ABSTRACT
At just short of six years, the second test of war to which Britain was subjected in the twentieth century was both longer than the first and in many ways more exacting. Though less costly in terms of death and injury, its effect inside Britain was more direct. Observers had already noted the blurring of the distinction between the soldier and the civilian in the earlier war; but the notion of a home front, as dangerous and at the same time as defined, organized and controlled as the military fronts, came fully into being only in the Second World War. The sense that the whole nation had experienced the war at the sharp end, so to speak, was strong in 1945, and this perhaps explains why it was accompanied by an equally strong urge to take stock and reflect upon the nature of British society and where it was going. Already, well before peace came formally in August, the dynamic of the popular mood was discernible. It ran in two apparently contrary directions. There was, on the one hand, a strong desire to piece together again lives disrupted by the demands of war (implying return to what had been); on the other, there were expectations, generated in part by those same disruptions, of a better life ahead (implying new departures). The General Election embraced both movements. In simply taking place it symbolized a return to normal times. In its result it pointed to the desire for change.
