© John Barnes
Political Change
24 November 2000
Lecture 8
It is time to return to one of the major themes in the historiography of postwar Britain and to ask whether British politics in the period 1945 to 1975 was characterised by an unusual degree of agreement and continuity. We have already seen good reason to doubt whether the Attlee Governments fit this pattern. Jefferys, who disputes the truth of the wartime consensus, argued that the mould of postwar politics was set in the late 1940s (it is only fair to add that in his latest book, Retreat from New Jerusalem, he expresses scepticism about consensus in the 1950s also), but there is a good deal of evidence to show that the younger Labour ministers were in favour of continuing with physical controls, particularly the control of imports and prices [Tomlinson], that they were dubious about GATT, wished to keep the EPU as far as possible a bilateral rather than a multilateral system [Burnham] and refused to submerge Britain's socialist identity in the European Coal and Steel Community [Dell & others]. Accounts of the first decade of Conservative government after the war have nevertheless assumed consensus, best subsumed in that well-known term "Butskellism".
In their pioneering collection of essays, The Age of Affluence 1951-1964, Bogdanor & Skidelsky noted that "in economics, as in foreign policy, consensus reigned, Consensus is, indeed, a fundamental idea in understanding the politics of the 1950s." However, they attributed to it both "a real humanising and civilising of the political battle" and an unquestioning "acceptance of traditional assumptions concerning Britain's political and economic role in the world." Like Gamble in his account of The Conservative Nation they sensed that the pursuit (and it should be said achievement) of economic growth was a way of avoiding "important political choices". With surprisingly few exceptions, the available literature for the first decade of Conservative Government after the war, continues to assume consensus, although the last decade has seen criticism, once voiced only in lecture courses, taken up by a younger school of revisionist historians. More senior figures like Dutton, Kavanagh, Lowe and Seldon continue to adhere to the earlier view. Battle is therefore joined. The pursuit of consensus is said to have been helped by the ability of the Government to deliver increasing prosperity and the consequent easing of class tensions. Thus Morgan writes of the general perception that Britain in the 1950s was "a land that had clambered out of post-war austerity, without dismantling the welfare apparatus and communal underpinnings that Labour rule had brought. Conservative efficiency in management had reinforced the social conscience. The general tone was one of buoyancy."
Clearly the existence and, should it be seen to exist, the nature of the consensus in the 1950s will be the central concern of today's lecture, but the focus of debate is beginning to shift. My own revisionist essay in Ruling Performance was concerned to explore earlier charges that these had been "wasted years" and Jefferys more recently has returned to this theme, giving it a normative spin of his own. Not only was Britain "less consensual and more socially divided than often assumed" but Conservative governments had "failed to modernise" and had created a "politics, centred above all else, on securing individual advancement via material prosperity." Hence Jefferys' title, Retreat from New Jerusalem, and his endorsement of the charge, made in the main by left-inclined social critics, that public purpose had been sacrificed to the pursuit of private affluence. Jefferys acknowledges that the retreat was a complex, multi-level and multi-faceted process and that the Wilson governments accelerated the process, but "there was no doubt when the rot set in: it was during the 1950s."
As we have seen, defining precisely what is meant by consensus is problematic Agreement about the rules of the game may extend to some generally desired goals - although not necessarily, or indeed usually, to the means of reaching them. More surprisingly there may be agreement on particular policies, even though the parties may differ about the ends they are intended to serve. Equally there is likely to be considerable agreement on what are the main problems facing Government at any given moment. But the term is inherently descriptive and offers no explanation as to why consensus formation takes place. There are several on offer and some work in together: -
1) Seldon lays stress on civil service advice: there may be areas of policy in which a particular civil servant's advice is dominant; in others civil servants and interest groups work together as a policy community (MAFF and the NFU offer one example and education affords another); the intellectual framework in which policy is set may constrain non-technical ministers (the role of forecasting in economic policy-making, for example); and the control/shaping of information on which ministerial decisions are based works to the civil service's advantage. In general they are plausible in advancing considerations of technocratic rationality, functional necessity or "reality".
2) Part of what is being advanced by the civil service is a way of viewing the world that may extend far beyond the civil service and amount to a mind-set. The way in which Britain's great power status was viewed is a complex mix in which tradition, obligation and reality all play a part. New ideas, for example on mental health or on the nuclear deterrent, can make headway and may amount to a new paradigm in particular policy areas. Keynesianism is making progress throughout the 1950s and even amongst those who do not fully understand it, has entered into the mind-set sufficiently to influence conduct.
