Introduction

Abstract

This book is intended as a study of British political responses to the demands generated by a century of almost continuous crisis. The theme of the book is the evolution of concepts of the state to meet the inexorable consequences of economic and social change. Britain has, in fact, negotiated the twentieth century remarkably successfully. Compared with the history of most developed nations in the twentieth century, that of Britain has been comparatively uneventful. There has been nothing like the events that occurred in Russia in 1917, nor what happened in Germany and Italy between the wars, nor even what happened in the United States in the Roosevelt era or during the Vietnam war. How does one account for the fact that Britain has come relatively unscathed, remained comparatively stable, through the experiences of the last one hundred years?