Abstract
The question of whether (and in what senses) the period after 1940 was characterised by a political consensus has been debated almost exclusively within the framework of domestic policy. Yet the war which spawned commitments to full employment and the welfare state, it should be remembered, was primarily a struggle for Britain’s survival as a great power. In the thirty years that followed, Britain shrank from the status of a global leader with far-flung imperial interests to a less certain position on the fringes of Europe. This adjustment occupied much of the energies and resources of Cabinets, officials and political parties. That the ‘consensus’ debate has made such advances on its home front while neglecting issues such as the Atlantic Alliance, European integration and the end of empire is therefore a serious deficiency.
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Notes
Paul Addison, ‘Epilogue: “The Road to 1945” Revisited’, in The Road to 1945, 1994, London, Pimlico, 2nd edn, pp. 279–92;
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Owen, N. (1996). Decolonisation and Postwar Consensus. In: Jones, H., Kandiah, M. (eds) The Myth of Consensus. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24942-8_9
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