ABSTRACT
The recent history of British politics is often understood in terms of the breakdown of the ‘post-war consensus*. The Conservative and Labour Parties are supposed to have adopted different positions within a general framework of ideas concerned with government responsibility for economic management and the provision of welfare services. The new right is characterised as rejecting major elements of that consensus.The left has held the view that the consensus constituted a partial basis for a move forward to a more genuinely socialist or at least more egalitarian society as well as helping to provide a genuine set of improvements in living standards for most of the population. The fact that there had been an overall set of improvements in welfare terms was taken to indicate that the post-war style of government (despite variations) did mark a step forward and that further advances were to be made by an increasing range of state interventions. In fact, socialism broadly was identified with an increasing state intervention that would move towards a (democratic) state control of a very wide range of areas of social life.It is important to draw attention to another facet of this apparent consensus. In the area of governmental attitudes and practices towards issues of racial discrimination and disadvantage of race, it simply is not possible to regard government intervention in a positive light. It is true that three Race Relations Acts were passed (1965, 1968, and 1976), but when these interventions are balanced against the blatantly racist immigration control debate and the racist legislation of the 1960s and 1970s, the notion of a post-war consensus takes on a quite different meaning.
