David Kynaston: Austerity was a Hard Sell in the 40s -- Today It's Harder Still
[David Kynaston is the author of Austerity Britain, 1945–1951.]
Like Charles Ryder at Brideshead or Bob Dylan on Highway 61, we've been here before. "No sooner did we awake from the six years nightmare of war and feel free to enjoy life once more than the means to do so immediately became even scantier than they had been during the war," lamented Anthony Heap, a local government official living in St Pancras, in his diary at the end of 1945. "Housing, food, clothing, fuel, beer, tobacco – all the ordinary comforts of life that we'd taken for granted before the war, and naturally expected to become more plentiful again when it ended, became instead more and more scarce and difficult to come by." In fact peacetime austerity had only just got going, and it was not until July 1954, more than eight dreary, make-do-and-mend years later, that rationing finally ended.
It's now pretty clear that the Keynesians have been defeated in the macroeconomic debate and that rapid, large-scale deficit reduction is the only game in town. In the 1940s the shortage facing most people was of goods, not money. This time it will be the other way round, but there is bound to be a similar sense of frustration and resentment as unemployment rises, standards of living at best stagnate, dreams and aspirations are put on hold, and the joy generally goes out of life. Or as another diarist, Vere Hodgson, prosaically but powerfully put it in 1949, "Oh, for a little extra butter!"...
Clement Attlee, Stafford Cripps, Ernest Bevin – these were political giants, men of unimpeachable integrity and manifestly driven by a high sense of duty. Indeed, the ascetic, carrot-crunching Cripps, chancellor in the late 1940s, attained almost surreal levels of personal popularity. By contrast, David Cameron et al have it all to do, against a long-term backdrop, going back to the 1960s, of ever-increasing cynicism about politicians, even before the expenses debacle. Vince Cable is arguably a latter-day Cripps, but too many of his cabinet colleagues exude a sense of social and material privilege that, put mildly, sits uneasily with the widespread pain they are now in the process of inflicting. Cameron himself has, I believe, old-fashioned "officer" qualities and will prove a more effective, one-nation prime minister than many expect. Whether he can sufficiently lead by example is another matter....
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Like Charles Ryder at Brideshead or Bob Dylan on Highway 61, we've been here before. "No sooner did we awake from the six years nightmare of war and feel free to enjoy life once more than the means to do so immediately became even scantier than they had been during the war," lamented Anthony Heap, a local government official living in St Pancras, in his diary at the end of 1945. "Housing, food, clothing, fuel, beer, tobacco – all the ordinary comforts of life that we'd taken for granted before the war, and naturally expected to become more plentiful again when it ended, became instead more and more scarce and difficult to come by." In fact peacetime austerity had only just got going, and it was not until July 1954, more than eight dreary, make-do-and-mend years later, that rationing finally ended.
It's now pretty clear that the Keynesians have been defeated in the macroeconomic debate and that rapid, large-scale deficit reduction is the only game in town. In the 1940s the shortage facing most people was of goods, not money. This time it will be the other way round, but there is bound to be a similar sense of frustration and resentment as unemployment rises, standards of living at best stagnate, dreams and aspirations are put on hold, and the joy generally goes out of life. Or as another diarist, Vere Hodgson, prosaically but powerfully put it in 1949, "Oh, for a little extra butter!"...
Clement Attlee, Stafford Cripps, Ernest Bevin – these were political giants, men of unimpeachable integrity and manifestly driven by a high sense of duty. Indeed, the ascetic, carrot-crunching Cripps, chancellor in the late 1940s, attained almost surreal levels of personal popularity. By contrast, David Cameron et al have it all to do, against a long-term backdrop, going back to the 1960s, of ever-increasing cynicism about politicians, even before the expenses debacle. Vince Cable is arguably a latter-day Cripps, but too many of his cabinet colleagues exude a sense of social and material privilege that, put mildly, sits uneasily with the widespread pain they are now in the process of inflicting. Cameron himself has, I believe, old-fashioned "officer" qualities and will prove a more effective, one-nation prime minister than many expect. Whether he can sufficiently lead by example is another matter....