POST-WAR BRITAIN

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POST-WAR BRITAIN
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• Post-war Britain
• The Loss of Empire
• a. India
• b. Egypt
• The Search for Economic Well-Being
• Conservative Rule
• Industrial Decline
• The Thatcher Revolution
• Attempts at Peace in Ireland
• Conservative Decline and the Rise of New Labour
• Labours Return to Power
• Labours Second Term
• Labours Third Term

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Post-War Reconstruction

• The immediate post-war period was one of severe
  privation. More than 4 million houses had been
  destroyed or badly damaged the result was an
  acute shortage of housing, especially after
  soldiers returned from the war. Commodity
  shortages meant the continuation of wartime
  rationing. Rationing also had to be extended to
  include items that had not been rationed during
  the war.
• For the first time since the 18th century,
  Britain became a debtor nation. The loans it had
  taken out from foreign nations to finance the war
  exceeded the money it could raise in taxes and
  other revenues. Without U.S. and Canadian aid,
  Britain would have defaulted on its considerable
  debts. Even so, the flood of wealth out of the
  country was considerable. The winter of 1947 was
  probably the lowest economic point of the
  century. Fuel shortages, gas rationing,
  inadequate food and shelter, and one of the
  coldest seasons on record all added to the
  nations problems. Unemployment reached 2.3
  million, and the monetary crisis worsened.

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• On the political scene, to the surprise of the
  world, Churchill was swept out of office when his
  Conservative Party lost to the Labour Party in
  the elections of 1945. The Labour government
  relaxed restrictions on trade unions and embarked
  upon a program of nationalization. This program
  resulted in government ownership of the Bank of
  England and of the coal, electricity, and gas
  industries. The government consolidated the
  railroads into British Rail and the airlines into
  British Overseas Airways Company (BOAC). The most
  controversial takeovers were the iron and steel
  industries, which were profitable private
  enterprises. The government immediately
  encountered the difficulties of effectively
  running complicated industries, many of which
  were badly in need of modernization. Efforts to
  make these businesses profitable and competitive
  in the international market were hampered by
  outdated equipment and inadequate facilities.
• In 1948 the most far-reaching of Britains social
  welfare programs was established. The National
  Insurance Act of 1946 consolidated benefits
  involving maternity, unemployment, disability,
  old age, and death. The National Health Service,
  set up in 1948, provided free medical service for
  Britons. British socialists now boasted that
  citizens were cared for from cradle to grave.
  However, the price tag for both programs was far
  greater than anyone had anticipated, and the
  government immediately cut back on some services.
  

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The Loss of Empire

• After the war, Britain still played an important
  role in international affairs. In 1945 it became
  a permanent member of the Security Council of the
  United Nations. (The United Nations, or UN, is an
  international organization of countries that was
  founded in 1945 to promote world peace and
  cooperation.) As a member of the UN, Britain
  served as one of the countries that continued to
  occupy and rebuild Germany. The new Labour
  government attempted to maintain Britains role
  as a world power by supporting a large overseas
  military presence in both the British colonies
  and Europe and by continuing a high level of
  military spending.
• Tensions grew between Communist nations under the
  leadership of the USSR and capitalist countries
  led by the United States. Britain developed its
  own nuclear weapons and cooperated closely with
  the United States in a policy that relied on
  using the threat of nuclear attack to discourage
  aggression by potential enemies. For many
  Britons, the USSR replaced Germany as the
  national enemy.

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India

• In India a movement for independence had been
  gathering momentum for decades. Although the
  British concluded that they could no longer rule
  in India, they did not feel that they could
  simply abandon their centuries-old ties. India
  was religiously divided, and the two largest
  groupsHindus and Muslimswere increasingly
  antagonistic toward each other. The attempt to
  create one dominion of India was undermined by
  the demand of the Muslims for their own separate
  state.
• After the war, the Labour government abandoned
  efforts to mediate the conflict and resolved to
  end the British presence in India as quickly as
  possible. The government opposed colonialism and
  felt little political attachment to India. The
  costs of continued peacekeeping were also keenly
  felt at a time when there was rationing at home.
  A heroic effort by the last governor-general of
  India, Louis Mountbatten, created what appeared
  to be a workable division between largely Hindu
  India and Muslim Pakistan, which has since split
  into the nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The
  British withdrawal in 1948 resulted in increased
  religious tensions and a terrible civil war. The
  civil war resulted in the deaths of between
  250,000 and 500,000 people, among them Gandhi,
  who was assassinated by a Hindu extremist opposed
  to the division of India. The abandonment of
  India was a blow to British prestige and the
  beginning of the total disintegration of the
  empire.

