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Clement Attlee, however, was not any better of a choice. The mass nationalization of industry after World War II crippled the recovery and made it difficult for Britain to enjoy post-war prosperity. It wasn't until Margaret Thatcher came along that Britain really managed to shake off the economic funk of World War II.
It's a bit more complicated or nuanced than that. Actually, the British economy grew fairly rapidly in the 1950s getting out of the war, and exceeding its wartime base. In 1955, unemployment was just 1%. To pay for the war debts, Britain really turned to exports to earn hard currency, and they were pretty successful - the Brits exported much of their motor vehicle output. Plus some of their major industrial competitors were still in ruins (e.g. Germany).
However, as the 1960s dawned, some of the economies which were devastated e.g. Germany, France, Japan, had recovered from their wartime destruction and were now competing with the British in markets, with up-to-date industrial technology, while the British failed to keep pace and stalled, relatively speaking.
As for nationalization - it usually doesn't work when it's used to prop up unhealthy companies(example being British Leyland) but can be successful in terms of providing infrastructure (conversely, the privatization of British Rail has been problematic).
It is hard to say exactly for a couple of reasons.
Churchill was a wartime president. He was not really in touch with the people who had gone through the years of doing without and surviving the war. And even in the U.S. the people had to endure great hardship although we never had any real attacks on the homeland (we had a few minor ones). After WWII, the country was in turmoil here at home. In England, they had to do major rebuilding of their nation and get back to living lives of normalcy.
Churchill was eventually restored to power in the 1950s but it was difficult to turn back the clock. Then his health began to fail. He had a stroke in office that was concealed from the public. Eventually he regained his ability to make a strong speech but the "starch" had gone out of him because of his age and infirmities.
I agree completely about Margaret Thatcher. I regard her as a savior to the British people because the policies of previous administrations had basically bankrupted the nation. And the unions controlled everything.
She had a steel backbone and it is for this reason she is reviled among so many who believe that money grows on trees to be ladled out to the masses. If we are not careful we will suffer the same fate with our politicians who bribe the voters with their own (or others) money to vote for them. If we don't get a handle on this our collapse will be inevitable.
But as with all mortal men and women, they can and do make mistakes. FDR made more than his fair share of them in his day. And even today Lincoln is reviled by those who for various reasons disagreed with his draconian actions during our Civil War. No leader is perfect. But a weak, indecisive leader is the worst kind of leader.
I regard her as a savior to the British people because the policies of previous administrations had basically bankrupted the nation. And the unions controlled everything.
Yeah, now just the banks are doing the bankrupting
The people absolutely DID NOT make a mistake electing the Labour party. Never forget the People of the UK had been through the same thing one generation previously at the end of WW1. They had been promised all kinds of reforms due to them for their sacrifice in the war and basically were betrayed to the max when nothing much changed at all. Economic statistics really mean very little to the common man and in many, many respects do not even apply to his life in the least. At the time the British empire controlled three quarters of the planet and was the richest country on earth, the average man was little better than a serf. You have all heard of the "Trickle Down" theory of economics, well there was precious little trickling in the unreformed Capitalist system not just in the UK but all throughout Europe.
It was a common view in the labour party that the war that had just been fought was fundamentally a war fought over economic interests with the Nazis representing "Big Business", unrestricted access to resources owned by others and the complete abandonment of ALL of the rights of labour. This was not far from the truth and that was the primary reason all of western Europe fell so easily to the Nazis. Their own leaders were not much different than the Nazis themselves and would prefer the Nazis to a native "Progressive" a "Red" as they called them. The real rulers of France before the war were known as "the two hundred families". They represented all of the economic cartels that owned France. They were such traitors they actually called their country, "The third republic" the ****. They hated their socialist premier to the degree they had a slogan, "Better Hitler than Blum"
There was also a large group of these same economic royalists in the UK. They had never wanted to fight the Nazis in the first place, being much like them in reality. After the war there was absolutely no way the people were going to let these same people take control once again and rightly so.
If so it was an inevitable one. Too many people remembered last time, when the soldiers had been promised "a land fit for heroes" and then promptly consigned to the dole.
We had had a couple of Labour governments, but both had been short-lived minority ones, so didn't prove very much. We had to go for a majority Labour government sometime, if only to teach ourselves what it was like, and so inoculate ourselves against it for some time into the future.
That's a pretty spurious list. Guess what? Britain's manufacturing was already in the tank before she moved into No. 10 Downing Street. The interest rates were jacked up to deal with inflation, echoing the moves performed by central banks around the world (Read up on Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserves), the IRA was being held to account for acts of criminal terror by taking away their political legitimacy. As far as the rest goes, Free Milk? Really?
No, I can't imagine any objective person actually preferring the likes of Edward Heath over her. I have plenty of friends and family who are British, and they are pretty unanimous in their appreciation of Margaret Thatcher. Here is one article that gives a better perspective on how she kept Britain from becoming the continents next economic basketcase.
Did the British make a mistake in the 1945 elections?
America emerged almost unscathed from the war, which is what made the 50s such an economically robust decade for us.
The Brits were much more actively engaged in that conflict and for two years longer than we were. Many of their cities and industries were heavily damaged and they, as well as the rest of the industrialized world, were digging out of the rubble. They were tired of it all and wanted a different future than what Churchill was offering. In any case, it was their call and not ours. Winston got another term as PM later on, anyway. He didn't suffer.
One only has to observe that 1945 was a end to constant wars for centuries between European powers. WWI end with massive losses of troops and many disabled. Then WWII dang near destroyed all of Europe. British people where on rations into the 1950's. Basically people voted for what they thought would end the class sacrifice and needed help to even get by after WWII .Never forget tho that allies in Europe tried to hold there empire possession long after the war. and even expanded on what Germany loss.
That's a pretty spurious list. Guess what? Britain's manufacturing was already in the tank before she moved into No. 10 Downing Street. The interest rates were jacked up to deal with inflation, echoing the moves performed by central banks around the world (Read up on Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserves), the IRA was being held to account for acts of criminal terror by taking away their political legitimacy. As far as the rest goes, Free Milk? Really?
No, I can't imagine any objective person actually preferring the likes of Edward Heath over her. I have plenty of friends and family who are British, and they are pretty unanimous in their appreciation of Margaret Thatcher. Here is one article that gives a better perspective on how she kept Britain from becoming the continents next economic basketcase.
Maybe it would be better to ask - who gained and who lost under the Thatcher years? Or at what cost? It's not so simple. If you were an industrial worker in the Rust Belt, you probably didn't do well. If you were in the south, in the financial industry, you did splendidly.
Which is why Thatcher continues to be a controversial and divisive figure, even after her death. That's pretty much something that can be agreed upon.
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Did the British make a mistake in the 1945 elections?
