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1922. In contrast to the majority of the former Liberals who went 93 DEFECTORS AND THE LIBERAL PARTY to the Conservatives, the first two – Reginald McKenna and Ronald Munro-Ferguson (Viscount Novar) – were anti-coalitionists. They were to become the first of eight Asquithians to defect to the Conservatives.2 Reginald McKenna was offered, and negotiated about, the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer under two Conservative prime ministers – Bonar Law and Baldwin. McKenna had already served as Chancellor in the Asquith Coalition, and in the process, some Liberals
to female suffrage, the chapter analyses Churchill’s attitude to the extension of the franchise in the late 1920s, his record on social and taxation policy as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his attitude to women’s issues as both Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition in the 1940s and 1950s. It also examines how far Churchill constructed his public appeals in gendered terms. To what extent did he specifically attempt to appeal to women voters and to women as wartime c itizens – Âand how did his efforts (or the lack of them) fit into the context of the
certain to have grave consequences for the University. It was in no position to solve its problems by laying off part of its workforce or sacking redundant executives. But the University could not afford to accumulate a deficit which it had no means of clearing away. At the end of 1973 Edward Heath’s administration withdrew guarantees that the Government would protect the finances of universities against the effects of inflation. No more would it proclaim itself ready to look with sympathy upon their plight. Anthony Barber, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reduced
partnerships. For another flexian fixer who drove developments inside the Treasury, it was all about creating a professionalized operation within the Exchequer, one that could direct activities across government departments and public entities up and down Britain. Thus was born Partnerships UK, a new unit designed to upscale PFI initiatives. That former official recounts intentions at the time: We created something called
4 The oratory of Iain Macleod Mark Garnett Iain Macleod has been a hero to many Conservatives, particularly but not exclusively to those who identify with the party’s ‘One Nation’ tradition. This is a fitting legacy for the man who co-founded (and named) the One Nation group of MPs. In part, he owes his continuing appeal to the fact that he died, at the age of just fifty-six, soon after reaching the pinnacle of his career by taking office as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The sense of promise unfulfilled is reinforced by the fact that, unlike so many moderate
The National Health Service (NHS) officially ‘opened’ across Britain on 5 July 1948, replacing a previous and patchy system of charity and local providers and making healthcare free at the point of use for all. 1 By 1974, Barbara Castle stated that ‘Intrinsically the National Health Service is a church. It is the nearest thing to the embodiment of the Good Samaritan that we have in any respect of our public policy.’ 2 This comparison crossed decades and party lines: in 1992 the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel
Alarmed by the diversion of material and technological resources to military ends, politicians and scientists on the left warned that this new war economy could undermine the development of civil industry. When a £4.7 billion rearmament package was announced by Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, in 1951, three ministers resigned in protest. As John Callaghan observed, the left felt that ‘costly overseas military commitments’ meant ‘that the future of the welfare state was jeopardised, let alone any further advances towards a socialist or social
The National Health Service (NHS) officially ‘opened’ across Britain in 1948. It replaced a patchy system of charity and local providers, and made healthcare free at the point of use. Over the subsequent decades, the NHS was vested with cultural meaning, and even love. By 1992, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson declared that the service was ‘the closest thing the English have to a religion’. Yet in 2016, a physician publishing in the British Medical Journal asked whether the service was, in fact, a ‘national religion or national football’, referring to the complex politics of healthcare. Placards, posters, and prescriptions radically illuminates the multiple meanings of the NHS, in public life and culture, over its seventy years of life. The book charts how this institution has been ignored, worshipped, challenged, and seen as under threat throughout its history. It analyses changing cultural representations and patterns of public behaviour that have emerged, and the politics and everyday life of health. By looking at the NHS through the lenses of labour, activism, consumerism, space, and representation, this collection showcases the depth and potential of cultural history. This approach can explain how and why the NHS has become the defining institution of contemporary Britain.
. However, as argued throughout, ideas had to be turned into realizable policies and practices, and the Exchequer was the institution to facilitate this. Beneath the big political personalities and momentous confrontations operated the institutional knowhow of the Treasury. To effect change, it relied as much on itself, its orthodoxies and contacts, as on the vaguer ideologies of its transient political ministers. As Chapter 2 explains, behind the 1980s political fireworks two fundamental organizational changes were taking place within the Treasury
interviewed). Well, that's the story that successive chancellors and Treasury officials have been very successful at telling. The liars and fantasists bit apart, I beg to differ. In fact, the overarching thesis of this book is an attempt to even out the balance of this narrative. It is true that the Exchequer is an impressive institution that is essential to the UK's political economy and stable government. For Martin Wolf, the Financial Times chief economics commentator and a Treasury observer over decades