Is political consensus a myth?

The nature of British post-war politics is the source of numerous debates and assessments. Historians and academicss have discussed the politics of post-war Britain for more than forty years, focusing on policies that were agreed by both of the leading political parties. Post-war policies were instituted following the end of the war in 1945. These policies were said by recent historians and critics to be born out of an agreement by both of the leading political parties of the time: Labour and Conservatives. Today, the existence of a ‘consensus’ in Britain after the Second World War continues to engage academics who feel the need to examine and reassess the political agenda of the major parties. The idea of a post-war consensus was first popularised by Paul Addison in 1975 in his book The Road to 1945. In his book, he delivers a clear and precise analysis of the war years and the post-war British policies that were instituted after the Second World War. Although his work is a really complete one and covers a rather long period of history, the rather recent post-war British politics have been subjected to massive changes and they concentrated on the welfare for a long time. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, some historians following Addison’s ideas argued that a political consensus was at the basis of such stability in the political sphere. Among them were people like Angus Calder who has defended the idea of a consensus, arguing that it really existed. The existence of this political consensus was later debated by historians and academics like Ben Pimlott, who were sceptical about the existence of such an agreement. There is no doubt that a definition of the term consensus must be given in order to define the limits of the consensus.

In 1989, Paul Addison, was enthusiastic about the idea of the post-war British consensus. At that time, he had already published his book The Road to 1945. Criticism about his theory started to develop in the years that followed; among them were critics such as Ben Pimlott and Peter Morris. They had a complete different definition from what Addison proposed in his book about the post-war consensus, and therefore they became critical about Addison’s ideas.

To quote Ben Pimlott, he argued that physiologists spoke of a consensus to describe an agreement or harmony of organs of the body which had a specific purpose[1]. In the article “Is the ‘post-war consensus’ a myth?”, he goes on by writing that consensus in political language is certainly a more powerful and emotive term than mere agreement. It is said to exist not when people merely agree, but when they are happy agreeing, are not contained to agree, and leave few of their number outside the broad parameters of their agreement.[2] Pimlott gives a very subjective definition and it is important to stress that other historians do not use the same expression to define this agreement.

---

[1] Pimlott, Ben, Kavanagh and Peter, Morris “Is the ‘postwar consensus’ a myth?” Contemporary record, 2:6, 12-15, 1989, 12

[2] Pimlott, Kavanagh and Morris, 12