, in range and not out of range) in an anti-Communist crusade that dissembled about whether it was frankly for the comfort and privilege of the wealthy and powerful and instead professed to be about fundamental human rights and dignity (never mind what happens in places like say Guatemala or Iran, it's all for the greater good after all).
Meanwhile, objectively speaking the generation of British children who grew up with the much-resented rationing were the healthiest, compared either to their underfed predecessors or their free-to-eat-whatever junk their families could afford successors.
Fundamentally it is a political argument, not one about objective absolute limits, a question of values--which includes of course the pragmatic question, who is willing to stand up for what values.
Garrison is correct I assume that indeed a great many Britons were struggling for socialism as such, for transforming the nature of British society. (And if we had an ATL where Hitler never came to power in Germany, which I think would very plausibly be one where no great war ever erupts in Europe whatsoever between 1918 and the present day, do you seriously see Britain just peacefully and cheerfully transitioning to the Labourite model without a lot of angry kicking and screaming from the most entitled British subjects, with a lot of resonance from people who objectively would benefit but subjectively think their kingdom is being taken over by Red Satanists? If reactionaries don't have objective atrocities to blame on leftists, they cheerfully make them up out of whole cloth, to achieve the necessary outrage to fight for ongoing social stratification and privilege).
The question there is whether Churchill et al can win over other Britons, who we know did vote Labour in the 1940s but later ceased to do so in the '50s. This penumbra is what is in contention.
I don't think a few slogans a few weeks before people have to actually vote would do that trick; the paradox is that Churchill could hardly start politicking with plain electoral intentions before V-E day, and his choice OTL to jump the gun and schedule the GE as soon as possible clearly rested on notions he and other Conservatives had that they didn't need to make social-democratic-lite appeals, I suggested maybe because of a conviction they had that military service would automatically shift the mass vote rightward because of their fundamental ideas about how the world worked.
That's what it's all about. How do we think the world works really? Socialists think it should be plain that the world is built on the day in, day out unsung inglorious work of common people, tilling fields, cranking out interchangable parts in factories, mopping the floors, raising the babies. We seek to get society reengineered to maximize benefit and opportunity for these people and make privilege, if it must exist at all, dependent on service to that goal.
There are many many people, perhaps always and forever a solid majority, who are convinced otherwise. For it to be a majority, most of those same common people working away and sneered at by their social betters as evolved society holds them to be, must agree it is inevitable some are far better off than others, and that the many will serve a crucial, powerful few in the nature of things. There are lots of different ideological approaches to this "all things are for the best in this the best of all possible worlds" Panglossism, and it would be incivil for me to assume the worst forms of it. Among the more plausible and at least apparently civil and humane forms of it is liberalism or neoliberalism, in which it is assumed the workings of the capitalist marketplace do indeed optimize things, provide for maximum realistic opportunity, and the objectively highest standards of living and hope for a stable, workable future. A whole lot of social energy has gone into trying to make this the consensus and as universal as possible belief system of everyone in the world, and I can see it works pretty well at that subjective conviction anyway. I certainly was raised to believe it myself.
If we do believe that I guess a lot of the assumptions some of us are attacking here are more reasonable and I assume the author and fans are on this track in good faith; this is how they think things do work and ought to work.
I don't, not any more and not for a long time. Unregulated capitalism is a social black hole, the nature of fundamental market workings will, if not checked by some strenuous effort from outside this system, concentrate essentially all control of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and without vigorous class struggle to raise it, the "natural" level of wages sinks to bare survival on 16+ hour, 7 day work weeks; there ain't no natural upper limit on how much wealth concentrates, barring human moral and political action to challenge it. Some degree of at least social democracy is minimally needed to sustain capitalism with a human face, and keep the game of Monopoly going, otherwise it turns into the end game of that board game indeed, with essentially a handful of people owning every damn thing and everyone else their abject subjects. In turn I think if we hit upon some scheme to stabilize the net flow of wealth so that what flows "naturally" to capital is countervailed by transfers down the social ladder, we will find that to achieve this we are having to create governmental institutions that can better achieve any positive benefits private capital in the means of production can be argued to offer, and it becomes a case of circling Robin Hood's barn to maintain polarized concentrations of private wealth nominally owning everything versus straightforward simplification of the whole thing into democratic socialism.