3) As is normal, much past thinking is embodied in a particular institutional configuration and the reality of that configuration in turn constrains policy. The importance of the City is a given even though the value of the sterling area and indeed of the pound itself is more debatable. Inevitably that means that the City's perception of reality and indeed that of the international banking circles in which they move will matter greatly. It may therefore be necessary, even if a Government might wish to do otherwise, to "restore confidence" in sterling rather than let the pound go.
4) Gamble speaks of the politics of power (perceived national interest) and the politics of support. Another Seldon suggestion is that there is a front bench or possibly elite consensus, which subordinates ideology to the practicalities of problem solving. This could be confined to those who he describes as "governmentalists". But there is a need also to maintain support.
5) Finally, there is the suggestion, argued in The Age of Affluence but to be found elsewhere, particularly in Beer's Modern British Politics and even in Jefferys, that in a two party system where both parties are able to mobilise substantially over 40% of the vote, both parties will be led to seek the middle ground and to eschew policies which might alienate large segments of the population. What Oppenheimer characterises as "bread and circuses" and Beer as "pensioneering" is characteristic of politics in the 1950s.
Some questioning comments are in order, however. By far the most convincing of these arguments concern the constraints on ministerial action and their concern to pursue what they perceive to be the "national interest". If political actors paid no attention to these factors, their advisers would certainly draw them to their attention, nor are the relevant interests backward in coming forward.
There is clearly some truth in the proposition advanced about the civil service, but it can easily be overdone. While Seldon's notion of a front bench consensus is over time is persuasive, it derives from his discovery of the importance of civil servants when researching the activities of Churchill's postwar Government and it could be argued per contra that the surviving records privilege civil servants over other actors. The situational constraints on an incoming government as mediated through the civil service imply substantial continuity of policy, but the civil service is not a monolith. Departments and even divisions within departments have their own idea of where the national interest lies and ministers matter. Talk of a Keynesian consensus in economic policy making is highly controversial even when related to the Treasury, and if ministers are brought into the argument, wholly misleading. Gaitskell clearly made policy in the last fifteen months or so of Labour Government and current research suggests that Butler too mattered.
There was in any case a disposition on the part of civil servants, in the light of the winning manifesto, to anticipate and think through what their new masters would want. It is likely that the bulk of the civil service were more attuned to the prejudices of the incoming ministers in 1951 than they were to their Socialist predecessors, but there is little or no evidence to suggest that they had not served the outgoing Government faithfully. Indeed their ethos is best exemplified by S.S.Wilson, who was quite ready to instruct the new Minister of Supply as to how best he should denationalise the Iron and Steel industry even though or perhaps because he had been responsible for the bill nationalising it: he was bitter that Sandys was not ready to entrust him with the job.
Electoral considerations matter, although (as Gamble reminds us) the politics of support means that the Government has to operate not just in the electoral market place but also in two related areas, the Parliamentary party and party activists more generally. In addition Downs makes the point that each party "must differentiate its product from all near substitutes, yet it must also prove this product has every virtue that any of the substitutes possesses." However, as Peter Utley put it, the central problem for Conservative policymakers was "how to combine full employment with low prices and a production great enough to make the welfare state safe." If that really was what mattered, it did not preclude a considerable shift in policy after 1951 although it indicated perhaps that the nature of the Conservative appeal should be (in Gamble's words) "overwhelmingly pragmatic".
The apogee of this type of rhetoric is to be found perhaps in Quintin Hogg's introduction to a CPC pamphlet, Prospect for Capitalism (1958): "The fantastic growth of the economy, the spectacular rise in the standard of living, the substantial redistribution of wealth, the generous development of social welfare, and the admitted humanizing of private industry, have rendered obsolete the whole intellectual framework within which Socialist discussion used to be conducted."
In 1955 the principal election slogan was "Invest in success" and the manifest posed a simple question to the electorate: "Which were better for themselves, for their families and for their country? The years of Socialism or the years of Conservatism that have followed." In 1958 the message was stark: "Conservatives give you a better standard of Living - Don't let Labour ruin it."
The assumption that ideology was at a discount and that there was an underlying consensus has recently been challenged by Harriet Jones, Michael Kandiah and other young Turks. Their case will undoubtedly be strengthened when Harriet Jones's account of Conservative social policy appears.
