ABSTRACT
In theory, Labour’s landslide victory of 1945 brought to office a party whose vision of Britain’s destiny could hardly have been more different from Churchill’s. In practice, though, despite all the changes which were enforced by the circumstances of the immediate post-war period, there was a remarkable degree of continuity. For those who doubted Ernest Bevin’s optimistic ‘spin’ on Britain’s post-war situation, the giveaway phrase would have been ‘sudden stroke of fate’. The ‘alternative’ narrative suggested that, far from ceasing to be a great power ‘overnight’, in 1945, the country had been slipping against its international rivals for decades, since before the First World War. Despite the political rhetoric, however, the reality was that while the First World War marked a serious setback to a country which was already beginning to lag behind its major competitors, the second global conflict brought Britain to the verge of bankruptcy.