In short, if this is correct and capitalists have the clear vision to foresee it all correctly, then indeed the only reason they would offer anything that looks like a social compact is a temporary and deceptive political expedient until they can outmaneuver their social democratic political foe and break them, followed by pushing for the capitalist endgame.
I'm humble enough to own what seems clear to me might be mistaken, and take it a step at a time in good faith, and see whether in fact we can arrive at an amicable social compact that is sustainable other than the omega of democratic socialism that seems to be the obviously most hopeful outcome we can wish for. And perhaps it was true of British moderates of this age they too could cheerfully and honestly offer the militant advocates of the working classes substantial if partial concessions, and expect it to somehow stabilize as a happy win win for all. But I quite understand Garrison's point of view that actually British conservatives could not foresee a good end and had to count on people supporting them because they believed they were right about the deep nature of things, a belief system in which any degree of socialism is a failure to achieve the capitalist optimum that is at best something deplorably to have to live with until enough of the masses come to their senses enough to fall in line with the wise orders of their natural betters and stop the inherently disruptive socialistic parasites.
Meanwhile I can only shake my head at the notion that Labourite social democracy is a privilege of a lucky nation that happens to be well off in a timeline where no one threatens its happy status quo. If social democracy can be achieved at all, it can be achieved regardless of levels of poverty or wealth. It is all about sharing whatever the society has, much or little, and this being the most rational basis to build up toward having more. If it is untrue for a nation in the position of Britain in 1945, it is untrue for a nation as much richer than that as one likes to imagine.
Public Health expenditure had been rising in the UK since at least the 1880sI'm sorry to have upset you. There was a specific commitment to the creation of a national health service in the real-life Tory manifesto in 1945. It's also worth mentioning that the Tory proposal was actually closer to the proposal found in the Beveridge Report, because voluntary hospitals would have been retained. I understand that this is an emotive topic with present-day implications, but I am simply trying to look at this from the perspective at the time.
And, at the time, the Labour proposals on health were not regarded as the most important issue in the 1945 general election. You can say that, with hindsight, the NHS is the most important innovation of the Attlee government. You'd probably be objectively right. But, at the time, it was viewed differently. When asked about the Beveridge Report, a poll in 1943 revealed that its proposals for health reform were listed as a distant third in terms of its most appealing proposals. A different poll in 1943, which left out the specific reference to the Beveridge Report found that half of Britons were opposed to "any major change on the health front".
This changed after the NHS formed. It became seen as much more important than other Labour reforms, almost immediately. A poll in 1949 showed that the NHS was "the best single initiative the government had taken since coming into office". But, again, at the time, in 1945, it was a different situation.
However, I will point out, and I have no real strong personal opinion on the NHS, as strange as that might sound, that a poll in the 50s found that just over half of respondents thought that their personal healthcare was "about the same" as it was in 1948.
Health reforms, opinion polls and surveys: myths and realities
<p>Attitudes to NHS reform today are shaped by a largely imagined past of poor healthcare prior to the NHS, according to Dr Nick Hayes in a new H&P policy paper. An Ipsos Mori poll in conjunction with King's College London confirmed Dr Hayes' research - finding a fear of reform, particularly the...
Did We Really Want a National Health Service? Hospitals, Patients and Public Opinions before 1948
OPPOSING the Conservative-led government’s planned ‘modernising’ health reforms in 2011, Dr Mark Porter, the Chair of the British Medical Association’s hospital
But if you insist on knowing the "benefit" to not immediately establishing an NHS in this timeline: it's the same reason that it took Labour three years to do in real life: it cost too much, and it cost far more than it was expected to. In the first year of it's operation, expenditure on just the provision of services in the NHS (i.e. not including the cost to actually nationalize the entire British healthcare system) was nearly double what it had been projected to be.
and relatively high levels of people unfit for military service in both the Boer and Great Wars had convinced even the crustiest of old Imperial Tories that increased health and public health spending were strategically necessary on military security grounds as well as being socially desirable. The real founding father of the NHS was one Neville Chamberlain (as Chancellor to Stanley Baldwin). The idea that the Tories opposed healthcare provision has little historical substance and only dates back as far as anti- Thatcher propaganda (Thatcher wanted managerial and operational reforms that the Health Service unions opposed but had no notion of privatisation of the NHS) in the 1980s.
