51-64

• Key areas of change in 1950s Britain

  • Social Change
  • Economic Change
  • Foreign Policy
  • Party division & Defeat
• Conservatives carried on with welfare state
• Tripartite school system


  1. Continued

  2. Some started to question the fairness
• Rising living standards - affluence and consumerism
• Pre-war slums cleared - traditional communities broken + private car ownership
• Men's wage rise - 8.30 - 15.35
• Home owners rise - Cheap mortgages but council housing and rent far higher
• Hire purchase - 57 - 59 number of tv houses rose by 32% - by 60 ½ population watched in evening
• Suez and CND encouraged challenging authority
• Government included heirs and earls - lacked social mobility further reinforced in satire boom - led allowed labour win 'salmon tinned'
• Rising living standards and spread of wealth blurred class divisions - now an attitude of mind
• 75% of women were married
• Improved by Labour saving devices - Washing machine up 54%, Refrigerator up 58%
• Therefore afforded with school and uni better living standard but not liberated or equal
• Birth control pill 61 - women now had choice - needed husbands approval though so little change
• Earlier immigration had been from old commonwealth which were white - no riots very well accepted
• Commonwealth Immigration Act 62 - discriminated against black people - restrictions on ethnic origin - backfired as encouraged rapid immigration and family's brought
• Tensions - no colour notices, blamed housing shortages
• 58 - Violence - Nottingham gangs went on 'n-word hunts' and Notting Hill riots - unprepared police
• 'Teenager' emergence - Post war boom - 10% Abolition of National Service - Relative affluence - Jobs opened up and they had little responsibility so disposable income so businesses targeted them
• Fashion, music, bike and moped - Compulsory education till 14 - question authority - American and European influence - TV and newspaper highlighted 'behaviour' and affirms them
• OVERALL SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE
• Attempt to maintain full employment whilst expanding economy
• Affluency - highest income per head excluding America - failing to compete with the world
• Britain heavily committed to defence expenditure - lack of innovation and funding across sectors
• 1951 - £700 Million deficit inherited
• Rationing ends
• Steel denationalised
• Continued with Keynesian policies
• Detonated first atomic bomb
• Post 53, 300k houses built
• 4% increase social Spending
• 63 - Blip and railway funds cut w hundreds of stations desolate in rural areas
• Butler Chancellor
• Interest rates control economy - Butskellism
• By 1955 - Full employment, low inflation and tax, home ownership up 300%, consumerism and real wages
• Mixed economy - Keynesianism
• 1960 - 5 mil work for services
• Economy expanded so much that £370 mil given in tax cutes in 59
• Short term - stop and go up to 1959 - falling behind