The welfare state begins

The welfare state did not appear overnight; it started life as a set of wartime plans. In 1942, the economist William Beveridge published a report setting out how government could tackle poverty, ill health and unemployment once the fighting was over, and it became the blueprint for everything that followed. Reform reached schools first. In 1944, R A Butler's Education Act guaranteed free primary and secondary education for everyone, reshaping how a whole generation was taught.

The bigger political change came the following year. In 1945, British voters turned to Labour, and Clement Attlee became Prime Minister with a mandate to build the welfare state Beveridge had sketched out. His government also began unwinding the empire it had inherited: in 1947, nine countries won independence from Britain, among them India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Labour's dominance did not last. Winston Churchill returned to Downing Street as Prime Minister in 1951, leading a Conservative government through much of the following decade.