ABSTRACT
War in Europe ended officially on 8 May 1945. Churchill had insisted, since taking power in 1940, that victory be the only aim and had devoted himself wholeheartedly to diplomacy and war strategy. But Britain’s war effort was dependent on the morale and efficiency of workers in industry and it was here that the Labour ministers in the Coalition-particularly Ernest Bevin-played a crucial role. Despite Churchill’s impatience and irritation with demands for social reform, he was persuaded that it was a necessary condition for winning the war. Paul Addison, in The Road to 1945, describes the Coalition government as
the greatest reforming administration since the Liberal government of 1905-14. Here in the midst of war, was an astonishing example of the uses of adversity. Social security for all, family allowances, major reform in education, a National Health Service, Keynesian budgetary technique, full employment policies, town and country planning, closer relations between the state and industry-all these had been set on foot by the spring of 1943. By the spring of 1945 a new and wide-ranging prospectus of peacetime development was at an advanced stage of preparation within the civil service, while educational reform had already been embodied in the Butler Act of 1944 and had only to be administered…. When Labour swept to victory in 1945 the new consensus fell, like a branch of ripe plums into the lap of Mr Attlee.2
