Welfare Britain 1945-51
The New labour government 1. The most influential were Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, lord president of the council with considerable powers over home affairs, Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Stafford Cripps, president of the board of trade.
The welfare state 2. The purpose of the welfare state is democracies were increasing the powers of the state to improve people’s lives, especially the lives of those living closest to poverty. 3. The money fund the welfare state is come from higher taxation.
The national insurance act 1946 4. Every citizen was entitled to sickness and unemployment benefits, old age pensions (women at 60, men at 65) widows and orphans pensions, maternity allowances and death grants. 5. The national insurance act is successful, becusess it provided a safety net for those who dell through the mesh provided by the National Insurance Act.
The National Health Service 6. The NHS is provides healthcare for all UK citizens based on their need for healthcare rather than their ability to pay for it. It is funded by taxes. Aneurin Bevan is in charge of it. 7. He agreed that consultants should keep the right to private practice and that GPs should be paid not by an annual salary but according to the number of patients on their lists. 8. The NHS is successful in its first two years, because the need to be met that expenditure in the first two years was 40per cent higher than estimated.
Housing
9. The labour government considerable success in its housing policy, becusess by the time labour left office in 1951, it had built well beyond that estimate, mainly council housing for families on lower incomes. Also the New Towns Act of 1946 which created 14 new towns like Harlow and Crawley, healthy and pleasant places to live which people could move to from the crowded slums of the Victorian cities allowing these slums to be demolished. But however in 1951 there was still a housing shortage.

Education 10. Ellen Wilkinson held the cabinet to the agreed date of 1 April 1947 for the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) to 15 by threat of resignation. 11. The main successes of education policy between 1945 and 1950, was as well as meeting immediate school building needs by a massive programme of prefabricated classrooms, 928 new primary schools were built .
Nationalisation
12. By Clause 4 of the labour party constitution, labour had been committed since 1918 to the public ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy. Morrison was in charge of its implementation. 13. An early case was the bank of England (1945). Then followed the British overseas airways corporation (BOAC), the coal mines and cable and wireless in 1947, transport including the railways and electricity in 1948, the gas industry in 1949. 14. The conservatives did not denationalize any of these industries when they came to power in 1951.the only nationalization measure which the conservatives wholeheartedly opposed was that of iron and steel (1951), since the industry was profitable.
Economic problems 15. Britain had run up debts of £3 billion and her industries were more concentrated on war production than any other nation in the world. 16. The winter of 1946-1947 was the worst for a century. First snow and ice, then floods from the thaw badly disrupted coal production and energy supplies. 17. When as agreed with the American government, sterling became convertible, there was a massive run on the pound. 18. Americans decided, through the programme known the Marshall plan, to launch a massive programme of financial aid to Europe to help economic recovery and thereby halt the advance of communism. Britain benefited greatly from Marshall Aid. 19. In three years he kept a strict control of imports and encouraged exports. He imposed a freeze on wage increases and also restricted price rises. 20. In order to pay for the costs of the Korean War, Gaitskell had introduced prescription charges to reduce the costs of the NHS. This led to Bevan’s resignation from the government, followed soon by Wilson.