The coalition government during the war, headed by
Churchill and Attlee, signed off on a series of white papers that promised Britain a much improved welfare state after the war. The promises included the national health service, and expansion of education, housing, and a number of welfare programmes. It included the nationalisation of weak industries. In education, the major legislation was the
Education Act 1944, written by Conservative
Rab Butler, a moderate, with his deputy, Labour's
James Chuter Ede, a former teacher who would become
Home Secretary throughout the Attlee administration. It expanded and modernised the educational system and became part of the consensus. The Labour Party did not challenge the system of elite
public schools – they became part of the consensus. It also called for building many new universities to dramatically broaden educational base of society. Conservatives did not challenge the socialised medicine of the National Health Service; indeed, they boasted they could do a better job of running it. In terms of foreign policy, there is much evidence to suggest that there was a shared set of views that were rooted in role of the recent history.
Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris emphasise the importance of the
Second World War, and war time cabinet, in yielding a set of values that were shared amongst the major parties rooted in the events leading up to the war: "Atlanticism, the development of an independent nuclear deterrent, the process of imperial disengagement and reluctant Europeanism: all originated in the 1945 Labour Government and were subsequently continued...by its successors". However, there were some disagreement on areas of foreign policy, such as the introduction of the
Commonwealth where "Labour opposed the conservative 'imperial rhetoric' with the idealism of multicultural Commonwealth" or, in the same vein,
decolonization, which became "an important theme of partisan conflict" in which Conservatives showed a reluctance to give back colonial possessions as well as the gradual process of independence. It is argued that from 1945 until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, there was a broad multi-partisan national consensus on social and economic policy, especially regarding the welfare state, nationalised health services, educational reform, a mixed economy, government regulation, Keynesian macroeconomic policies, and full employment. Apart from the question of nationalisation of some industries, these policies were broadly accepted by the three major parties, as well as by industry, the financial community and the labour movement. Until the 1980s, historians generally agreed on the existence and importance of the consensus. Some historians such as
Ralph Miliband expressed disappointment that the consensus was a modest or even conservative package that blocked a fully socialised society. Historian
Angus Calder complained bitterly that the post-war reforms were an inadequate reward for the wartime sacrifices, and a cynical betrayal of the people's hope for a more just post-war society. However, it is still important to note that there was not total agreement between the two major parties and there were still policies which the Conservatives did not support, such as how the National Health Service would be implemented.
Henry Willink, who was the Conservative minister of health from 1943–1945, opposed the nationalisation of hospitals. This could indicate that the post-war consensus may have been exaggerated, as many historians have argued.
Labour revisionism The Future of Socialism by
Anthony Crosland, published in 1956, was one of the most influential books in post-war British Labour Party thinking. It was the seminal work of the 'revisionist' school of Labour politics. A central argument in the book is Crosland's distinction between 'means' and 'ends'. Crosland demonstrates the variety of socialist thought over time, and argues that a definition of socialism founded on nationalisation and public ownership is mistaken, since these are simply one possible means to an end. For Crosland, the defining goal of the left should be more social equality. Crosland also argued that an attack on unjustified inequalities would give any left party a political project to make the definition of the end point of 'how much equality' a secondary and more academic question. Crosland also developed his argument about the nature of capitalism (developing the argument in his contribution 'The Transition from Capitalism' in the 1952
New Fabian Essays volume). Asking, "is this still capitalism?", Crosland argued that post-war capitalism had fundamentally changed, meaning that the Marxist claim that it was not possible to pursue equality in a capitalist economy was no longer true. Crosland wrote that: Crosland argued that these features of a reformed managerial capitalism were irreversible. Others within the Labour Party argued that Margaret Thatcher and
Ronald Reagan brought about its reversal. A third important argument was Crosland's liberal vision of the 'good society'. Here his target was the dominance in Labour and Fabian thinking of
Sidney Webb and
Beatrice Webb, and a rather grey, top down bureaucratic vision of the socialist project.
Butskellism "Butskellism" was a somewhat satirical term sometimes used in British politics to refer to this consensus, established in the 1950s and associated with the exercise of office as
Chancellor of the Exchequer by Rab Butler of the Conservatives and Hugh Gaitskell of Labour. The term was inspired by a leading article in
The Economist by
Norman Macrae which dramatised the claimed convergence by referring to a fictitious "Mr. Butskell". ==Debate about consensus==