I just meant that it probably wasn't the best time to make the NHS when your country had just been blown up repeatedly and was flat broke...
Health and health policy doesn’t really hold any interest for me and I’ve never really got the passion some people hold for or against it. The quasi-religious passion that I’ve seen about healthcare, particularly the NHS, on other websites and in books is something quite alien to me.
Having said that, I have read and found quite a bit that clearly states that it was a very popular step during wartime Britain and a sine qua non the moment that peace had come.
Going further than that:
1.) Britain hadn’t been blown up repeatedly. Bomb damage was significant, but industry and housing alike were not damaged on the scale of the Continental states or Japan, for example. Housing was the primary budget line for reconstruction of said bombing and it wasn’t a huge expense.
2.) Britain wasn’t bankrupt or flat broke. They were in some pretty dark economic straits in 1947 and did have to make some unenviable choices, including selling ships for scrap to pay RN wages (relevant details in Vanguard to Trident), but even in that time, they had options and plans which did improve.
3.) The cost of setting up the NHS was not huge in terms of the national budget. In fact, it was easily affordable even in the absolute economic nadir years.
Having said that, I have read and found quite a bit that clearly states that it was a very popular step during wartime Britain and a sine qua non the moment that peace had come.
Going further than that:
1.) Britain hadn’t been blown up repeatedly. Bomb damage was significant, but industry and housing alike were not damaged on the scale of the Continental states or Japan, for example. Housing was the primary budget line for reconstruction of said bombing and it wasn’t a huge expense.
2.) Britain wasn’t bankrupt or flat broke. They were in some pretty dark economic straits in 1947 and did have to make some unenviable choices, including selling ships for scrap to pay RN wages (relevant details in Vanguard to Trident), but even in that time, they had options and plans which did improve.
3.) The cost of setting up the NHS was not huge in terms of the national budget. In fact, it was easily affordable even in the absolute economic nadir years.
Interesting that you bring up Neville Chamberlain. He has always suffered a very "bad press" as an "appeaser", mainly due to, inter alia, Michael Foot's scandalous tract "The Guilty Men".
My own view is that he was an excellent Chancellor, and as Prime Minister a realist. He fully understood that a war would be catastrophic for Britain, as indeed it proved. He tried his damnedest to keep Britain out of one, only to be criticised for doing so. Had he succeeded, Britain would have become a more powerful and prosperous nation.
I would agree with the second part of your statement. I'd even be prepared to meet you halfway on the first part of your statement. I think there was certainly an appetite in wartime Britain for radical reform, including to the national health. The Citadel had been published in 1937, and there was a feeling that things needed to change.
However, I do not agree that the NHS as it came to be was non-negotiable in 1945, and I also do not believe that it was the primary factor motivating people to vote Labour. I've submitted some evidence which forms part of the basis for my view there, but I am happy to see any countervailing evidence you have.
Well, now, here I disagree with you entirely. It's true to say that in comparison to countries which had been flattened, by virtue of being on the losing side of the war, that Britain is in a different league entirely. However, when we look at Britain itself and compare the situation in 1945 to the late 1930s, it's clear there was a housing crisis already during the war. The housing stock barely increased between 1939-1945, and, when we look solely at what happened in war, the net increase was either nil or there was a small decrease. Clearly this is why the US government was concerned enough to begin shipping over "USA Houses" to Britain during the war as part of Lend-Lease, a policy carried over after the end of Lend-Lease with the British PreFab homes, which were very quickly built and not meant to last more than 5-10 years. They needed to get roofs over heads. Also, as an aside, the war had destroyed much of Britain's hard-fought progress in advancing home ownership under the previous Tory government (going from around 20% in 1920 to 32% in 1938).
I agree. Britain isn't the basket case in 1945 that she is often slandered to be. There are very real problems, especially indebtedness, which is going to crowd out investment for decades. However, it is the choices of the postwar Labour government (including the almost comically-bad system of taxation which further strangled investment), and actually the wartime Coalition as well, that I think laid the foundation of the economic conditions of the late-1940s, which were themselves merely just preludes to the situation Britain would find herself in for the next few decades. Which is the subject of this timeline.
