Post-war consensus

The post-war consensus, sometimes called the post-war compromise, was the economic order and social model of which the major political parties in post-war Britain shared a consensus supporting view, from the end of World War II in Europe in 1945 to the late-1970s. It ended during the governance of Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher. The consensus tolerated or encouraged nationalisation, strong trade unions, heavy regulation, high taxes, and an extensive welfare state.

The notion of a post-war consensus covered support for a coherent package of policies that was developed in the 1930s and promised during the Second World War, focused on a mixed economy, Keynesianism, and a broad welfare state. Historians have debated the timing of the weakening and collapse of the consensus, including whether it ended before Thatcherism arrived with the 1979 general election. They also suggest that the notion might not have been as widely supported as some claim, and that the word consensus might be inaccurate to describe the period. Embedded liberalism has been applied to describe the post-war consensus on a global stage, around the same period from World War II to the crisis of the 1970s, and contrast it with the paradigm shift led by neoliberalism that followed.

Origins of post-war consensus

The thesis of post-war consensus was most fully developed by Paul Addison. The basic argument is that in the 1930s Liberal intellectuals led by John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge developed a series of plans that became especially attractive as the wartime government promised a much better post-war Britain and saw the need to engage every sector of society.

The foundations of the post-war consensus can be traced to the Beveridge Report.