Post-war development

[wellinghall]

And another one.

While no expert, I am tolerably familiar with post-WWII British history and politics. But how does it compare with the history and politics of other major European countries (eg Germany, Italy, France) for the same period?

There are obvious differences - France had been invaded and occupied; Germany and Italy had both been defeated in war; Germany had been partitioned. But how much did this affect their later development? What lessons could we have learned from them that we didn't?

(Um, this is turning into a huge subject! But any enlightened comments - philmophlegm, gramarye1971, parrot_knight, maybe? - would be much appreciated!)

ETA:
I was a post-war baby in a small Scots town
I was three years old when we moved down south
Hard times written in my mother's looks
With her widow's pension and her ration books
Aneurin Bevan took the miners' cause
The the House of Commons in his coal dust voice
We were locked up safe and warm from the snow
With "Life with the Lyons" on the radio
And Churchill said to Louis Mountbatten
"I just can't stand to see you today
How could you have gone and given India away?"
Mountbatten just frowned, said "What can I say?
Some of these things slip through your hands
And there's no good talking or making plans"
But Churchill he just flapped his wings
Said "I don't really care to discuss these things, but
Oh, every time I look at you
I feel so low I don't know what to do
Well every day just seems to bring bad news
Leaves me here with the Post World War Two Blues"

1959 was a very strange time
A bad year for Labour and a good year for wine
Uncle Ike was our American pal
And nobody talked about the Suez Canal
I can still remember the last time I cried
The day that Buddy Holly died
I never met him, so it may seem strange
Don't some people just affect you that way
And all in all it was good
The even seemed to be in an optimistic mood
While TW3 sat and laughed at it all
Till some began to see the cracks in the walls
And one day Macmillan was coming downstairs
A voice in the dark caught him unawares
It was Christine Keeler blowing him a kiss
He said "I never believed it could happen like this
But oh, every time I look at you
I feel so low I don't know what to do
Well every day just seems to bring bad news
Leaves me here with the post World War Two Blues"

I came up to London when I was nineteen
With a corduroy jacket and a head full of dreams
In coffee bars I spent my nights
Reading Allen Ginsberg, talking civil rights
The day Robert Kennedy got shot down
The world was wearing a deeper frown
And though I knew that we'd lost a friend
I always believed we would win in the end
'Cause music was the scenery
Jimi Hendrix played loud and free
Sergeant Pepper was real to me
Songs and poems were all you needed
Which way did the sixties go?
Now Ramona's in Desolation Row
And where I'm going I hardly know
It surely wasn't like this before but
Oh, every time I look around
I feel so low my head seems underground
Well every day just seems to bring bad news
Leaves me here with the Post World War Two Blues

Oh, every time I look at you
I feel so low I don't know what to do
Well every day just seems to bring bad news
Leaves me here with the post World War Two Blues

"Post World War Two Blues", Al Stewart

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

*bzzt* justify Portugal? My politics A level teacher (who was admittedly a bit of a twit) gave Portugal as an example of relatively graceful and benign decolonisation.

... though possibly this was just in contrast to Spain and Belgium...

[gramarye1971]

*nods* The drawn-out guerilla battles with FRELIMO and other anticolonial splinter groups were also a major destabilising factor in all of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and 1970s -- it's arguable that the mess that followed Rhodesian UDI and contributed to the strength of the apartheid regime in South Africa up through the 1990s was in no small part due to Portugal's inability/unwillingness to extricate itself from its colonial claim in Mozambique.

[gramarye1971]

Glad to contribute. ^_^ One of the things I remember reading about whilst digging through the Kew archives on Rhodesia in the 1970s was the level of frustration with Mozambique, because it was a hub of oil sanctions-busting activity and communist- or mercenary-supported training for guerilla conflict tactics, and the Wilson and Heath governments couldn't do much about it besides wring their hands.

I'd never heard of the Goa conflict before -- interesting stuff, there.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Yet more evidence that my A level politics teacher simply made a whole bunch of stuff up!

I should know by now to disregard everything he said, but somehow that teacherly authority is pervasive...

Thanks, I will have to read up further now I have some starting points!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your interesting comments.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that interesting comment.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what he said. There wasn't a 'British Colonial War', but there was a 'Portuguese Colonial War'. It was one of the longest wars (possibly the longest) fought by any European nation since 1945 and it ended in the overthrow of the Portuguese government.

[(Anonymous)]

There was national conscription during the war, and many of Meglorien's parents generation had to fight, including most of her uncles.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming this is foradan ...