The historical context: British politics since 1945

Abstract

This chapter rests squarely on the assumption that British politics today cannot be properly grasped without an understanding of the country’s post-war history. British politics was transformed in the last half of the 20th century by an interplay of external and internal pressures. Britain’s changing role in the world, resulting from loss of empire and world power status, and its growing engagement with Europe, has involved a painful process of readjustment, which remains incomplete. The attempt of successive British governments to maintain a world role adversely affected the British economy, which was simultaneously stretched by a huge expansion in government spending at home from the 1939–45 war onwards. This involved the development of a new welfare state providing a system of social security ‘from the cradle to the grave’.