ABSTRACT
Britain emerged from the Second World War battered but triumphant, fortified by a sense of solidarity forged during the Nazi onslaught. More than 40,000 civilians had been killed and over a million houses destroyed in London alone during the Blitz. The resulting sense of national unity was profound and helped drive the creation of a welfare state in the post-war period designed to ensure that no Briton would ever again be abandoned by society. But although this new dispensation advanced the cause of social justice on many fronts, it was far from egalitarian. Carping against the deficiencies of the new order emerged quickly, and culture proved to be a particularly contested terrain in such contention. For cultural conservatives, the new order consolidated a terrible decline, while for the young, everything remained far too similar to the unjust old days, stoking incandescent anger at the vain sacrifices of the war. As the Cold War set in, spiraling paranoia and creeping malaise further discomforted an age in which Britons were told they’d never had it so good. Capping this sense of disquiet, the end of the empire generated a profound identity crisis about what it meant to be British.
