Here, Morgan (Principal of The Univ. College of Wales, Albertswyth)
presents a fine scholarly narrative history of postwar Britain.
Morgan claims that WW II's great moral achievement was the spirit
of national unity that brought British classes together in a
people's war. Ideally, a People's Peace would follow, when Attlee's
new Labour government of 1945, backed by powerful trade unions and
Keynesian economic theories, promised to redress inequalities of
class and region. But instead, Morgan finds, cracks in the "mask of
unity" developed when shortages and austerity persisted into the
postwar years. Rising taxes, inflation, bureaucracies, public debt,
and trade deficits brought the Conservatives to power, which
compromised socialist trends. Morgan recounts how patricians and
others mourned the retreat from Empire that culminated in the
disaster at Suez, and he discusses the revival of nationalism in
deprived Celtic areas of Scotland and Wales and the racism that
followed the waves of black and Asian immigration. Finally, Morgan
describes the toppling of Wilson's Labour regime by strikes and
economic decline, and its replacement by the Thatcher group and the
rising middle classes. He concludes that the average Briton,
despite problems, enjoyed a time of peace and stability in these
times, while not missing the burdens of Empire. Comprehensive and
well-detailed, as Morgan illuminates the complacency of British
society and the irony of Britain's decline in the postwar world in
contrast to the rise of defeated Germany and Japan. (Kirkus
Reviews)
Kenneth Morgan has won wide acclaim as one of the finest historians
of twentieth century Britain. His works have been hailed as
"history at its very best" by New Society--the finest combination
of rigorous scholarship and lucid, enjoyable writing. Now comes The
People's Peace, the most comprehensive and authoritative look at
post-war Britain ever written.
In The People's Peace, Morgan paints a richly detailed portrait of
British social and political history from the end of the Second
World War up through the rule of Margaret Thatcher. It was a time
when the British, having pulled together to win what was called
"the people's war," looked forward to a people's peace--a peace of
plenty and equality, provided by the Labour government's dramatic
new welfare programs. But Morgan shows how the nation staggered
under the debt of the war, struggling to rebuild its economy for a
rapidly changing world. He examines Britain's fitful retreat from
its imperial legacy, depicting the surprising popularity of the
withdrawal from India and other colonies, and the shock of the Suez
Crisis--when the U.S. made Britain's reduced role in the world
painfully clear. Morgan also provides an insightful look at the
changing popular culture, from the Teddy Boys to the massive
adulation of the Beatles, as well as rising consumerism,
permissiveness, and the ugly racism that met the tide of African,
Asian, and Caribbean immigrants.
From the debates over the welfare state, to the Profumo scandal,
to the disillusionment with Wilson's chaotic Labour regime (leading
to rumors of a military coup), to the crisis of strikes and
economic decline that brought Margaret Thatcher to power, Morgan
provides a lucid narrative of Britain's post-war politics. Even
after Thatcher's apparent revival of the U.K.'s vitality, he
writes, it still remains a land of tremendous inequality, split
between a decaying industrial north and a growing high-tech south,
the Celtic fringe and English heartland, the well-paid and the
unemployed--locked into decades-old patterns. "In forty-four
years," he writes, "the British had yet to recover from victory in
the Second World War, even though the Germans and Japanese had so
manifestly recovered from defeat."
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