EUROPEAN WELFARE STATE

European welfare state of the 1960s-1970s

European welfare state of the 1960s-1970s

European welfare state of the 1960s-1970s

The decades after the end of World War II were a time of cultural vitality and increasing pluralism. On the political side, the era saw the formation of the welfare state, which attracted support from all parties but eventually also, became the target of criticism. The period also saw the decolonization of nearly all of the British Empire and the weakening of key sectors of the British economy. Suppressed populations within Britain—Scottish and Welsh nationalists, Catholics in Northern Ireland, immigrants, people of color, sexual minorities, and women—increasingly began to make their voices heard. This paper will tell how the concept of the welfare state weekend in the era of 1960s - 1970s (Zijderveld 1999, 269-282 ).

Postwar Britain

Although the Allied victory had brought much rejoicing, Britain faced numerous problems after the war, both internally and externally. The war's expense was a paramount concern: Britain had used up all of its foreign reserves of currency and had to borrow immense sums of money from the United States. After the glow of victory wore off, life was drab, food rationing was still in force, and there seemed few economic opportunities. In the years following 1945, many Britons who could afford to do so emigrated to Australia, Canada, or the United States (Rhodes 1997, 12-32).

Many in Britain expected that the general election in 1945—the first in 10 years, called after victory in Europe—would be a triumph for the Conservatives and their leader, the great wartime prime minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Instead, it was a landslide victory for the Labour Party under Churchill's wartime deputy, Clement Atlee (1883-1967), who became the new prime minister. Labour won 394 seats to the Conservatives' 210, a nearly 2-to-1 majority that ensured Labour would govern with few political checks.

The reasons for the Labour victory were many. While Churchill remained personally popular, many continued to hold the Conservative Party responsible for the economic and diplomatic errors of the 1930s. In addition, Churchill's charge that Labor's economic policies would require more state control over business and could only be enforced by a "Gestapo" (Pugh 2002, 255), coming as it did after the hard-fought victory against the Nazis and the revelations of Nazi atrocities, alienated many British voters. Labor's dominance of the home-front administration during the war gave it credibility as a government for peacetime. The party's program of housing, full employment, and social insurance also appealed to many who hoped the war would be followed by a more socially just Britain (Pierson 2006, 22-97).

The Atlee government (1945-51) was the most beneficial peacetime British government of the 20th century, laying the foundation for the British welfare state whose pillars, if battered, remain to this day. The challenges the government faced were legion. One of the most basic was housing. Thousands of houses had been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by the German bombing. In addition, much of Britain's housing stock was decrepit, poorly maintained, and in ...