I don't think so. Expenditure on the NHS was considerable, even when we only consider the direct cost of running it. 1948 also set the trend for...the remainder of time...in that the costs exceeded the estimates considerably. It may not have been a ruinous cost, but it was certainly a very high cost, at a time when Britain was perhaps not technically bankrupt, but was having its fate determined in Washington more than London, as she went cap in hand to the US Treasury. Indeed, in negotiations on the Anglo-American loan of 1945, there are more than a few pretty cold references from the American side to Britain as a bankrupt company whose major creditors must be paid.
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I think that revisionist historians (aided by 50 and 75 year file closures having come to an end) are increasingly sympathetic to Chamberlain, who successfully built up British military capability which had been rather heavily run down under Macdonald and Baldwin.
Unfortunately, there was simply no option. Hitler could not be trusted to keep his word or to be satiated for very long and the German economy had been directed towards military conquest.
A Labour of Love
A Labour of Love
When the results of the 1945 general election were announced, many were unsurprised, having expected Churchill to come on top. There were grumblings of discontent from important pockets within the Labour Party, though, who had privately harboured hopes that this would be the year that Labour would finally take hold of the country and enact a grand new vision for it. Talk on the Labour backbench of whether or not Clement Attlee, a man who had led the party to two election defeats over the course of a decade, should step down and allow someone else to lead the party was becoming more common as the summer months drew to a close.
Although some saw the much-increased vote for the Labour Party, not to mention the greatly increased Labour representation in the halls of Westminster, as a credit to the party leader, many looked back to the 1935 leadership election and remembered Herbert Morrison’s challenge to Attlee and wondered whether the party had made the correct choice. Morrison himself had made no small secret of this amongst his small but influential coterie of Labour MPs, including Hugh Dalton. He had also found that many new MPs, including Hugh Gaitskell and George Brown, were sympathetic to his private musings on whether the British people were ready to accept such wide-ranging reforms as had been called for at the general election.
On the other side from the group gathering around Morrison was a group led by the buccaneering Welsh firebrand for socialism, Aneurin Bevan. To Bevan, the election had been fought because the party had not been aggressive enough in calling for radical change. To Bevan, the answer to how the Labour Party should proceed and win even more working-class support was to “Keep Left”. He found a very strong appetite amongst new Labour MPs including Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, Ian Mikardo, and Richard Crossman, as well as from the controversial Chairman of the Labour Party, Harold Laski, who had been denounced by his own party in the 1945 general election for threatening violence to achieve socialism.
For his own part, the leader of the party could sense a slight change in some of his colleagues in the Westminster lobby rooms. He was becoming increasingly worried that his control of the party seemed to be waning. His suspicions seemed to be confirmed on 19 August, Clement Attlee was called on by Ernest Bevin.
“Clement, the vultures are starting to circle for you. Morrison is definitely going to make a leadership challenge, and I think in reaction we’re likely to see the radicals in the party throwing in their lot with Bevan. They don’t think you can win, and they’re not prepared to see the party drift rightward.”
Attlee and Bevin were both well aware that this three-horse race had the potential to split the party. If Morrison and Bevan both launched challenges to his leadership, it was very possible that Attlee could come in a close third and be eliminated in the first round. His support would then trickle to the two increasingly implacably opposed sides. Whoever came second in this race would feel that the party was heading in a fatal direction, and they could even be prepared to leave the party altogether.
The fears of Clement and Ernest were increased when, on 10 September a new member of Parliament, Hugh Gaitskell, used his maiden speech in the House of Commons to call for more rights for trade unions. It was a polite, well-crafted speech, which although excellently delivered would otherwise not have been of note, had it not been for Mr. Gaitskell’s decision to include another line in it.
“Honourable and Right Honourable Members, it grieves me to tell you that there seems to be an element in the country, within my own party even, who are more preoccupied with an academic reading of socialism than with actually improving the lives of that great slice of the country who shall not see benefit from this Tory government. They seem to believe that if only the country were smarter, more enlightened, then it would be they in power, and not my Honourable and Right Honourable friends opposite. They are mistaken! If Socialism is the cause of the people, then we must respond to what the country has told us in this election by moving towards the view of the man on the High Street, not the man in Parliament! It is we who must change, not those who send us here.”
