ABSTRACT
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) anticipates an association between the welfare state, middle-class angst and a peace movement that would by the 1970s inspire and, to some extent, morph into the green movement. The Clean Air Act is a good example of a preventative healthcare measure, though it was also an isolated example in an economic system where the welfare state is often better at cleaning up a mess than at preventing the mess from appearing in the first place. The Clean Air Act epitomised the fact that government now stood at the centre of a collective attempt to ensure personal and social wellbeing. Even after the Clean Air Act, Harold Macmillan saw the natural environment as little more than a matter of day-to-day management and political strategizing. In 1938 Macmillan sealed the reputation that would eventually allow him to mould the Conservative Party in a new image, with the publication of The Middle Way.