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Mohandas Gandhi
Mohandas Gandhi Indian nationalist leader
Mohandas Gandhi spent his life campaigning for
human rights in India. His strategy was to use a
combination of passive resistance to and no
cooperation with the British, who ruled India.
Gandhi said his techniques were inspired by the
Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, by American writer
Henry David Thoreau, and by the teachings of
Jesus Christ. In 1947 Gandhis pacifist efforts
brought an end to British rule in India.
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Egypt

• The next crisis for the empire occurred in Egypt,
  where British domination of the Suez Canal
  sustained Britains role as a world trader. Even
  before the war, British troops had withdrawn to a
  zone around the canal, and Britain had ceased its
  once active role in Egyptian government.
  Relations were complicated by the creation in
  1948 of a Jewish state, Israel, in
  British-controlled Palestine. Both Arabs and
  Israelis accused the British of taking the
  others side, and both wanted Britain out of the
  Middle East.
• In 1956 Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser seized
  the canal. Britain, with military assistance from
  France and Israel, attempted to retake the canal
  and almost succeeded in doing so. However, the
  United States and the USSR, who were caught
  unaware by the Suez crisis, insisted that
  British, French, and Israeli forces withdraw from
  the canal area. The Suez crisis saw Britain lose
  all of its influence in the region and raised at
  home the idea that Britain was no longer a great
  power.

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• During the 1960s colonies throughout the world
  rapidly acquired their independence. In 1961
  South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth after
  controversy developed within the Commonwealth
  concerning apartheid, South Africas policy of
  racial segregation. Other African territories
  became self-governing states and joined the
  Commonwealth of Nations. Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda,
  and Kenyaall large African states under British
  controldeveloped into republics and adopted
  British forms of parliamentary government, law,
  and finances.
• The Commonwealth provided an international sphere
  of influence for Britain during world crises and
  remained an important economic union. Although
  Britain was no longer a superpower, the countrys
  traditional role in Africa and the Middle East
  made it an obvious mediator of conflict. London
  remained the financial center of choice for
  petroleum-rich states as well as the educational
  center for the sons of the ruling elite in the
  former colonies. The Commonwealth tied together
  the member nations by automatically granting
  British citizenship to citizens of Commonwealth
  countries, a policy that ended in 1983. British
  emigration to the former colonies of Canada,
  Australia, and New Zealand remained a significant
  dimension of its population history as did the
  even higher immigration into Britain from its
  former Asian and African possessions. This
  immigration created racial tensions in Britains
  largest cities. While the Race Relations Act of
  1968 prohibited discrimination, racial violence
  increased, especially among youths

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Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser led a nationalist movement in
1952 that ousted the Egyptian monarchy and
transformed Egypt into a republic. Nasser became
leader of Egypt in 1954 and subsequently
negotiated an end to Britains 72-year occupation
of Egypt. He was president of Egypt from 1956
until his death in 1970. His accomplishments
included the construction of the Aswan High Dam,
the institution of land reforms, a program of
industrialization, and the restoration of
Egyptian self-government. Nasser also pursued
policies of Arab unity and socialism.
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The search for economic well-being

• Conservative rule
• In 1951 the Labour Party lost its majority in
  Parliament, and the Conservative Party regained
  control. The Conservatives led the nation toward
  renewed prosperity. They returned the iron and
  steel industries to private ownership, but left
  intact the major components of the welfare state.
  Tight government control on imports and on
  government spending, high rates of income tax for
  the wealthy, and investment in new industries
  such as automobiles and chemicals finally created
  a surplus in British trading accounts.
•   Private enterprise led the growth of what
  was being called the affluent society. The
  value of the goods that workers could buy with
  their wages rose by 40 percent during the 1950s.
  Two symbols of affluencecars and
  televisionssoon became so common that the
  government undertook a program of motorway
  expansion. In addition, private investors created
  the first independent television network to
  compete with the government-owned British
  Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

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• The accession of young Queen Elizabeth II in 1952
  provided a ray of light toward a brighter future,
  as did the extraordinary accomplishments of
  British sportsmen around the world. In 1953 a
  British expedition scaled the worlds highest
  mountain, Mount Everest another British
  expedition crossed Antarctica and in 1954
  British athlete Roger Bannister became the first
  person to run a mile in less than four minutes.
  In the early 1960s, British popular culture swept
  the world. For a time the United Kingdom replaced
  the United States as the leader in fashion,
  style, and especially music, with popular music
  groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
  emerging as the dominant rock groups of the day.