This was greeted with jeers from his own side of the House. Aneurin Bevan looked back in disgust from his position on the opposition frontbench, acutely aware that this upstart may just as well have used Nye’s name in the speech. However, in looking back, he noticed that although those jeering were loudest, it was far from the unanimous position of the Labour members. The bulk of them seemed to be reflected. Some were even clapping. It was becoming ever clearer that Nye would have to take action to save the Labour Party as a force for true Socialism in Great Britain. Nye was still reflecting on the events in the House today when he was called on by the Chairman of the Labour Party, Harold Laski.
“Shameful! Absolutely shameful,” Laski belted out, before even removing his coat. “Who in the HELL does that man think he is?! Trying to lecture us on what socialism is? The man clearly should just bugger off and join the Liberals! If Clement doesn’t do something about these class traitors, we must! They must be purged!” Aware that Laski had approximately zero power to enforce such a purge, Nye merely nodded at the suggestion. After all, it had been Laski’s suggestion that Socialism must be achieved in Great Britain, even if violence were required to do it, that had possibly been yet another tipping point in why Nye was not now building his Socialist utopia. Churchill himself had denounced the remark in the House of Commons, and the Labour Party had been forced to repudiate its own Chairman. Nevertheless, Nye needed friends.
“There will be a great battle Hal, for the soul of our party. It’s clear that the right-wing would like to take our party from us. But what can I do?”
Laski looked incredulously from behind his perfectly rounded spectacles. “Challenge! Nye, you must challenge Clem for the leadership! If you don’t, they’ll do it, and they’ll have all the momentum behind them! You would be surprised how easily some of our comrades are willing to abandon the path, after just one defeat! Nye, the time is now! We cannot afford to wait!”
As October approached, beckoning the new Parliamentary session, Herbert Morrison also felt that the time was ripe to strike out. Although not himself a member of the new “right” of the party, Morrison was much more amenable to a gradualist approach to the implementation of socialism and was thus continuing to attract the support of those less convinced of the benefits of radical socialism and largescale nationalisation of industry in particular. Finally, on 9 October, Morrison and his allies made their move and challenged Clement Attlee for the leadership of the Labour Party.
Immediately, Aneurin declared his intention to stand. The question was now whether Clement Attlee would allow this internecine civil war to consume the party he had built up over the last ten years into a force that was now seen by a large slice of the British people as a credible alternative to the Conservative Party in government. He knew it would be impossible to convince Morrison to stand down, but if he wanted to avert this from developing into a serious split in the party, he had to make a plea for unity to Nye Bevan. Deciding to fight for his life’s work, he called Ernest Bevin and Bevan to dinner.
“Nye, you’ve got to stand down, or we won’t win!” Bevin pleaded. “It will come down to you and Morrison, and you won’t win that fight.”
“Perhaps it is you, Clem, who should stand down and endorse me,” Bevan retorted. “I mean no disrespect, but there is no guarantee that you win against Morrison either. And I won’t sit back and watch this party shirk its duty to real change for the workingmen of this country. And, anyway, I’ve already announced it, I’m standing. I can’t just go back on that now.”
“You have my word, Nye, that if you convince enough of your supporters to back me in the first round so that I come out on top, you shall always have your concerns listened to. And when we enter government, you shall have a free hand to reform health,” said Clem. Bevan knew this was a fair offer. He trusted Attlee, but he was still concerned about how it might appear if he was seen to be swinging the leadership election after he’d made such a fuss in the lobbies of Parliament over the direction the party was heading. He promised he’d consider the Leader’s offer.
Leaving the Leader’s London house, he decided to return to the House to contemplate his decision in his office. It was getting late and the halls were empty. He made it to his office in the and lit a cigarette. Weighing up the options, he felt that the best way to ensure that true Socialism lived to fight another day in the Labour Party was to preserve the status quo under Clem. He and his allies would be sidelined for years if Morrison became leader. If the party went into the next election having abandoned its major commitments, there was a danger that the left of the party may whither and die. He made his mind up. He’d quietly shift support to Attlee in the first round, and then lobby all his supporters to back him in the second round.
