Labour's High Noon [antikvár]

Preface This collection of essays was conceived as one of two, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Labour's electoral victory of 1945. The second. Culture and Society in Labour Britain, is planned for next year. Contributors to this volume have analysed different aspects of Labour's economic policies, showing their relationship with pre-war Labour Movement discussions, with wartime experience and with Keynesian theory, as well as with colonial and foreign policy. Other writers show the effect of these policies on trade unionists, on women workers, Scotland and immigrants. Taken as a whole the essays give both an account and a critique of Labour's economic policies. They include a number of topics which other books on the period have either ignored or touched on only lightly. There are, naturally, differences of emphasis between different writers. All to some extent, but some more than others, point to the long-term consequences of what the Labour governments did or did not do. Some topics are treated more critically than others. This is inevitable because, while the post-war Labour governments can be credited with great achievements, they can also be accused of having taken paths which led to the negation of many of the hopes of 1945. The achievements come through clearly in these essays, so do the criticisms. The quarter of a century following the Labour victory of 1945 î was a time both of full employment and, on the whole, economic growth. It can also, with the construction of the Welfare State, be ^ claimed as a time of greater social justice and social stability than the fc years which preceded or followed it. Looking back from today's F bleaker landscape, it is tempting to think of those years as the golden i age of social democracy. Yet this would be to forget the discontents & [i'