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Industrial decline

• Almost imperceptibly, Britons came to realize
  that their nation was in decline during the 1960s
  and 1970s. Early recovery from the war led to an
  optimism that could not be sustained as other
  European countries staged their own revivals.
  Despite being severed in two, Germany emerged
  once again as an industrial and trading power.
  Under the energetic leadership of Charles de
  Gaulle, France charted a course of independence
  from the United States by refusing to join the
  North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a
  defensive organization formed by the United
  States and a number of European countries to
  counter the military strength of the USSR.
• For a time, de Gaulle managed to keep Britain out
  of the European Economic Community (now the
  European Union), an organization designed to
  promote economic integration among European
  nations. De Gaulle vetoed Britains membership
  applications in 1961 and 1967, largely because of
  Britains close ties with the United States.
  Britons themselves remained split over closer
  ties with the continental powers. It was not
  until 1973 that Britain finally became a member
  of the European Community.

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• By the mid-1960s Britain was mired in an economic
  slowdown. Massive dock strikes in both 1966 and
  1967 severely affected British exports. In an
  effort to prevent the flow of money out of the
  country, the government devalued the currency.
  Devaluation lowered the value of British currency
  in relation to foreign currency, making it less
  expensive for Britain to pay its foreign debts.
  It gave a boost to British exports by making
  British goods less expensive on the foreign
  market. However, it also made imported products
  more expensive for British citizens and lowered
  international confidence in Britains currency.
• Industries in which Britain had been dominant for
  centuries were decaying rapidly. Shipbuilding,
  textiles, coal, and steel, all of which had been
  bywords of Britains Industrial Revolution, were
  no longer competitive. Each was beset with low
  productivity, high labour costs, and outdated
  plants and machinery. Industrial relations
  between workers and employers were at an all-time
  low, as workers staged hundreds of strikes, work
  stoppages, and deliberate slowdowns.

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• Crisis came in 1973 when oil-exporting nations in
  the Middle East dramatically cut shipments to
  pro-Israeli nations following the Arab-Israeli
  War. Oil prices quadrupled, forcing British
  industries to use more coal. This was the
  opportunity for which miners had waited. Miners
  were dissatisfied because they opposed the
  governments wage controls as well as the policy
  of closing down unprofitable mines at the cost of
  miners jobs. Now the miners introduced a ban on
  working overtime and finally began an all-out
  strike to pressure the government to abandon its
  policy of legislating limits on wage increases.
  In response, Prime Minister Edward Heath
  introduced emergency legislation that limited the
  working week to three days and instituted
  national electrical power cuts to minimize the
  amount of coal used in power plants.
• The election of 1974 was fought on whether
  government would restrain the unions. The Labour
  Party won a narrow majority by promising not to
  interfere with the unions. With legal limits
  removed, the unions won wage increases. Workers
  now had more money to spend, while the amount of
  available goods on the market remained the same.
  As a result, prices for products began to rise,
  and double-digit inflation ensued. Food prices
  rose 20 percent in 1973 alone.
• Wages and prices spiralled out of control. Only a
  supply of oil drilled from the North Sea off the
  coast of Scotland saved Britain from a crisis
  over the payment of its foreign debts. Even with
  the new supply of oil, the government raised
  taxes on income and on consumer goods to finance
  raises in wages that had been negotiated with
  union members in nationalized industries. The
  taxes left less and less for reinvestment. In
  1979 an arrangement between the Labour Party and
  the unions to keep wage demands moderate broke
  down, and another round of strikes took place

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The Thatcher revolution

• The Conservatives capitalized on the situation to
  win the election in 1979 under their newly chosen
  leader, Margaret Thatcher, Britains first female
  prime minister. Thatcher was a strident
  Conservative, and she was determined not to give
  in to the unions or change from the course she
  had charted to revive the British economy.
  Thatcher based her policy on the theory of
  monetarism. This theory involved strictly
  controlling the money supply to reduce inflation,
  lowering tax rates to encourage investment, and
  minimizing government intervention in industry to
  remove restrictions on the expansion of
  businesses.

