From the Archive: A Quiet Revolution Begins
History Today was launched in 1951, the year of the Festival of Britain. Barry Turner challenges Arthur Marwick’s impressions, first published in 1991, of the year that austerity Britain glimpsed a brighter future.
Arthur Marwick (1936-2006) was not a historian to harbour doubts. His judgements were forthright and bold. But looking back on the 1950s from his vantage point in 1991 he was uncharacteristically ambivalent. ‘Not a golden age’, he opined, ‘but not leaden either’, an airy dismissal that might apply to any postwar period.
To start on a basis we can all accept, the 1950s was a bleak decade. The Labour government, elected with a thumping majority in 1945, had laid the foundations of a welfare state but the benefits had still to feed through to a generation weaned on austerity.
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