Where the Uk Went Wrong [1945-2015]: A Personal Journey

By Alastair Macdonald Hart

How then did the UK reach the golden years of purposeful education, full employment, and adequate housing?
More to the point, why did successive governments in the latter part of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century betray the British people by subjecting them to the overwhelming stresses of poor education, low-paid employment, and a housing crisis eclipsing even that of the immediate postWorld War II era?
I consider myself lucky to have been born in the UK. I also consider myself lucky to have lived through the golden years, enjoying prosperity my children and childrens children will only be able to dream of.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781493193486

Alastair Macdonald Hart

Born at the beginning of 1952, I thankfully missed World War II by less than seven years, yet the effects were still being felt all around me. Rationing and bomb sites were the norm as I grew up in a once-great Britain still reeling from the effects of the most devastating war in world history.

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Copyright © 2015 by Alastair Macdonald Hart.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015907338

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4931-9346-2

Softcover   978-1-4931-9347-9

eBook   978-1-4931-9348-6

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Rev. date: 05/11/2015

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CONTENTS

Disclaimer

Preface

Post–WW II UK Governments

Chapter 1 Employment

Chapter 2 Employment and the Unions

Chapter 3 Education

Chapter 4 Housing

Chapter 5 The Economy

Chapter 6 Immigration

Chapter 7 The Health Service

Chapter 8 The Welfare State

Chapter 9 Is There a Future for the Uk?

DISCLAIMER

The facts and figures used within this book have been gleaned from a number of sources, mainly, though not exclusively, from the World Wide Web. As with all statistics, these figures vary immensely depending on which publications you read.

To try to avoid any kind of political bias; these statistics were averaged out to hopefully provide the reader with a balanced perspective.

The same process was followed when any reference was made to what could be, however loosely, termed as a historical fact. Therefore, no direct reference to any publication has been used in compiling this book.

All facts and figures are in the public domain.

PREFACE

My personal Journey

Born at the beginning of 1952, I thankfully missed World War II by less than seven years, yet the effects were still being felt all around me. Rationing and bomb sites were the norm as I grew up, with the once- Great Britain still reeling from the effects of the most devastating war in world history. Our cities had been ravaged and required rebuilding as a priority; industries once geared to war had to be returned to civilian projects, no mean task with a shortage of labour, finance, and investment.

How then did the UK reach the ‘golden years’ of purposeful education, full employment, and adequate housing?

More to the point, why did successive governments in the latter part of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century betray the British people by subjecting them to the overwhelming stresses of poor education, low-paid employment, and a housing crisis eclipsing even that of the immediate post–World War II era.

I consider myself lucky to have been born in the UK. I also consider myself lucky to have lived through the golden years, enjoying prosperity my children and children’s children will only be able to dream of.

POST–WW II UK GOVERNMENTS

CHAPTER 1

EMPLOYMENT

The Second World War Created a Shortage of Labour

To say that the Second World War have had a lasting effect on Britain would be an understatement of biblical proportions, but while the legacy of the war will carry on throughout the twenty-first century and beyond, the ramifications of the conflict were felt far hardest by those living at the time of the war’s end.

They say history is written by the victors, and that is exactly what Britain was, victorious, but while historians and documentaries spout off about the many merits and tragedies of the war itself, life after its end is scarcely mentioned. It is easy to speculate that this is because, as the victors, Britain would rather tell dramatic and romanticised tales of war than relive the darker days beyond 1945.

While the war was won, the casualties and damage that plagued the country were not to simply disappear once the Third Reich and its axis were defeated. Thus, as the war ended, the Allied troops brought peace, albeit short-lived, to Europe and further afield. The armies that swelled around Germany’s cities and beyond began to disperse, vacating these countries and returning home.

While many did return home to a sea of grateful faces, welcomed back as heroes of Britain, there were far fewer returning to the shores of the United Kingdom than those that left.

As a result of the fatalities of the war not only out in the battlefields but also at home due to bombings, Britain suffered a massive loss of nearly 400,000 of its citizens. Most of them were young, able-bodied men. The loss was a very small number compared to countries like the Soviet Union, which lost over 20 million people to the war. Being such a small nation, Britain felt the impact of this sudden population loss.