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• The Thatcher government began privatizing
  industry, relaxing government regulation, and
  removing government subsidies. This was strong
  medicine and initially led to an even more rapid
  decline. By 1981 both interest rates and
  unemployment reached post-war highs, and a
  growing number of British firms faced bankruptcy.
  Pressure mounted to reverse government policy,
  and even members of Thatchers own party
  threatened to revolt. Thatcher refused to abandon
  her policies.
• A political crisis was averted only after war
  broke out when Argentina invaded the Falkland
  Islands, a British dependency in the South
  Atlantic that is also claimed by Argentina. The
  Falkland War released a mood of defiance in
  Britain in the wake of decades of international
  setbacks. Following Britains victory in the war,
  the Conservatives won a resounding electoral
  victory in 1983. However, their 150-seat majority
  came almost entirely from the southeast, where
  the benefits of monetarism were felt most.

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• The successes of Thatcherism were tempered by the
  new social divisions it created. Scotland, Wales,
  and northern England all became economic
  backwaters their industrial bases were in ruins,
  and an entire generation of workers was
  unemployed. Moreover, the new wealth that
  monetarism createdin the financial industry,
  real estate, and technologyled to many displays
  of luxury among the newly rich. The new wealth
  contrasted sharply with the loss of income
  experienced by many inner-city residents and
  unemployed middle-aged males. Conservative
  support slipped in the polls, and members of the
  party revolted against Thatcher, who resigned in
  1990.

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Attempts at Peace in Ireland

• In Ireland, the uneasy settlement that had kept
  Northern Ireland part of Britain exploded in the
  late 1960s. In 1968 Northern Irelands Catholic
  minority launched a series of protests against
  discrimination in employment and housing. The
  protests led to increasing violence between
  Catholic and Protestant groups. British troops
  were sent to keep the peace in cities such as
  Belfast, which had large concentrations of
  Catholics among the majority Protestant
  population. These troops became the target of
  violence, and guerrilla warfare followed.
  Beginning in 1973 the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
  targeted prominent sites in England, bombing
  subway stations, department stores, and tourist
  locations.

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• For the next 25 years Catholic and Protestant
  paramilitary groups waged a deadly battle.
  Catholics fought to create a single Ireland
  Protestants fought to maintain union with
  Britain. Almost every effort toward peace was
  sabotaged by acts of violence by one side or the
  other. By the early 1980s, hunger strikes
  conducted by IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland
  heightened political tensions and fuelled fears
  that the provinces moderate Catholics would
  become radicalized. These concerns led the
  British government to pursue a policy of close
  cooperation with the Irish government to achieve
  peace in Northern Ireland. In 1985 Thatcher and
  Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald signed the
  Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave Ireland a
  consultative role in the administration of
  Northern Ireland.
• Anglo-Irish cooperation provided fresh momentum
  to the peace process, and in 1993 the British and
  Irish governments issued a joint peace proposal
  called the Downing Street Declarationa document
  intended to form the basis for peace
  negotiations. In an important breakthrough, the
  IRA announced in 1994 that it would suspend its
  paramilitary operations in favour of peace talks.
  However, British demands that all-party peace
  talks could not proceed until the IRA began
  disarming were rejected by the IRA, and in 1996
  the IRA broke its cease-fire with a renewed
  campaign of violence.

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IRA Cease-Fire The Irish Republican Army (IRA),
a paramilitary organization dedicated to fighting
British rule in Ireland, laid down its arms on
August 31, 1994, to promote a peaceful settlement
with Britain. Gerry Adams, head of the IRAs
political arm, Sinn Fein, said the struggle to
end British rule in Ireland had entered a new
phase.
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Conservative Decline and the Rise of New Labour

• Thatchers Conservative successor as prime
  minister, John Major, inherited a badly divided
  party, a country that had grown tired of
  Conservative rule, and a major dispute over the
  European Community, which was moving toward
  greater integration. In 1991 the major European
  powers agreed on the Maastricht Treaty, which
  created the European Union (EU) and took the next
  steps toward the establishment of a single
  economic union. The treaty tied the exchange
  rates of European currencies together and
  proposed to create a single, unified currency,
  the euro, in 1999. It was proposed that monetary
  policy follow the lines that had already been
  adopted by Britain. However, other aspects of the
  EUs social and economic policy were bitterly
  opposed by Thatcherite Conservatives as being too
  favourable toward labour and too expensive for
  the government.

