The Battle for Britain Citizenship and Ideology in the Second World War

"The Battle for Britain" aims to reevaluate the impact of the second world war upon changes in ideology and social policy in Britain. Overturning many of our assumptions about the national spirit of 1939-1945, it analyses the mixed and often contradictory pressures influencing the formation of postwar social democratic "consensus" and the expansion of social citizenship under a welfare state. However, while in these respects the book offers a social history of the period, the main purpose of the authors is to mount a critique of the Thatcher years which have castigated in principle and dismantled in practice the postwar social reconstruction.
The authors suggest that the postwar consensus represented an ideological deviation in the history of British class politics and the Conservative party itself, until Thatcher's social and economic policies restored continuity with the ruling assumptions of the past. Innovative and timely, "The Battle for Britain" will be of interest to political scientists, historians, and sociologists.

It is generally accepted that Britain was held together during the second world war by a spirit of national democratic `consensus'. But whose interests did the consensus serve? And how did it unravel in the years immediately after victory? This well observed and powerfully argued book overturns many of our assumptions about the national spirit of 1939-45. It shows that the current return to right-wing politics in Britain was prefigured by ideologies of change during and immediately after the war.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Whose war?; Chapter 2 Production for victory; Chapter 3 Keeping the home fires burning; Chapter 4 The spirit of the times; Chapter 5 When the war is over; Chapter 6 Reconstructions from the past; Chapter 7 Postscript; BIBLIOGRAPHYIndex Subject index;

David Morgan is director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Kent., Mary Evans teaches Women's Studies and Sociology at the University of Kent.