Abstract
Recently there has been a trend in the literature on the postwar consensus to broaden the area of perceived consensus to incorporate foreign and defence policy.1 None the less even these accounts still place great weight on those areas in which the postwar consensus has traditionally been located: the welfare state, the mixed economy and the use of demand management to ensure full employment. With regard to the last of these, it has been conventional to argue that both Conservative and Labour governments during the 1940s and 1950s were committed to the maintenance of full employment and used Keynesian demand management to ensure this occurred.2 Frequently, the term ‘Butskellism’ has been used as a shorthand expression of this consensus.3 Whether Butskellism existed is open to debate, but to equate the term with the postwar consensus is a dubious practice. This raises the fundamental issue of definition, a great bone of contention amongst historians of the postwar consensus. Even if Butskellism can be applied to the period 1945–55, its use to describe the period after then, when neither Gaitskell nor Butler was Chancellor of the Exchequer, must be seen as unwise. How then do the three concepts of Butskellism, the postwar consensus and the managed economy relate to each other? This question will form the basis of the chapter.
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Notes
For example, A. Seldon, ‘Consensus: A Debate too Long?’, Parliamentary Affairs, 47, 1994, pp. 501–14;
and D. Kavanagh and P. Morris, Consensus Politics from Attlee to Major, 2nd edn, 1994, Oxford, Blackwell.
D. Dutton, British Politics since 1945: The Rise and Fall of Consensus, 1991, Oxford, Blackwell, p. 7; Kavanagh and Morris, 1994, pp. 4–5.
Seldon, 1994, p. 513; J. Harris, ‘Enterprise and Welfare States: A Comparative Perspective’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 40, 1990, pp. 175–95.
B. Pimlott, ‘The Myth of Consensus’, in L.M. Smith, ed., The Making of Britain: Echoes of Greatness, 1988, Basingstoke, Macmillan.
Seldon, 1994, p. 508. See also R. Lowe, ‘The Second World War, Consensus, and the Foundation of the Welfare State’, Twentieth Century British History, 1, 1990, p. 157.
N. Rollings, ‘“Poor Mr Butskell: A Short Life Wrecked by Schizophrenia”?’, Twentieth Century British History, 5, 1994, pp. 183–205.
J. Tomlinson, Employment Policy: The Crucial Years, 1939–1955, 1987, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 156.
R.A. Chapman, Ethics in the British Civil Service, 1988, London, Routledge.
K. Jones, An Economist among Mandarins, 1994, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 134.
A.K. Cairncross, ed., The Robert Hall Diaries, 1954–1961, 1991, London, Unwin Hyman, p. 166.
For an explanation of the differences, see N. Rollings, ‘British Budgetary Policy, 1945–1954: a “Keynesian Revolution”?’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XLI, 1988, pp. 292–3;
and N. Rollings, ‘The Control of Inflation in the Managed Economy: Britain 1945–53’, 1990, University of Bristol, unpublished doctoral thesis, pp. 179–94.
See also J.R. Hicks, The Problem of Budgetary Reform, 1948, London, Oxford University Press, and the Report of the Committee on the Form of Government Accounts, 1963, Cmnd. 7969.
J. Tomlinson, ‘Why Was There Never a “Keynesian Revolution” in Economic Policy?’, Economy and Society, 10, 1981, pp. 72–87.
G.C. Peden, ‘Sir Richard Hopkins and the “Keynesian Revolution” in Employment Policy, 1929–45’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXXVI, 1983, pp. 281–96.
This is one of the main arguments in the standard work on demand management in this period, J.C.R. Dow, The Management of the British Economy, 1945–60, 1964, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
A. Booth, ‘The “Keynesian Revolution” in Economic Policy-making’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXXVI, 1983, pp. 103–23;
G.C. Peden, ‘The “Treasury View” on Public Works and Employment in the Interwar Period’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXXVII, 1984, pp. 167–81;
R. Middleton, ‘The Treasury and Public Investment: A Perspective on Interwar Economic Management’, Public Administration, LXI, 1983, pp. 351–70.
For example, K. Morgan, The People’s Peace, 1990, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 171, 175;
James Foreman-Peck, ‘Trade and the Balance of Payments’, in N. Crafts and N. Woodward, eds., The British Economy since 1945, 1991, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 168;
S. Brittan, Steering the Economy, 1971, Harmondsworth, Penguin, p. 218.
Ibid. See also A. Seldon, ‘Conservative Century’, in A. Seldon and S. Ball, eds., Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900, 1994, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 49.
A. Horne, Macmillan 1957–1986: Volume II of the Official Biography, 1989, London, Macmillan.
C.S. Newton and D. Porter, Modernization Frustrated: The Politics of Industrial Decline in Britain since 1900, 1988, London, Unwin Hyman, p. 132.
A.K. Cairncross, The British Economy since 1945, 1992, Oxford, Blackwell, p. 110.
A. Taylor, ‘The Party and the Trade Unions’, in AAA Seldon and AAA Ball, 1994, p. 520. See PRO: CAB 129/88, C(57)194.
Both Macmillan and Thorneycroft point to disagreements amongst economists over the nature of inflation but then say that whatever the cause they have to do something and then conflate the two theories in PRO: CAB 128/88, C(57)194 and C(57)195 respectively. See also Cairncross, 1992, p. 109, and R. Lowe, ‘Resignation at the Treasury: The Social Services Committee and the Failure to Reform the Welfare State, 1955–57’, Journal of Social Policy, 18, 1989, p. 519.
H. Morrison, Government and Parliament, 1954, London, Oxford University Press;
and J. Eaves, Emergency Powers and the Parliamentary Watchdog: Parliament and the Executive in Great Britain 1939–1951, 1957, London, Hansard Society.
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Rollings, N. (1996). Butskellism, the Postwar Consensus and the Managed Economy. In: Jones, H., Kandiah, M. (eds) The Myth of Consensus. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24942-8_6
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