Privatisation and the postwar settlement

"If there is one idea that has dominated the literature on British history since 1945, it is that of the ‘post-war settlement’ or the ‘post-war consensus’. The locus classicus, is surely Paul Addison’s hugely influential The road to 1945, first published in 1975. Addison describes in detail the wartime discussions amongst the policy elite which led, in the 1950s, to ‘a species of consensus in which a Labour party led by social democrats competed against a Conservative party led by “One Nation” Tories’. This analysis has proved very persuasive. Indeed, for some decades, there was something of a consensus among historians about the existence of the ‘post-war settlement’. In this account, a ‘political contract’ was made between the high contracting parties of the state, industry and the unions. What then was the basis of this post-war settlement? A fundamental tenet was the creation of the welfare state, financed out of progressive taxation. Next, there was a state commitment to full employment. Third, the economy was ‘mixed’, in that the state owned and ran large enterprises, but a substantial private sector remained. Fourth, governments worked closely with the trade unions. Finally, the UK retreated from empire, worked closely with the USA and moved towards the EEC. This paper re-examines the historiographical consensus around the supposed settlement. It argues that the ‘mixed economy’ consensus was not as deeply rooted as often believed. Nor was privatisation a creature simply of the post-1979 world. We will be considering primarily those policymakers who were said to have forged the consensus in the Conservative Party and, to a lesser extent, in the Labour Party."