ABSTRACT
Historians have generally been kind to the post-war Labour governments. Responsible for a series of pioneering reforms that included the establishment of a National Health Service and the roll-out of universal national insurance, the Attlee administrations have been credited with a progressive brand of social democracy that prioritised wealth redistribution and egalitarianism within the parameters of a mixed-market capitalist economy. Labour also, however, pursued an expansionist foreign policy to try to shore up Britain’s dwindling status as a post-war ‘great power’, and this policy both required and eventually occasioned a series of major mobilisation campaigns. This chapter will analyse these campaigns, focusing in particular on those aimed at schoolchildren and school-leavers. Drawing on governmental, newspaper and film archives, it will consider the strategies used to attract minors to the Services and their broader legacy as well.