But it was not just the loss of life that affected the country. Many of the men who returned were injured or were suffering from psychological conditions; the stress of living in war zones crippled their ability to readjust to civilian life. As a result, even though they returned to a hero’s welcome, it was a hero’s welcome in a battered and broken country.

While the war had ended, rationing was still in place as trade routes from other war-stricken nations took time to reopen. Added to that was the fact that the food stocks of the nation were very low and that Britain had millions of soldiers returning from overseas. This created a tough situation for the majority of British residents. Morale began to run low, as food was scarce. Soldiers returning home did so to mostly squalid conditions.

With no solution in sight or war to spur the nation, the spirit of the British people was at an all-time low. What was required to revitalise the spirits of the British people was to rebuild the country literally. The war had cost the country everything in terms of resources and money. For the country to return to its former glory, it had to be rebuilt. Such a large-scale operation required masses of labourers, something Britain simply did not have.

At the end of the world war, Britain was experiencing a great labour shortage. With the majority of the young male population still under military service, large numbers were working in agriculture, straining to sustain a hungry population, and others were drafted into the merchant navy. The merchant navy became a great sinkhole for labourers after the war. More important than reconstructing houses was ensuring that the country did not face a famine at this time when it was at its weakest point. To do this, the merchant navy had to be expanded as much as its original crews that had been lost during the war, the resources it brought in being a constant target of German U-boats. As men poured into these vessels, once again leaving British shores in search of food and other resources, there were simply not enough hands available to start reconstructing the country.

Due to the physicality of the work required, hiring of women was low, and while many workers were brought over from Ireland to begin the process, it was simply not enough. To counteract this issue, the government launched a scheme to lure workers from Commonwealth nations to the UK with the promise of work. The scheme was largely judged to be a success, and in the years following the war, there was a great influx of immigrants, the majority of which were labourers. The boost was of great help in the reconstruction of the country, with numerous different colonial countries offering up their workers either through recruitment drives or voluntary migration. An example of this labour migration is a case in Scotland, where over 1,000 nationals of Honduras travelled to the UK to fell timber for house construction.

However, many foreign workers also went into the construction of houses, factory work, and maintenance. Overall, the boost from migrants was one of the largest cannons for the countries’ resurgence, with the boost to the labour force allowing the government to begin pulling Britain out of the squalor it was stagnating in. While this migration of citizens from colonial countries was the catalyst for Britain’s post-war resurrection, it was made possible by another group of people, its current residents.

While the majority of men were either still conscripted to national service, working in agriculture, or sailing throughout the world in the merchant navy, somebody had to keep the country’s wheels turning. And just as it had been during the war, it was the women and children that did so. The labour shortage was enormous; a vast chunk of Britain’s labour force was unavailable at the time it needed it most. But without the work of the women and children, the labour shortage would have been colossal. It is not too far of a stretch to say that without them, the prosperity that followed could not have been achieved.

While the most physical jobs were left to the male population, many of whom were now migrants, women continued their work in the factories just as they had done during wartime. Their presence during this time ensured the production of necessary materials for rebuilding the country. Thus, on the back of these two groups of workers, Britain was facing the prospects of returning to its former glory even in light of such labour shortages.

So as the women and children continued working, which helped prop up the country and keep it functioning, the migrants then arrived to help what few men were left in the labour industry to pick up the slack, but even then the migrants only numbered in the tens of thousands, hardly the hundreds of thousands lost and even more away on duties.

Despite the labour situation, the country seemed to be in recovery; in the years that followed, the merchant navy began to bring supplies in, houses started to go up, and the ruins of war were swept away. How was this being achieved? The answer was in the leadership.

The war had caused the government to adapt strict regimentation of resources, and they had clear-cut control over what was going in, what was going out, and where every bit of steel and timber was being used. The war effort also produced a lot of surplus material that could be recycled and used to rebuild the country. Thanks to this combination of recycling resources and regimented and organised planning, the government was able to stretch its assets in such a way that allowed for growth rather than simply treading water and waiting for their labour force to naturally grow.

Eventually the labour problems started to improve. In the 1950s, many houses had gone up, and the clean-up of the country was in full swing. At this point, much of the labour force previously tied up on national service had now left the armed forces and were being funnelled into the labour market. Around the same time, in the mid 1950s, the merchant navy along with other foreign import groups had created a situation where the food stocks of the country were full enough and regular enough to remove the need for rationing, and thus it was taken out of use. As a result of this movement, the British agricultural industry was relied upon less.

