The Ideas That Shaped Post-War Britain

The seventy years since the end of the Second World War have seen dramatic changes in Britain’s cultural, intellectual and political climate. Old class allegiances have been challenged by new loyalties to gender, ethnicity, religion or lifestyle and a new sensibility of self-fulfilment – sometimes hedonistic, sometimes altruistic – has been born.There have been equally seismic shifts in political ideology and public policy in this period. The Labour government of 1945 came to power with an ambitious collectivist programme, involving a planned economy and a cradle-to-grave welfare state. By 1979 the welfare state was widely attacked as a nanny state and economic planning h…