Broken Promises and the Remaking of Political Trust: Debating Reconstruction in Britain During the Second World War

Abstract

Narratives about broken promises following the First World War continued to inform public perceptions of politicians and political parties during the fervour of debate about reconstruction in the 1940s. This chapter offers an interpretation of the political culture of Britain in the Second World War. Rather than focusing on the much-discussed ‘leftward’ shift in public opinion and the specific areas of policy that shaped the platform for the Labour party’s victory at the 1945 general election, it considers the ways in which reconstruction was framed as a political programme. This was a period in which trust in politicians needed to be re-established, amidst arguments not just about what the ‘new Britain’ might look like, but about when and whether it would be delivered as promised.