On leaving his office, he noticed another figure walking through the halls. As he approached him, he recognised him as the upstart MP who had challenged him in the House. Gaitskell smiled faintly as he passed by Nye and slightly doffed his cap.
“Ah, if it isn’t the red Tory,” Bevan muttered under his breath. Gaitskell gave a quick glance back and didn’t say anything in reply. However, there was a look in the young MP’s eye that told Bevan that no matter what happened in this leadership contest, he likely hadn’t heard the last of that man.
When the results of the 1945 general election were announced, many were unsurprised, having expected Churchill to come on top. There were grumblings of discontent from important pockets within the Labour Party, though, who had privately harboured hopes that this would be the year that Labour would finally take hold of the country and enact a grand new vision for it. Talk on the Labour backbench of whether or not Clement Attlee, a man who had led the party to two election defeats over the course of a decade, should step down and allow someone else to lead the party was becoming more common as the summer months drew to a close.
Although some saw the much-increased vote for the Labour Party, not to mention the greatly increased Labour representation in the halls of Westminster, as a credit to the party leader, many looked back to the 1935 leadership election and remembered Herbert Morrison’s challenge to Attlee and wondered whether the party had made the correct choice. Morrison himself had made no small secret of this amongst his small but influential coterie of Labour MPs, including Hugh Dalton. He had also found that many new MPs, including Hugh Gaitskell and George Brown, were sympathetic to his private musings on whether the British people were ready to accept such wide-ranging reforms as had been called for at the general election.
On the other side from the group gathering around Morrison was a group led by the buccaneering Welsh firebrand for socialism, Aneurin Bevan. To Bevan, the election had been fought because the party had not been aggressive enough in calling for radical change. To Bevan, the answer to how the Labour Party should proceed and win even more working-class support was to “Keep Left”. He found a very strong appetite amongst new Labour MPs including Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, Ian Mikardo, and Richard Crossman, as well as from the controversial Chairman of the Labour Party, Harold Laski, who had been denounced by his own party in the 1945 general election for threatening violence to achieve socialism.
For his own part, the leader of the party could sense a slight change in some of his colleagues in the Westminster lobby rooms. He was becoming increasingly worried that his control of the party seemed to be waning. His suspicions seemed to be confirmed on 19 August, Clement Attlee was called on by Ernest Bevin.
“Clement, the vultures are starting to circle for you. Morrison is definitely going to make a leadership challenge, and I think in reaction we’re likely to see the radicals in the party throwing in their lot with Bevan. They don’t think you can win, and they’re not prepared to see the party drift rightward.”
Attlee and Bevin were both well aware that this three-horse race had the potential to split the party. If Morrison and Bevan both launched challenges to his leadership, it was very possible that Attlee could come in a close third and be eliminated in the first round. His support would then trickle to the two increasingly implacably opposed sides. Whoever came second in this race would feel that the party was heading in a fatal direction, and they could even be prepared to leave the party altogether.
The fears of Clement and Ernest were increased when, on 10 September a new member of Parliament, Hugh Gaitskell, used his maiden speech in the House of Commons to call for more rights for trade unions. It was a polite, well-crafted speech, which although excellently delivered would otherwise not have been of note, had it not been for Mr. Gaitskell’s decision to include another line in it.
“Honourable and Right Honourable Members, it grieves me to tell you that there seems to be an element in the country, within my own party even, who are more preoccupied with an academic reading of socialism than with actually improving the lives of that great slice of the country who shall not see benefit from this Tory government. They seem to believe that if only the country were smarter, more enlightened, then it would be they in power, and not my Honourable and Right Honourable friends opposite. They are mistaken! If Socialism is the cause of the people, then we must respond to what the country has told us in this election by moving towards the view of the man on the High Street, not the man in Parliament! It is we who must change, not those who send us here.”
This was greeted with jeers from his own side of the House. Aneurin Bevan looked back in disgust from his position on the opposition frontbench, acutely aware that this upstart may just as well have used Nye’s name in the speech. However, in looking back, he noticed that although those jeering were loudest, it was far from the unanimous position of the Labour members. The bulk of them seemed to be reflected. Some were even clapping. It was becoming ever clearer that Nye would have to take action to save the Labour Party as a force for true Socialism in Great Britain. Nye was still reflecting on the events in the House today when he was called on by the Chairman of the Labour Party, Harold Laski.
