British Economy 1951-64

To what extent was the period between 1951 and 1964 a ‘Golden Age’ for the economy?
Howard Macmillan’s words ‘… most of our people have never had it so good’ became an important symbol of the time when Britain seemed to be in a Golden Age. The British people were optimistic and there was affluence within society. There were however examples of the underlying problems which include how Britain was performing compared to other European competitors, how the government failed to control public spending and the failure to modernise British Industry. The period of 1951-64 is seen as being a Golden Age due to many factors which directly prove that. These include living standards rising steadily due to incredibly high rates of employment with an
They are also interpreted as maybe the conditions of prosperity and affluence were too good to be true. Although many people did not notice at the time there were underlying problems. The promise of full employment was made by Labour was carried on by the Conservative government and it became apparent that this was not that easy to achieve. Between 1951 and 64 the lowest number of workers that were unemployed was 297,000 in 1956. In 1951 the number was 367,000 which shows that there was a decrease in the unemployment rate in those 5 years. However, after 1956 the unemployment rates started increasing and reached a high of 878,000 unemployed workers in 1963. Even though unemployment seemed to be low there were still over 250,000 people unemployed during the ‘Golden Age’ and it was close to a million by the end of it. There were also key events in the period of the ‘Golden Age’ which put a toll on the recovering war economy. An example of one is the Suez Crisis which occurred under Anthony Eden’s government in 1956. This crisis did not receive much support from the British public and was opposed greatly by the National Council of Labour. This opposition was due to the public not wanting to be involved in a war again, especially as the economy was improving and people’s lives as a result of that. The crisis increased the British debt to £564 million which links to the
The Gross Domestic Product percentage growth during the ‘Golden Age’ was highest for Italy at 5.6% while Britain had the lowest in comparison to three other European countries at a percentage of 2.3%. This was mainly due to the spending in the defence sector. This spending was to maintain the naval bases and to fun other types of defence research such as nuclear weapons. Compared to the European countries Britain was spending the most money on research and development and that was 10% of the GDP. In 1963 for example Britain had spent 34.5% of its research and development fund on defence whilst Italy only spent 2.6%. Also due to this increased spending in the defence sector as well as the service sector expansion, the manufacturing industry wages of a worker in Britain were lower that France and Germany. The money used fo research and development could have been used instead for economic research which would have caused the industry to grow. The average wages of a manufacturing worker in 1963 in Britain was £1.61 per hour while in Germany it was £2.95. However that can also be blamed on the budget policies adopted by Macmillan’s government. For example stagflation was a situation in which industry declined but inflation still increased. This was due to the ‘stop-go’ policy when the government would adopt the ‘go’ policy by cutting the taxes and lowering