{"id":42541,"date":"2018-07-23T07:47:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-23T06:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=42541"},"modified":"2018-07-23T07:47:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-23T06:47:14","slug":"1945-manifestos-and-a-new-beveridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/07\/23\/1945-manifestos-and-a-new-beveridge\/","title":{"rendered":"1945, manifestos, and a new Beveridge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A regular commentator on this blog, G Hewitt, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/07\/20\/labour-dont-need-35-bills-they-need-brexit-and-economic-strategies\/#comment-810744\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">noted yesterday<\/a> that the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.iwm.org.uk\/history\/how-winston-churchill-and-the-conservative-party-lost-the-1945-election\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Imperial War Museum <\/a>notes on their website that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Labour Party won the general election decisively, winning 393 seats, while the second-placed Conservatives only secured 197. With an emphasis on social reform, the Labour Party\u2019s manifesto was strongly influenced by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/pathways\/citizenship\/brave_new_world\/welfare.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Beveridge Report<\/a>\u00a0and included a commitment to full employment, affordable housing, and social security and health care for all.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, the Conservative campaign focused on Churchill\u2019s popular appeal, lowering taxation, maintaining defence spending and encouraging private business interests. While Churchill acknowledged a need for social reform, he argued that this should be done privately rather than by the government, claiming that Labour would need 'some kind of Gestapo' to implement such reform.<\/p>\n<p>Despite Churchill\u2019s concerns, the Labour Party\u2019s emphasis on social reform clearly appealed to many voters, who gave Labour a landslide victory at the polls and a clear mandate for change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As G Hewitt then noted:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Well knock me down with a feather, plus ca change, it\u2019s deja vu all over again. The first para is what Labour should be majoring on, and spent the Blair\/Brown years largely ignoring while adopting the Conservative policies in the second para. Maybe they should commission a new \u201cBeveridge\u201d, written by someone with MMT background, cull the Blair\/Brown Tories within their ranks and address the issues of inequality etc which the 1945 manifesto highlighted and which are still here today and perhaps in 5 to 10 years, when Scotland and NI have gone they may be ready to bring England into a more equal, more socialist place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If only, I say.<\/p>\n<p>If only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A regular commentator on this blog, G Hewitt, noted yesterday that the Imperial War Museum notes on their website that: The Labour Party won the<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/07\/23\/1945-manifestos-and-a-new-beveridge\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}