The Skylon at the Festival of Britain, 1951 BW Lee (3) by Heresy0uk is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

 

Speaker: Professor Clare Griffiths, Cardiff University.

In 1945, the Labour party found itself in power for the first time: a majority government achieved through a remarkable electoral landslide. The party’s manifesto Let Us Face the Future had promised a ‘tremendous overhaul’ of the nation, modernisation, and the emergence of a New Britain.

This lecture considers Labour’s visions of that future and how it might be planned, thinking in particular about the use of land and the building of infrastructure and housing. How ‘new’ was this New Britain to be? And how far could the party’s stated commitment to socialism be reflected in its policies in practice?

This event series is hosted by the History Department in collaboration with  King’s Contemporary British History and the journal Renewal.