cod'ead wrote:The world did owe them a fooking living, they spent six bloody years fighting for it
I suggest you speak to, or at least read contemoporary accounts written by some of the "British working class", who after fighting up to six years of a war, returned to find that little had ever changed. The "old money" still ruled like Victorian mill-owners and thought that the sun would never set on "our" empire. Ex-servicemen would just drop their weapons and pick up the picks, shovels, lathes etc that they'd left in 1939. While the women who were good enough to keep factories and farming working, while looking after families, would just go back to their kitchen sinks.
A re-alignment was needed, unfortunately it never went far enough.
Quite a few years ago I read a book about British forces returning home. One of them said that after fighting through Holland, the thing which stuck out for him and his unit was the standard of living there. All of the houses had indoor plumbing including bathrooms and toilets. No tin bath in front of the fire once a week and boiling pans and kettles to have it. For him that was the thing which stood out in his memory. Just a simple thing like that, not the might of Empire.
That's why Quentin Hogg said "We must give them reforms or they will give us revolution." So, Labour adopted a Liberal plan and made a welfare state. Not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
