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On 1 January 1947, a notice was posted at every colliery in Britain. It read: “This colliery is now managed by the Nation on behalf of the people.” In a single morning, over 900 coal mines—along with 225,000 acres of farmland, 140,000 miners’ houses, and countless shops and offices—passed from private ownership to public control. The National Coal Board (NCB) was formally constituted, and the British coal industry, which had been a byword for private exploitation and industrial strife, became a public corporation. It was, as Prime Minister Clement Attlee declared, “one of the great days in the industrial history…
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On the morning of 5 July 1948, a new era in British history began. At hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ surgeries across the country, the National Health Service (NHS) opened its doors for the first time. It was not the first universal healthcare system in the world—Germany’s compulsory insurance dated back to the 1880s, the Soviet Union had state provision, and New Zealand’s Social Security Act of 1938 had already taken major steps toward universal coverage. But the NHS was the first comprehensive, universal, tax-funded system free at the point of use on a national scale.
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On 5 July 1945, as the guns of the Second World War fell silent in Europe and the battle against Japan still raged in the Far East, the British people went to the polls for the first general election in nearly a decade. Victory in Europe had been declared just eight weeks earlier, and the universally admired war leader, Winston Churchill, confident of the gratitude of the nation, sought a personal mandate from the people to guide Britain through the post-war peace. At the beginning of the campaign, his personal approval rating stood at an astronomical 83%—the consummate hero of…