John Major John Major was elected prime minister
of the United Kingdom in 1990 as leader of the
Conservative Party. He served until 1997, when he
was defeated by the Labour Party headed by Tony
Blair.
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• Major worked hard to keep his own party together
  and to maintain the loyalty of key ministers.
  There was widespread expectation that Labour
  would return to power in 1992, but Major
  surprised the pollsters and many in his own party
  when the Conservatives won re-election. However,
  voters soon lost confidence in the Conservatives.
  In the following year the governments approval
  rating sank to just 18 percent despite strong
  economic growth and a new peace initiative in
  Northern Ireland.
• The loss of the 1992 elections had a profound
  impact on the Labour Party. For nearly a decade,
  Labour had been attempting to moderate its
  policies and distance itself from ties to the
  unions. It developed a new platform that would
  build upon Britains economic recovery, but that
  would also allow a more equitable distribution of
  the new wealth that was being created.
• In 1994 the Labour Party elected Tony Blair, a
  young lawyer, as its leader. Under the title New
  Labour, Blair insisted that his party abandon its
  nearly century-old commitment to creating a
  socialist state. Blair benefited immediately from
  a series of scandals involving Conservative
  ministers and Members of Parliament. The public
  spectacle surrounding Prince Charles and Princess
  Diana, whose marital infidelities were openly
  discussed on national television and who were
  finally divorced in 1996, also hurt the
  Conservatives, who were strong supporters of the
  monarchy. Despite the continued economic boomby
  1996 inflation had nearly disappeared,
  unemployment was the lowest in Europe, and growth
  the highestLabour led the Conservatives in polls
  by a significant margin.

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Labours Return to Power

• The general elections of 1997 gave the Labour
  Party the greatest landslide victory of the
  century and its largest-ever majority of 179
  seats in the Parliament. The Conservative Party
  suffered its worst electoral defeat of the
  century, and John Major resigned as party leader.
  As the United Kingdoms youngest prime minister
  since the 19th century, Blair seemed to speak for
  a new generation and a new Britain.

In 1994 British lawyer Tony Blair became the
leader of the British Labour Party. He worked
extensively to reorganize the party and to
increase its popularity. In 1997 the Labour Party
won a landslide victory in British national
elections, and Blair became prime minister
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• Blair attempted to maintain his centrist approach
  to government against the demands of the
  traditional Labour constituencies for social
  justice and the redistribution of wealth. In a
  bold beginning, he made the Bank of England
  independent of government. This move was designed
  to prevent monetary policy from being affected by
  political issues. In addition, he supported
  Parliaments decision to reconstitute the ancient
  parliaments of Scotland and Wales, giving them
  more regional control and political independence.
  
• Blair also worked closely with Irish prime
  minister Bertie Ahern to revive the stalled peace
  negotiations in Northern Ireland. In April 1998 a
  new peace accord was signed that had strong
  backing from the British and Irish governments.
  Known as the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement,
  the accord authorized the creation of a
  semiautonomous assembly for Northern Ireland to
  replace direct rule of the province by the United
  Kingdom. The accord won overwhelming endorsement
  from voters in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and
  in December 1999 the United Kingdom formally
  transferred power to the new provincial assembly.
  However, an impasse between Catholic and
  Protestant groups over the pace of the Irish
  Republican Armys disarmament forced the United
  Kingdom to suspend the assembly in February 2000.
  Provincial rule was restored in May, but the
  disarmament issue remained unresolved and a
  source of persistent political tension.