To test their arguments, it is worth looking at policy in a number of areas, beginning with those where continuity seems most obvious: -
(a) Health. The Conservatives had been critical of the NHS as designed by Bevan and in conjunction with the BMA had secured one important modification - the position of the doctors. After 1951 the structure of the NHS remained unchallenged. As a priority it languished behind housing and it was subject to continued assault by the Treasury. Prescription and dental charges were introduced and subsequently a new health stamp in 1957. Administrative practicalities came to the Department's aid, but the major bastion was the Guillebaud Committee. Consistency in action did not always mean consistency in thought, as Timmins observes. Health did not even keep its place in the Cabinet, and when Powell arrived, despite his later reputation as one of the great Health ministers, he increased the proportion of NHS expenditure met by charges to 5.6% and continued the switch towards funding through National Insurance (22% came from charges and insurance combined), hence Titmuss's charge that his 1961 package was "the final charge of dynamite under the welfare state".
(b) Social Security. Labour had not been good about uprating. The Conservatives were more generous, although they allowed an increasing number in receipt of National Assistance (1.6 million in 1958). It was increasingly clear that a funding crunch would come. Boyd Carpenter counters Crossman's earnings related pensions with his graduated pension scheme, deliberately designed to ensure that the fund would meet "pay as you go". Beveridge's aim to relate contribution to final pension disappeared and the principle of "opting out" was brought in to the system, not in relation to the basic pension but the graduated element.
(c) Housing. The immediate drive was to get 300,000 houses a year (General subsidies raised; licensing and development charge go; 1953: 318,000; 1954: 357,000), but by the mid 1950s there was a clear switch in emphasis. Macmillan's cautious Rent and Repairs Act 1954 was followed by a switch from general subsidy to specific subsidy aimed at slum clearance and the Rent Act of 1957, which began the task of dismantling Rent Control. Labour's counter was the municipalisation of rented housing, adopted by the 1956 Conference and included in the 1959 manifesto. Macmillan had encouraged the private developer. By 1959 his Government had put the House Purchase and Housing Act on the statute book (subsidies to Building Societies to provide 95% mortgages on pre 1919 houses; 100% local authority mortgages etc.).
(d) Education. In opposition Labour shifted to endorsing the comprehensive school and Conservative policy hardened in favour of the tripartite model. Important developments in Further Education driven through by Eccles with the backing of Eden had a dual motivation, but were in some measure "second chance".
(e) Action taken to cut food subsidies.
(f) Cuts in direct taxation.
There remain points of agreement between the parties although it is arguable how much on the Conservative side was driven by the need to retain the working class vote. Most obvious of all was reluctance to allow unemployment to rise beyond a certain point, even though there were arguments from Conservative backbenchers and well-disposed economists to suggest that a shade more unemployment would reduce inflationary pressures.
But the policy followed was very different.
(a) Monetary policy.
(b) Convertibility. The defeat of ROBOT should not obscure
(1) that convertibility on a floating rate was a persistent aim; and
(2) that Labour was hesitant (Gaitskell opposed) about convertibility even on a fixed exchange rate.
(c) Abandonment of controls 1952-54 (these had comprised price control, restrictions on the manufacture and supply of certain non-food products, utility schemes, import controls replaced private trading in raw materials and food, allocation schemes, especially iron and steel, rationing. Building controls) and a return to free markets. Agriculture Act 1953. Some remained until late 1950s: coal (until 1958), scrap, export licenses for some iron and steel products and of course Capital Issues and exchange control. Labour more critical than Henderson suggests and the economy by 1955 was virtually free of rationing, licensing and physical controls.
(d) Free Trade. The decision to stay in GATT and clash with the Imperial visionaries.
(e) Keynesian budgeting, but how genuine?
(f) The 1957 crisis. Thorneycroft's resignation often taken to mark a shift. Cuts in welfare avoided, in part for electoral reasons, in part because they would have contributed to upward pressure on wages. But illusion that there were serious differences of view over disinflation.
Overall it can be argued that the Government was not over generous in its provision for the welfare state in comparison to the rest of Europe.
If one is talking about a front bench consensus produced by the realities of power, then something like that clearly can be found in the foreign policy area, and arguably in colonial policy also. However, as the Labour party came under pressure from CND, there were moves by Labour's front bench to differentiate itself, e.g. by pressing for a nuclear free zone in central Europe or committing the British deterrent wholly to Nato; it is only fair to add in fairness to protagonists of a front bench consensus that these policies came to nothing when Labour returned to office.
Focusing on the tensions within Keynesianism as the term is used in the literature and also on the lack of attention paid to essential continuities within the institutional configuration of the British state and its governing assumptions, Kerr has recently argued that the term obscures far more than it reveals. If one accepts the truth of that proposition, and there has long been good reason to do so, the nagging question remains - with what do we replace it as a heuristic device to illuminate the dynamics of state development in Britain?