Postwar Britain — The Welfare State and Its Trials

Last time, we saw how the two world wars shook the British Empire, and how the island grew deeply exhausted in exchange for victory. Hegemony slowly passed to America, and the empire that had spread across the globe began to break apart. As it let go of the territories beyond the sea that had been its source of pride and wealth, Britain found itself facing a question: ‘After empire, what kind of country are we to become?’

One answer was not an empire reaching outward, but a state turning inward. For the people who had survived the war, the nation would support a sense of security from birth to death — such was the new promise that was raised. Yet that ideal was forever tested by reality. In this chapter, we trace the wavering half-century the postwar island lived through: from the birth of the welfare state, through decolonization, the stumble at Suez, the long economic stagnation, and the turning point of the Thatcher reforms.

From Cradle to Grave — The Birth of the Welfare State

In 1942, while the war still raged, a single report captured the nation’s heart. Compiled by the economist Beveridge, it argued that the anxieties of life — illness, unemployment, old age — should be supported by a unified system covering all citizens. Its call to confront the ‘five giants’ of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness is said to have given people, in the midst of wartime suffering, a hope for what might come after.

In the election held at the war’s end, the people chose not Churchill, the hero of victory, but the Labour Party, which pledged to expand welfare. Under the Attlee government that took office, the vision took shape one piece at a time. Most symbolic of all was the National Health Service (NHS), launched in 1948. In principle, anyone could receive medical care without worrying about money — and this system, together with the phrase ‘from cradle to grave,’ became a source of pride for postwar Britain.

The island, losing its empire abroad, gained inside itself a new form: a ‘state that supports one another.’ Yet beneath its feet, its very standing in the world was about to change dramatically.

Closing the Shop of Empire — Decolonization and the Stumble at Suez

After the war, the drive for independence rose around the world. With India’s independence in 1947 as a major turning point, the map of the former empire across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean was transformed, one region after another, into independent nations. This is called decolonization. For peoples long under rule, it was the achievement of self-determination; for Britain, it was the gradual closing of the shop of empire.

It was amid this current that the Suez Crisis erupted in 1956. When Egypt’s President Nasser declared the nationalization of the Suez Canal, Britain joined with France and Israel and resorted to military intervention. But in the face of strong opposition from the United States and the Soviet Union, and of international criticism, the operation collapsed partway through. Prime Minister Eden was soon forced to resign, and this episode is said to have made plain to all that Britain was no longer a great power that could move the world on its own.

The stumble at Suez is told as an event symbolizing the twilight of empire. The island that had once held world hegemony could no longer act on its own terms alone — accepting that reality became a great task for postwar Britain. Letting go of pride while searching for a new place to stand. That search weighed heavily not only on diplomacy but on the economy at home.

The British Disease — Long Stagnation and the Approach to Europe

From the 1960s into the 1970s, the British economy suffered a long slump. The productivity of a country once called the workshop of the world stalled, and repeated strikes, high inflation, and worsening public finances piled up together. This decline is often spoken of with the phrase ‘the British disease.’ That said, some take issue with the very label, viewing it as exaggerating the stagnation, and assessments are divided.

Seeking a way out, the island turned its eyes toward the continent. In 1973, Britain joined the European Community (EC). For an island that had long kept itself apart from the continent across the sea, stepping into its economic sphere was a major shift. Yet opinion was split over membership from the outset, and the question of ‘whether to bind ourselves deeply to the continent or keep our distance’ would go on to unsettle British society again and again.

Empire lost, the economy faltering, and uncertain how to keep its distance from Europe. In that sense of impasse, politics gradually bred an air that called for ‘a clean break by a strong leader.’ Taking on all of that expectation, a single woman prime minister stepped forward.

The Thatcher Reforms — A Turning Point That Divides Opinion

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became prime minister. What she championed was a course that shrank the role of the state and trusted the power of the market. Privatization, selling off one after another the state-run enterprises of water, electricity, gas, telecommunications, and rail; tax cuts; deregulation. And confrontation with the labour unions she saw as obstructing the rationalization of industry. In the miners’ strike of 1984 into the following year, the government and the mineworkers clashed fiercely, and its outcome is said to have left deep wounds in local communities.

Assessments of Thatcher’s reforms remain sharply divided to this day. Some praise her for breaking the stagnation and restoring vitality and competitiveness to the economy, while a persistent chorus criticizes her for widening inequality, for tearing apart the lives of communities and workers through pit closures and the like, and for wounding the spirit of a welfare state in which people support one another.

Postwar Britain let go of empire, raised up the ideal of the welfare state, and wavered between stagnation and reform. It was also a half-century in which the island that had been the master of the world searched anew, amid pain, for itself as an ordinary nation. In time, that search would converge upon one great choice. To walk together with Europe, or to choose a path alone? In the next chapter, we look at this question that modern Britain faced — and at what lies beyond it.