Values-based ideology: Socialism

In 1945 the population of Britain suprised the whole world by deposing Winston Churchill and implanting Clement Atlee and his Labour administation into power. Someone might very reasonably ask how this could have happened. Hadn't Churchill, after all, been the nation's saviour?

What actually happened in 1945 wasn't a rejection of Winston Churchill. It was, however, confirmation that a new scale of values was much more universally approved of than at any previous time.

People were, quite understandably, exausted. Britain had spent the previous six years fighting the Nazis, and the people inevitably bore the consequences of this intense conflict. What they ushered in, on the conclusion of the war, was not merely a radically-reformist socialist government but a new wave of values; universalism, brotherly love and solidarity and a rejection, at least for the time being, of rugged individualism and laissez-faire economics.

The theme of this 'pamplet' is that every age has a need, and particular values to meet those needs. I submit that the socialist construction of Britain in the mid to late 1940s was a reflection of people's desire for a new identity and a new stability, and that there was much to admire in that project. We retain, after all, many of the foundations that were laid in 1945; the NHS and our comprehensive system of welfare and social security are the two major ones.

Admittedly, in this author's opinion, the march of socialism went too far in its aspirations and attempted too much to be realistic or practical. It was for Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives to restore the balance, in the 1980s, but this is not to do away with the progressive features of the revolution of the 1940s.