On The Causes Of The British Consensus Politics After World War II

After World War II,British had economic prosperity as well as political stability. Despite the change of government between the Conservative and the Labor Party,a broad consensus existed between the two parties concerning a wide range of socio-economic issues,such as welfare state,full employment,mixed economy and trade unionism. This had formed a so-called onsensus politics".The consensus politics ended when Mrs. Thatcher came to power. Her attack on previous British consensus also encouraged the rise of the study of consensus politics in British. However,there had been so far very little study on this topic in China.Focusing on the consensus politics in Britain during the period of 1945 to 1965,the essay made a tentative study of its background. It argued that the emergence of the consensus politics was due to a number of social,economic and historical reasons,including British's two party system,the popularity of Keynesianism,the expansion of the middle class and the practice of the coalition government during world war II.