Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Glen O'Hara

Titel

Governing Post-War Britain: The Paradoxes of Progress, 1951-1973

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

London: Palgrave Macmillan

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 01 02 Glen O'Hara looks at modern British politicsfrom 'top' to 'bottom' – from Prime Ministers' relationship with US Presidents and the Cabinet room, to individual neighbourhoods and schools. In doing so, he fuses the new political history of the everyday and the humdrum with high political accounts involving economic and social advisers, top politicians and senior civil servants. Post-war Britain emerges as a country that experienced increasingly tense relations between governors and the governed. The electorate demanded ever wider access to fairly-provided and universally-available social services; elites looked to other European and American countries for how this search for quality might be mounted. However, new solutions became ever more complex, and increasingly likely to conflict with one another or involve unintended additional effects. Drawing on new archival findings from across the United Kingdom, among personal and political papers as much as the files of national and international governance, O'Hara uses the new economics of organization, management and complexity to draw a compelling picture of the post-war settlement as it came under strain during the 1950s and 1960s. 13 02 GLEN O'HARA Reader in the History of Public Policy at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He is the author of several books about modern British history, including From Dreams to Disillusionment: Economic and Social Planning in 1960s Britain , and Britain and the Sea since 1600 . 02 02 Glen O'Hara draws a compelling picture of Second World War Britain by investigating relations between people and government: the electorate's rising expectations and demands for universally-available social services, the increasing complexity of the new solutions to these needs, and mounting frustration with both among both governors and governed. 19 02 New archival evidence from across the United Kingdom's governmental, political and pressure group archives New interpretation of post-war British governance, drawing on theories interdisciplinary fields of inquiry 'Top to bottom' approach– looking from the Cabinet room to the individual school and ultimately refusing to blame the populace for their increasing disillusionment with, and disengagement from, organized 'formal' politics 31 02 A look at modern Britain from 'top' to 'bottom' of its politics – drawing a compelling picture of a country that experienced increasingly tense relations between governors and governed 04 02 Acknowledgements List of Charts and Tables Introduction: Progress and its Paradoxes PART I: IDEAS FROM 'THE OUTSIDE' The Use and Abuse of Foreign Archetypes in British Economic Policy Archetype, Example or Warning? British Views of Scandinavia PART II: SLIDING AWAY FROM STABILITY President Kennedy, Prime Minister Macmillan and the Gold Market, 1961-63 President Johnson, Prime Minister Wilson and the Slow Collapse of Equilibrium, 1964-68 PART III: GOVERNING BRITAIN The Creation and Early Work of the Parliamentary 'Ombudsman' Sir Alec Cairncross and the Art and Craft of Economic Advice, 1961-69 'An All Over Expansion': The Politics of the Land in 'Golden Age' Britain PART IV: EDUCATING THE NATION Planning the Education System in the Post-War Era Slum Schools, Civil Servants and Sociology: Educational Priority Areas, 1967-72 Conclusion: Strange Triumphs? Bibliography Index 08 02 'Governing Post-War Britain is a good contribution to scholarship about post-war Britain, exploring the shifting policy debates about international influence, the Anglo-American relationship and social reforms.' - European Review of History