Before the beginning of the war, 70 per cent of all food consumed in Britain was imported, and in the 1950s, while it was not quite up to the same figure, it was certainly approaching it. With the easing of dependency on British agriculture came another surge of workers being thrown into a job market desperate for more skilled labourers. With the 1960s came the end of mandatory national service and the biggest growth of the labour market yet. Young men that would have ordinarily gone into the military and remained there for several years were now looking for employment.

It was a long and arduous recovery process, but it was one the British government prepared for. Numerous housing construction schemes, recruitment drives, and rationing—not just of food, but also of resources—eventually saw the country break free from the chains of its war-stricken past and into what would be known as the golden years, a period in British history unlike any other, the peak of its economical success.

This era’s success was thanks, in no small part, to this shortage of workers. The lack of workers only did one thing—it slowly drove up the requirement for them. When it came to a time when the majority was ready and able to work, because there had been such a shortage for so long, the market was desperate for them to join. The result of this was stable jobs for every worker able to carry out labour tasks, which was the largest part of the workforce at this time. Improvements then ensured this workforce would steadily flourish, and while the economic situation of Britain at the time didn’t look so bright, during the 1960s and 1970s, it generated an extraordinary amount of wealth.

The adjustment to the education sector also provided a higher number of intellectuals than ever before, resulting in technological advancements. The culmination of all this prosperity was a nation with the highest house ownership and personal wealth per capita than in any other era of the country’s history.

Employment was also at its lowest point ever recorded during this era—at 3.4 per cent in the early 1970s. The labour shortage had truly ended, and Britain had risen back to prominence only a few decades after such a devastating war. However, the entire system of boom and bust was about to burst the bubble of a nation that had worked so hard to repair itself. Would it return to the squalor and depression of a war-torn nation? No, but it would face a decline that is still happening to this day.

Expansion of Manufacturing and Trade

The war had many negative consequences in Europe and indeed in many parts of the world. But due to the problems many nations faced, the post-war years saw an era of solidarity amongst battered countries trying to repair the damage done. As a result, international trade markets expanded exponentially, more so than they had done for decades. In the twenty years following the end of the war, the global trade sector grew by nearly 300 per cent.

While many cite the reason behind this being the introduction of the Bretton Woods system—a system that required trading nations to set up monetary policies to create and maintain a stable exchange rate—this fact is still debated. Whether or not it was the direct cause or not, it was certainly a defining factor of the economic era. The system itself was based on the amount of gold owned by a country, allowing for simple trade among national currencies. However, while it did enable the international trade industry, it was not the factor considered for the stark rise in overseas trade. War-torn countries required supplies which they lacked. Countries like Britain had a healthy supply of metals and machinery, but not food, which meant trade was necessary in order to feed the people and start reconstructing the country. Likewise, other nations had vast food stocks, but no construction supplies, allowing international trade between UK and foreign nations to resume.

However, Britain had a problem. With such a large workforce shortfall stretching before them, the government had to work out a way to increase trade with the stock of workers they had to use. At this point, from 1945 to 1951, Britain was facing the age of austerity as it had such deep debts, mainly existing from borrowing from the US, which it had to repay. Thus, it was down not only on workforce but also on the ability to grow the economy enough to pay back the debts.

To combat this, one of the focuses became nationalising UK’s manufacturing industries. The idea was simple. If the state controlled the industry giants, such as coal and steel, then they could ensure all profits were used either to pay off the crippling debt or put back into the system to improve its quality. The result would be that the business had no shareholders; thus, profits were to be injected back into the state rather than into an executive’s pockets. Government backing would also improve the chance of effective trade through intergovernmental deals.

However, while this policy was a favourite of the Labour party and was in fact what their 1945 campaign was largely based on, the Conservatives were not pleased. They saw this as a move towards communism, which was currently on the rise in Stalin’s Russia, and disputed the idea of state-run industries. In desperation, after the Labour government won and took power, the Conservatives attempted to pass a motion through the House of Commons to stop what they believed was a step too far.

The motion, however, was rejected, and in 1946, nationalisation began. First, the Bank of England was nationalised. While it wasn’t in the business of manufacturing, it had worked with the treasury department during the war, and the collaboration was seen as the first step towards getting Britain’s finances back on track.

