Abstract
The question of whether (and in what senses) the period after 1940 was characterised by a political consensus has been debated almost exclusively within the framework of domestic policy. Yet the war which spawned commitments to full employment and the welfare state, it should be remembered, was primarily a struggle for Britain’s survival as a great power. In the thirty years that followed, Britain shrank from the status of a global leader with far-flung imperial interests to a less certain position on the fringes of Europe. This adjustment occupied much of the energies and resources of Cabinets, officials and political parties. That the ‘consensus’ debate has made such advances on its home front while neglecting issues such as the Atlantic Alliance, European integration and the end of empire is therefore a serious deficiency.
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Notes
Paul Addison, ‘Epilogue: “The Road to 1945” Revisited’, in The Road to 1945, 1994, London, Pimlico, 2nd edn, pp. 279–92;
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There are early signs, however, of right-wing revisionism on the question of Europe. See John Charmley, Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940–57, 1995, London, John Curtis/Hodder and Stoughton.
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For Bennett’s plan, see Ronald Hyam, ed., The Labour Government and the End of Empire 1945–1951, 1992, London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies/HMSO, introduction, p. xxxix, and II, 174. For the planning of the new African policy,
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See Philip Murphy, Party Politics and Decolonization: The Conservative Party and British Colonial Policy in Tropical Africa, 1951–1964, 1995, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 42–5; Goldsworthy, 1971, pp. 193–8.
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G.K. Evens, Public Opinion on Colonial Affairs, June 1948, London, HMSO NS 119.
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Nicholas Owen, ‘Responsibility Without Power: The Attlee Governments and the End of British Rule in India’, in Nick Tiratsoo, ed., The Attlee Years, 1991, London, Pinter.
Nicholas Owen, ‘More Than a Transfer of Power: Independence Day Ceremonies in India, 15 August 1947’, Contemporary Record, 6, 3 (Winter 1992), pp. 415–51.
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Owen, N. (1996). Decolonisation and Postwar Consensus. In: Jones, H., Kandiah, M. (eds) The Myth of Consensus. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24942-8_9
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