The underside of the welfare state

Abstract

The post-war welfare settlement marks the culmination of a century of incremental democratisation and working-class integration into the nation. This chapter however reveals its long-occluded underside by showing such integration into the nation was resourced through the combined economic returns of empire abroad and the super-exploitation of migrant labour at home. Racism, as it had throughout the previous century, formed a constitutive feature of this final phase of the democratic settlement, helping to solidify colour-coded hierarchies of labour both within and beyond the boundaries of the British state. The chapter also discusses how the British empire – the financial cornerstone of this domestic inter-class truce – starts to crumble just as the final touches are put to the apotheosis of the domestic democratic settlement. The subsequent history of British politics along with the accompanying conflicts and fissures that would culminate in the Scottish independence referendum and Brexit are the convoluted artefact of the fundamental conundrum that has stumped the British state and its ruling class ever since: how to maintain its geopolitical influence and sustain the relative competitiveness of British capitalism in the aftermath of empire while continuing to deliver a level of social, economic and psychic security that could guarantee the maintenance of domestic social order. This chapter traces the twists and turns between the years of 1945 and 1970, particularly the contradictions and conflicts they produced, and the development of new strategies to maintain social order and capitalist rule.