What followed was a series of acquisitions by the state, which was met with mixed responses. The nationalisation of British Coal and British Rail received little to no opposition. Both were highly unprofitable by then and didn’t have the resources to quickly restart the business. Thus by nationalising them, money could be contributed by the state to fire up work, and they could soon become profitable.

The other two biggest industries (i.e. the iron and steel industries) were not easy to obtain. Although the Conservatives had lost their bid to stop the nationalisation of businesses completely, they still fought hard to keep steel and iron private. Thanks to requirements of metal in the war, these industries were still alive and well; thus, the Conservatives argued that there was no point in dismantling a private business that was working.

However, the Labour government saw the financial potential for the state and forced through the Iron and Steel Act of 1949, using their overwhelming majority. The act was not an easy one to get through, as the House of Lords, which was mostly made up of Conservatives, did their best to delay it, and although it was passed in 1949, it was not established until 1951. At the point, all steel and iron manufacturing went through the government-run Iron and Steel Board.

Thus, Labour now had control of the biggest UK industries and could now improve their trade output and increase their manufacturing processes. But did it work?

The nationalisation of these industries resulted in many things, but one unexpected turn was the vast improvements in workers’ lifestyles. Typically, the relationships between workers and management in these sectors were tenuous, with workers being made to work hard for long hours with little benefits and pay. However, after nationalisation of these industries, that had to change. A government looking for continued support couldn’t have workers in poor conditions nor could it argue that it was a socialist party if it wasn’t improving lives of the people.

Soon after the buyout of the industries where workers were most affected by poor working conditions (most notably, the coal industry), new regulations and measures were put in place. Miners were given holiday pay, sickness leave, and care during recovery from work-based accidents. Safety became a more crucial concern; the worker became a person, not a tool. But pay was still a big problem, as there was no way the government could afford to ramp up salaries in a time of great austerity. In lieu of no adjustments to pay, the state organised industry boards to run the individual sectors, putting more power in the hands of the industry leaders and workers in an attempt to prove they were out to help the people, not just harvest profit to secure debt repayments. Nationalisation showed vast lifestyle improvements to the people, but the question that we remain to ask ourselves is, did it have some effects on the country’s trade market?

At the end of the war, many trade industries were looking worse besides the aforementioned metal sectors; however, these sectors were also experiencing a sharp decline in demand and therefore would soon lose their profitability. The period immediately following the war was uncertain. People had weak financial muscles thanks to their involvement in the war, industries that were less important received low to no income as all money was being pumped into essential war-related development, and those industries used during wartime were now quickly becoming redundant. After all, why build massive amounts of weapons and war machines if there was no enormous war to fight? Thus, it fell to the state, as they were currently the only organisation that had any stable financial backing.

The result of nationalisation then created a revival. All the industries that had been suffering were rejuvenated with the help of government spending. Factories were reopened, new ones were created, and existing ones were expanded. This revival created a domino effect, one that would eventually lead to the resurgence of UK’s trade market.

With new money coming into the businesses came new job opportunities; thus the workforce began to boom as well. With a booming workforce and investment in these industries, they could once again produce the products they had before the war. This effect culminated into Britain becoming an industrial power once more, with tradable goods being produced under the state. This automatically meant that their initial idea was in fact a success, and the production of trade under the government meant profits could be used to secure debt payments and other essential supplies rather than fall into the pockets of business executives.

However, while this proved to be a success and local and international commodity trading improved, there was another trade good that was becoming difficult to manage—food.

Agriculture had been diminishing in the UK prior to the war, which created a big problem for the country’s balance of payments. Even though trade was improving, the amount of food required to be imported into the country was vast. Thus, the state had to get involved to improve the situation or risk losing their gains through trade. This was done via the Agricultural Act of 1947, which stated that legislation was to be introduced to improve efficiency and stability. This was done by establishing fixed prices on common foods, such as wheat and oats. Previously, thanks to rationing, the costs of these items were uncharacteristically high; however, by price-fixing products, the government aimed to curb the lack of food by forcing farmers to grow more to achieve similar profits. The focus was now on productivity rather than quality.

Farmers were encouraged to maximise yields by any means possible, often via genetic selection and artificial accelerants. While many nutritionists will frown upon this approach,