ABSTRACT
Whatever the rest of the world may have expected, the British people did not spend much energy grieving over their lost empire or hankering after past glories. Apart from crises in which Britain was directly involved, such as Berlin in 1948, Suez in 1956 and the Falklands in 1982, little of what was occurring in the outside world distracted them from domestic concerns. Their attention was overwhelmingly fixed on the economy at home, on wage bargaining and wage restraint, on the trade unions and their growing power, on whether Britain could keep pace with, and later whether it could catch up with, the spectacular progress of its West European neighbours, above all on whether people felt confident about better times ahead. These issues decided elections. Chancellors of the exchequer had to develop policies that would create the right economic conditions and the right mood on election day. Labour and the Conservatives attacked each other’s economic policies, though in practice a consensus prevailed on many aspects of domestic policy at least until 1979: to sustain full employment, to aid declining industry and to promote economic growth. There was, of course, a price to pay; over-manning meant low productivity, sheltered industries became less competitive, and steeply progressive taxation to meet the costs of these policies had to be exacted. Britain slipped further behind, its standard of living advancing more slowly than that of its West European neighbours. Yet economic statistics alone do not accurately reflect the quality of life.