“Shameful! Absolutely shameful,” Laski belted out, before even removing his coat. “Who in the HELL does that man think he is?! Trying to lecture us on what socialism is? The man clearly should just bugger off and join the Liberals! If Clement doesn’t do something about these class traitors, we must! They must be purged!” Aware that Laski had approximately zero power to enforce such a purge, Nye merely nodded at the suggestion. After all, it had been Laski’s suggestion that Socialism must be achieved in Great Britain, even if violence were required to do it, that had possibly been yet another tipping point in why Nye was not now building his Socialist utopia. Churchill himself had denounced the remark in the House of Commons, and the Labour Party had been forced to repudiate its own Chairman. Nevertheless, Nye needed friends.
“There will be a great battle Hal, for the soul of our party. It’s clear that the right-wing would like to take our party from us. But what can I do?”
Laski looked incredulously from behind his perfectly rounded spectacles. “Challenge! Nye, you must challenge Clem for the leadership! If you don’t, they’ll do it, and they’ll have all the momentum behind them! You would be surprised how easily some of our comrades are willing to abandon the path, after just one defeat! Nye, the time is now! We cannot afford to wait!”
As October approached, beckoning the new Parliamentary session, Herbert Morrison also felt that the time was ripe to strike out. Although not himself a member of the new “right” of the party, Morrison was much more amenable to a gradualist approach to the implementation of socialism and was thus continuing to attract the support of those less convinced of the benefits of radical socialism and largescale nationalisation of industry in particular. Finally, on 9 October, Morrison and his allies made their move and challenged Clement Attlee for the leadership of the Labour Party.
Immediately, Aneurin declared his intention to stand. The question was now whether Clement Attlee would allow this internecine civil war to consume the party he had built up over the last ten years into a force that was now seen by a large slice of the British people as a credible alternative to the Conservative Party in government. He knew it would be impossible to convince Morrison to stand down, but if he wanted to avert this from developing into a serious split in the party, he had to make a plea for unity to Nye Bevan. Deciding to fight for his life’s work, he called Ernest Bevin and Bevan to dinner.
“Nye, you’ve got to stand down, or we won’t win!” Bevin pleaded. “It will come down to you and Morrison, and you won’t win that fight.”
“Perhaps it is you, Clem, who should stand down and endorse me,” Bevan retorted. “I mean no disrespect, but there is no guarantee that you win against Morrison either. And I won’t sit back and watch this party shirk its duty to real change for the workingmen of this country. And, anyway, I’ve already announced it, I’m standing. I can’t just go back on that now.”
“You have my word, Nye, that if you convince enough of your supporters to back me in the first round so that I come out on top, you shall always have your concerns listened to. And when we enter government, you shall have a free hand to reform health,” said Clem. Bevan knew this was a fair offer. He trusted Attlee, but he was still concerned about how it might appear if he was seen to be swinging the leadership election after he’d made such a fuss in the lobbies of Parliament over the direction the party was heading. He promised he’d consider the Leader’s offer.
Leaving the Leader’s London house, he decided to return to the House to contemplate his decision in his office. It was getting late and the halls were empty. He made it to his office in the and lit a cigarette. Weighing up the options, he felt that the best way to ensure that true Socialism lived to fight another day in the Labour Party was to preserve the status quo under Clem. He and his allies would be sidelined for years if Morrison became leader. If the party went into the next election having abandoned its major commitments, there was a danger that the left of the party may whither and die. He made his mind up. He’d quietly shift support to Attlee in the first round, and then lobby all his supporters to back him in the second round.
On leaving his office, he noticed another figure walking through the halls. As he approached him, he recognised him as the upstart MP who had challenged him in the House. Gaitskell smiled faintly as he passed by Nye and slightly doffed his cap.
“Ah, if it isn’t the red Tory,” Bevan muttered under his breath. Gaitskell gave a quick glance back and didn’t say anything in reply. However, there was a look in the young MP’s eye that told Bevan that no matter what happened in this leadership contest, he likely hadn’t heard the last of that man.
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