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• Under Blair, the United Kingdom continued to play
  an active role in the European Union (EU).
  However, Britains strong economy and monetary
  policy provided little incentive to accept the
  unified European currency, the euro. Blairs
  government backed away from its commitment to a
  complete economic union with the other EU
  countries because of the cost. In addition, the
  economic union had always been unpopular with
  many Britons. In early 1998 Blair announced a
  wait-and-see attitude toward monetary
  integration, an attitude that he maintained even
  as 11 EU countries officially adopted the euro in
  1999.
• In another move to modernize and streamline the
  government, in November 1999 Blair made good on a
  campaign promise to strip many of the hereditary
  peers in the House of Lords of their right to sit
  and vote in Parliament. The House of Lords Act
  eliminated all but 92 of the more than 750 seats
  held by hereditary members of Parliaments upper
  house.

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Labours Second Term

• The Labour Party won its second consecutive
  landslide victory in the June 2001 general
  elections, gaining the largest majority ever held
  by a British party in its second term. The
  elections were an enormous victory for the Labour
  Party and the centrist policies of Blair, who won
  a second term as prime minister.
• Soon after the elections the impasse over the
  pace of IRA disarmament again threatened to
  derail the peace process in Northern Ireland. The
  British government briefly suspended the
  provincial assembly on two more occasions in
  mid-2001 to prevent the governments collapse.
  Blair welcomed an announcement by the IRA in
  October that it had begun to disarm, as did key
  Protestant leaders, and the assembly resumed
  operations the following month. However,
  continued conflict among Northern Irelands
  political parties led the British government to
  reimpose direct rule of the province in 2002.
  Following the suspension, Blair and Irish prime
  minister Bertie Ahern renewed negotiations in an
  effort to restore operations of the provincial
  assembly.

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• In the wake of the September 11 attacks on the
  United States in 2001, Blair proclaimed that the
  United Kingdom would stand shoulder to shoulder
  with the United States in the effort to root out
  global terrorism. More than 100 British citizens
  were among the thousands of people who died in
  the attacks. Blair began an intensive round of
  diplomatic negotiations that took him to many
  European capitals and to a host of Muslim
  countriesincluding Egypt, Oman, and Pakistanto
  build international support for action against
  the terrorists. In October the United Kingdom
  sent British forces to participate in the
  U.S.-led assault on Afghanistans Taliban regime,
  which was accused of harboring terrorists.
  Additional British troops were deployed to
  Afghanistan in December 2001 and March 2002.
• As the conflict in Afghanistan subsided, the
  Labour government maintained its strong support
  for U.S foreign policy, including a possible
  U.S.-led war against the government of Iraqi
  leader Saddam Hussein. Blairfollowing the lead
  of U.S. president George W. Bushaccused Hussein
  of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and of
  posing a serious threat to regional and global
  security, and he offered to contribute British
  military forces to a preemptive U.S.-led attack
  on Iraq. Blairs position put him at odds with
  the leaders of many European countries, including
  France and Germany, who preferred to work through
  the United Nations (UN) to ensure Iraqs
  disarmament. Blair als??ÿaced intense o?ÿosition
  from many Britons, including members of the
  Labour Party, who opposed military action against
  Iraq. In March 2003 British forces joined the
  U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, despite a failure to
  secure a UN resolution explicitly sanctioning the
  action. The subsequent failure to find weapons of
  mass destruction The Labour Party won its second
  consecutive landslide victory in the June 2001
  general elections, gaining the largest majority
  ever held by a British party in its second term.
  The elections were an enormous victory for the
  Labour Party and the centrist policies of Blair,
  who won a second term as prime minister.

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Labours Third Term

• Labours Third Term
• Blair called a general election in May 2005. The
  Labour Party won its first-ever third consecutive
  victory, giving Blair a third term as prime
  minister. Labour won 356 seats, giving it a solid
  but much reduced majority in the 646-seat House
  of Commons. Analysts said Labours slimmer
  majority reflected voter discontent with Blairs
  decision to support the U.S.-led invasion of
  Iraq. The Liberal Democrats, who opposed
  Britains involvement in the war, increased their
  representation in the House of Commons, winning
  62 seats. The Conservatives, who waged an
  aggressive campaign, picked up 33 seats, bringing
  their total to 197.

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• Post-war Britain
• The Loss of Empire
• a. India
• b. Egypt
• The Search for Economic Well-Being
• Conservative Rule
• Industrial Decline
• The Thatcher Revolution
• Attempts at Peace in Ireland
• Conservative Decline and the Rise of New Labour
• Labours Return to Power
• Labours Second Term
• Labours Third Term

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