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Labour Governments And The Origins Of The Welfare State 1945-51 Research ...

Labour Governments and the Origins of the Welfare State 1945-51
Research Description
The polarity between socialism (communism) and fascism (Nazism) is echoed in the many histories that cover the Inter war period, such as E. H. Carr's Britain, Eric Hobsbawn's Age of Extremes, as well as the social theories of Gramsci (p. 108, 119, 131). Orwell (1981, p. 227) further adds that socialism had alienated the proletariat by using an abstract language and by associating itself chiefly with the self-loathing bourgeois intellectual. Also, fascism is seen as the only alternative to socialism (p. 225) and thus he explains the success of fascism as a combination of the two. World War II and the defeat of fascism as an enemy of the UK (Walsh, p. 47), along with the "devastation" of Britain (Cole, G. D. H.) subsequently led to a swing to the left and the implementation of policies that led to a mixed economy of public and private sectors that utilised a Keynesian economic model. The Beveridge Report of 1942 was ignored at the time of its publication (Beveridge, 1953, p. 323) by the Churchillian government, but had developed widespread positive interest among the public, as demonstrated by the survey done on the Beveridge Report in 1943 (held in the "Mass Observation Library"). This level of interest was unprecedented, and with "so much public debate in Britain about the shape of social policy" (Jones, C., 1994, p. 132) taking place, a future society that fought against the "five giants", idleness, ignorance, disease, squalor and want, (1943, p. 1) that Beveridge identified as key to the creation of a stable welfare state, was essential to the rebuilding of Britain after World War II.
However, the initial popularity of the Labour government was eventually countered by the decline of socialism as a practical political ideology during this period in the UK. According to some theorists and critics, this was due to the "'Americanisation' of Britain" that "problematized the very underpinnings of the socialist project." (Dworkin, p. 57) Mass culture was also critiqued by Horkheimer and Adorno (1972) on grounds that it pacified the masses and rendered them apolitical.
Aim of Research
The aim of this research is to determine the extent to which various ideological, historical, social and political factors played a role in the creation of the Keynesian welfare state outlined by The Beveridge Report. First, the stance of socialism as firmly against Nazism, along with other factors led to an increased support for the implementation of socialist policies directly after World War II. However, the increased freedoms of the proletariat developed over the subsequent six years of Labour governmental rule into the terminal decline of the Left and of an effective Socialist Labour government.


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