Publisher's Synopsis
The People's Peace is the first comprehensive study by a professional historian of British history from 1945 to the present day. It examines the transformation of post-war Britain from the planning enthusiasm of 1945 to the ethic of Thatcherism. Its themes include the troubles of the British economy; public criticism of the legitimacy of the state and its instruments of authority; the co-existence of growing personal prosperity with widespread social inequality; and the debates aroused by the process of deconlonization, and by Britain's relationship to the Commonweatlh, the transatlantic world and Europe. Changes in cultural life, from the puritanical `austerity' of the 1940s , through the `permisiveness' of the 1960s, to the tensions of recent years are also charted. Kenneth Morgan examines the paradoxes of life in the modern United Kingdom: the growing affluence and the internal peace of mainland Britain, with its underside of disillusion and discontent.;This book is intended for scholars and students with an interest in the 20th-century history of Britain; also post-war political, social, economic, and cultural history; trades unionists, journalists, political activists; general trade.
