When Britain emerged victorious from the Second World War, the Labour Party under Clement Attlee came to power and created a comprehensive welfare state, with the establishment of the National Health Service giving free healthcare to all British citizens, and other reforms to benefits.

Many historians describe this era as the "post-war consensus", emphasising how both the Labour and Conservative Parties until the 1970s tolerated or encouraged nationalisation, strong trade unions, heavy regulation, high taxes, and generous welfare state.

Labour returned to power under Harold Wilson in 1964 and oversaw a series of social reforms including the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion, the relaxing of divorce laws, and the end of capital punishment.

Edward Heath returned the Conservatives to power from 1970 to 1974 and oversaw the decimalisation of British currency, the accession of Britain to the European Communities, and the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The general election in 1979 took Conservative Margaret Thatcher to power, effectively ending the postwar state interventionist consensus of prior decades despite initial intense Labour opposition.

"[8] Michael Foot adds that Bevan had to persuade "the most conservative and respected profession in the country to accept and operate the Labour government's most intrinsically socialist proposition.

The government aimed to build 400,000 new houses a year to replace those destroyed in the war, but shortages of materials and manpower meant that less than half this number were built.

On the other hand, he had some success in convincing Washington to take over roles that were too expensive for Britain, including the rebuilding of the European economy and supporting anti-communist governments in Greece and elsewhere.

[19] For decades the Conservatives were split on India between die-hard imperialists (led by Churchill) and moderate elements who tried to provide limited local control.

One recent historian and Conservative party sympathiser Andrew Roberts says the independence of India was a "national humiliation" but it was necessitated by urgent financial, administrative, strategic and political needs.

[23] Whereas Churchill in 1940–45 had tightened the hold on India and imprisoned the Congress leadership, Labour had looked forward to making it a fully independent dominion like Canada or Australia.

[24] Attlee found that Churchill's viceroy, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, was too imperialistic, too keen on military solutions (he wanted seven more Army divisions) and too neglectful of Indian political alignments.

[29] Popular and elite opinion in Britain at the time did not view Indian independence as a humiliation but as a successful completion of a process long underway, and strongly supported by Labour and indeed most of the Conservative party as well.

Independence strengthened the Commonwealth of Nations, and had a valuable impact on the British economy, with large sums transferring back and forth, as well as fresh migrants arriving from India.

The success in India encouraged and embolden the development programs of ambitious young British colonial officials in Africa and the rest of Asia.

Negotiations broke down, and as the blockade's political and economic costs mounted inside Iran, coup plots arose from the army and pro-British factions in the Majlis.

He stepped up the implementation of a "hearts and minds" campaign and approved the creation of fortified villages, a tactic that would become a recurring part of Western military strategy in South-East Asia, especially in the American role in the Vietnam War.

He left domestic issues to his lieutenants such as Rab Butler, and concentrated largely on foreign policy, forming a close alliance with US President Dwight Eisenhower.

[47] On 26 July 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt, nationalised the Suez Canal company, in violation of the international agreement he had signed with the UK in 1954.

In November 1956, after months of negotiation and attempts at mediation had failed to dissuade Nasser, Britain and France, in conjunction with Israel, invaded Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal Zone.

After Suez they started to heed Treasury warnings about the effect of high defence expenditure on the economy, and the slow growth of the British population compared with the United States and the Soviet Union.

With British youth no longer subject to military service and with post-war rationing and reconstruction ended, the stage was set for the social uprisings of the 1960s to commence.

Britain's application to join the Common Market was vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle on 29 January 1963, in due to his fear that 'the end would be a colossal Atlantic Community dependent on America', and personal anger at the Anglo-American nuclear deal.

[60] However, Wilson provided the Americans with intelligence, military weapons, and jungle training, and allowed some 2000 British soldiers to volunteer for service in Vietnam.

He was prime minister at the time of Bloody Sunday in 1972 when 14 unarmed men were killed by 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment soldiers during a banned Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march in Derry.

In July 1972, he permitted his Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw to hold unofficial talks in London with a Provisional Irish Republican Army delegation by Seán Mac Stíofáin.

The rise of punk rock bands such as the Sex Pistols and The Clash were a reflection of the discontent felt by British youth during the difficulties of the late 1970s.

Callaghan's time as Prime Minister was dominated by the troubles in running a Government with a minority in the House of Commons; by-election defeats had wiped out Labour's three-seat majority by early 1977.

As expected, Margaret Thatcher (who had succeeded Edward Heath as Conservative leader in February 1975) won the general election held on 3 May, becoming Britain's first female prime minister.

[69] Historian Kenneth O. Morgan states: The fall of James Callaghan in the summer of 1979 meant, according to most commentators across the political spectrum, the end of an ancien régime, a system of corporatism, Keynesian spending programmes, subsidized welfare, and trade union power.