Conclusion

It all began so well, when in 1949 the young Oxford economist told the South Gloucestershire selection-meeting that socialism to him was about opportunity and outcome most of all: ‘Socialism, as I see it, is a society in wh[ich] everyone starts equal with an equal chance, & there are no upper & lower classes. I’m quite clear in my own mind about what Soc[ialism] sh[ould] ultimately mean. It sh[ould] mean a state of affairs in which every single citizen has the chance to live the same sort of graceful, cultured & comfortable life that only the lucky few can live to-day: a life with beauty in it, with leisure in it, with art in it, the sort of life that William Morris wrote about & longed for: in which people can forget about all those miserable economic problems & concentrate on the things that really matter. That at any rate is my ultimate goal, & I believe we sh[ould] judge every issue on whether or not it gets us nearer to it.’1 The genuinely open road and the visibly classless culture were Crosland’s ultimate goal; equalisation through State intervention and upgrading through economic growth were Crosland’s proximate means - and the name of the package was to be socialism.