History - Britain 1951-2007

Key events

• 1953 end of Korean war
• Rationing is ended
• 1953 Iron and steel industry is denationalised
• Committed to building 300,000 houses a year
• 1952 Atomic bomb
• Adopting of keynesian policies

• Chancellor of Exchequer, modern conservatism (education act 1944)
• Keynesian economics - full employment/economic growth/expansion of welfare state
• Believed economic control via monetary policy, interest rates
• 1953 Korean war - a lot of money, cost of defence 1951 = 14% GDP
• Ideology thought so close to labour, the term 'Butskelism' was coined by joung Butler's name to his labour counterpart Gaitskell

• Real wages across 51-55 rose by 2.2% in real terms
• 1954 rationing ended
• Housing target, 1954 c.350,000, largely through local authority housing programmes
• spending on social services increased by 39.2%, however introduced prescription charges, BUT this was good = + BOP for NHS

• 1950 North Korea invaded South Korea with supporting sanctions of the USSR
• South Korea appealed to UN
• American troops supported south under UN supervision
• July 1950 British troops entered Korea supporting the South and USA, by Jan 1951 = 10,000 troops
• Chinese joined the north of Korea
• Armistice signed 1953
• Consequences - communism Vs liberalism
• Defence cost 14% GDP 
• Stalin died in 1953, WC saw oppurtunity to act as mediator between USA and USSR
• Sep 1954 the Sotuh East Asian Trety Organisation was assigned as a defensive allians, jointly guaranteed by USA and BR.

• 1950 European defence community set up - supranational agreement. 
• 1951 Economic coal and steel community set up, The big 6 supranational

• Reduced income tax 1953-54
• 1952 BOP converted to £259m despite inheriting - £700m
• Stop go policies, Bank rate cut 52' and 53', increased 54' and 55'
• Not a lot done to tackled the long term relative decline of Br, industrial production of France = 3x facter and west germany = 4x faster

• Monckton, minister of Labour, given instructions to be conciliatory to the Unions
• Example, 1954, public sector strike, railway dispute, government intervened and gave concessions to the strikers.
• Churchill's gov no sanctions or new legislation to interfere with picketing/closed shop

• Continued on the tripartite sustem as set out in the Butler act, despite the widening social divisions between grammar school educated children and those who went to secondory modern which facing up to 60,000 teaching shortages
• 1954 opening of Kid Brooke school, first comprehensive 

Seldon - a period of "consolidation rather than innovation was the order of the day"

Addelman "period of industrial peace"

Addision "Between 1949 and 1953 Churchill lead the conservative party to the middle ground of politics"