In my opinion, the 1950s cannot be seen as a period of prosperity for the people of Britain for a number of reasons which I will explain further on. I believe that source 1 mainly agrees with the above statement, however, there are some areas in the source which can display ways in which the source doesn’t fully agree with the above statements. Source 2 also, somewhat agrees with the above question, however, there are a greater number of aspects of the question which can imply that the statement is not 100% true. Source 3 is the source which mostly disagrees with the above question for a number of reasons.

I believe that the 1950s were not years of great prosperity for the people in Britain for a number of reasons. Firstly, although source 1 states that the British people ‘have never had it so good’ it can be interpreted that this account could be considered as being somewhat biased as it is a speech made by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in July 1957 during a Conservative Party rally in Bedford which means that all that is said in the rally is to ensure that all the supporters of the party are pleased with the progress that is being made. As it is a speech made at the rally of the party that implemented policies in order for this situation to happen they would only discuss the positives of their policies and only talk about the benefits it has for people, it would not discuss the limitations or the negative impact it may have had on the lives of some. The use of the word ‘most’ in the starting of the speech clearly shows that not everyone benefited from the policies he had out in place, in fact some people were left in a much worse condition as they were not able to enjoy all the benefits the majority of the people had available to them. Source 1 is simply a rally speech that is in need of being treated with caution as it is designed to please all the people that were present at the rally and thus does not give the true facts of what actually took place in those years and if Prime Minister Macmillan’s claim had any truth to it and if it had any evidence in which it could be supported.
Furthermore, source 2 states that there were ‘periods of hardships for some of the population in Britain under the Conservatives’ which means that many people did not have any improvements in their living conditions, in effect rather then it getting better in some cases the living conditions were getting much worse, this is again further emphasised in source 1 with the reference to ‘most people’ and not to all shows that although there was prosperity it was extremely limited. Some of the ways in which the minority groups suffered hardship was through the Rent Act of 1957. This Act did stimulate the rented property market; however, it was due to this Act that ensured the rent rose a great deal making it extremely difficult for the lower earners to afford the leases, thus making the poorest worse off from what they were before. As this source is by Michael Lynch from the book Britain 1945-2007 and was published in 2008 it can trusted more than the speech as it has the benefit of having hindsight and also to evaluate all information before coming to a conclusion therefore, making it more accurate.
Finally, source 3 refers to the ‘economic difficulties which had begun in the second half of 1955 thus stating that there was in fact limitations to the prosperity people were facing. In addition source 3 also suggests that the 1957 was not a year of complete prosperity and there were underlying problems that were connected to it as a state of prosperity would not last forever and eventually prosperity would come to an end as inflation would end up disturbing the prosperity and would essentially kick prosperity out and bring back the inflation problems for the majority of the people thus ending the period of prosperity. This is because as the inflation increases, foreign countries would be less willing to import from Britain as the prices would be extremely high thus they would not be able to afford the importation and exportation prices. This became clear at the end of the 1950s when inflation was at one of its highest points and led to stagflation (this is when there is low economic growth and rising unemployment). This was due to the fact Britain had not been developing their goods through the introduction of new forms of technology, making Britain’s GDP the lowest in Europe by the end of the 1950s; it had even gone behind the economies of Germany and Japan which were the defeated countries in the Second World War. This again is a trusted source as it is written by the historian Derrick Murphy in the book Britain 1914-2000 and was also published in the year 2000 it can be equally trusted with source 2 and more trusted then source 1 as again it has the benefit of having a hindsight into what exactly happened and evaluating all the information for the time before coming to a final conclusion thus making the end result accurate.

However, the 1950s were years of great prosperity for the people in Britain. Source 1 states, that ‘most people have never had it so good’ this refers to the fact that this was the time when prosperity was at its highest point in history and implied that it exists all over the country and not just in certain parts, ‘Go around the city, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms and you will see a state of prosperity such as we have never seen in my lifetime-nor indeed in the history of this country.’ It is clear that the prosperity is helping all people as wages of people were starting to increase. Also, there was an increase in the amount of credit that was available to the public, with that at an increase people are able to go out and buy more materialistic goods such as fridges and TVs which before this time could only be brought by the wealthy and upper class. Through credit ordinary people were able to go out and spend money on things they wouldn’t have spent any money on before as they would not be able to afford it, now they would have time to pay back the money and also be able to use the modern technologies (at the time). Due to credit people were able to also go on holiday to foreign countries and not have to worry about the paying all the costs in advance.
Moreover, source 2 leads to the conclusion that many people were living a life of great affluence and prosperity was an important part of the living standards. ‘Continuous rise in living standards’, this shows that many people were living life full of riches and were