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Building a New Jerusalem?: Labour in Power 1945-51, Part II - Page 3

© Joseph Sramek

Lastly, Corelli Barnett's argument that the Labour Government should have focused their attention on building and repairing industrial plants rather than building and repairing houses is quite disingenuous as well. To suggest that the Labour Government should have done things completely differently, forgoing the establishment of the Welfare State and building of houses for increased investment in the industrial plant of the country, belies common sense. Politics is about the art of the possible at any given moment, not necessarily about the long-term. To suggest that a democratically elected government would have been able to forgo building houses, or establishing a Welfare State that many Britons wanted just does not make much sense. Instead of placing all the blame for Britain's anemic economic position during the post-war period squarely on the shoulders of the Labour Government, I would suggest that Barnett take another look at the Governments of the 1930s and their appeasement policies that caused Britain to enter war in 1939 economically ill-prepared.

Footnotes:

[1] Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 186.

[2] David Vincent, Poor Citizens: The State and the Poor in Twentieth Century Britain, (New York and London: Longman, 1991), p. 132.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Corelli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities; 1945-1950, (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 142.

[6] Ibid., p. 154.

[7] Ibid., pp. 163-4.

[8] Ibid., p. 128.

[9] Jose Harris, "Society and the state in 20th century Britain," in F.M.L. Thompson, ed., the Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750-1950, vol. 3, (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 74, 78, 89.

[10] Ibid., p. 99.

[11] Morgan, p. 494.

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