S7 History – 4hr
Europe 5 Eastern Europe, Western Europe 1949-73
4. Western Europe in the 1950s
www.internationalschoolhistory.net
Adapted and edited extract from
Pat Callan et al, Division and realignment in Europe 1945-1992.
In this section of the syllabus we need to provide an overview of the ways in which western Europe was
transformed economically, socially and culturally in the 1950s. Some things were new, such as the consumer
driven economies and all embracing ‘welfare states’ which guaranteed individual security from ‘the womb to
the tomb’. Some developments were shared with eastern Europe, such as the significant state involvement in
economic planning or the significant economic growth which accompanied it. But there were also some things
that were little changed such as the role of women in society. The key questions from the syllabus should be
upmost in your mind as you read through this account: How and why did social and economic conditions vary
across the European continent? To what extent did western Europe emulate the USA, as the eastern Bloc had
emulated the USSR? What different models of development were initiated throughout the continent? How
successful was it all?
The Economy
As in central and eastern Europe, state control of the
economy was a feature of the post-war economies in
western Europe. Governments played a greater role in
economic and social life, promoting investment, funding
the public sector and providing more social welfare
services. After 1945 Jean Monnet drew up economic plans
to renew France's economic infrastructure. This included
nationalising major industries such as coal mining, gas,
electricity and businesses such as Air France and the Bank
of France. The French government (largely via Marshall
Aid) provided 30 per cent of the money invested in their
economy between 1947 and 1951. The British government
widened its control over major industries (such as coal) by
nationalising them (right). In Italy, the Institute of
Industrial Reconstruction owned and ran large sections of
major industries such as transport and. chemicals.
By the early 1970s the Scandinavian countries, the UK and the Netherlands were spending over 50 per cent of
their national income on the public sector, mainly on social welfare supports. The decades of the 1950s and the
1960s were periods of almost constant economic growth in Western Europe. Industrial growth was helped by a
stream of innovations. Developments took place in the new plastics industry, nuclear energy, electronics and
chemicals, as well as in modern consumer durables such as televisions and cars. Harold Macmillan, UK Prime
Minister said in July 1957, "Most of our people have never had it so good." The rate of unemployment fell in the
advanced industrial countries as the "Golden Age' developed. The millions of refugees after the war, the
migration of peasants from the farms to the cities and later the millions of non-European migrants provided a
willing labour force for the new industries.
American influence was significant. Western European countries increasingly took up the idea of free trade and
international cooperation during the 1950s and 1960s. When Marshall Aid was given, countries had to agree to
move towards free trade, as well as to co-operate on economic matters. The ERP encouraged countries to
remove import duties on goods made elsewhere. An important economic conference at Bretton Woods in 1944
had set up the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1947, 23 countries signed the GATT agreement (General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Both the IMF and GATT promoted free trade between countries. Despite
initial reluctance, western European countries gradually eliminated most trade barriers by the end of the 1960s.
Starting with the European Payments Union (1950), the restrictions on free trade began to disappear. By 1955
the OEEC had succeeded in removing 84 per cent of the trade restrictions that had been in place at the start of
the 1950s. The new trading groups, such as the EEC (1957) and European Free Trade Area (EFTA 1959), led to
closer economic co-operation among the countries of Western Europe. American multinationals in Western
Europe encouraged the transfer of managers and technical specialists between countries, creating a European
working space that did not depend on national boundaries.
Welfare state
Before 1945 most Western European states had developed basic state welfare programmes. However, it was
only in the post-war period that such programmes were given stable funding and became legal entitlements for
all citizens. If economic growth had been strongly influenced by American ideas, the European welfare state
was a very different response of how to manage that growth for the social good. If American capitalism was to
be defined by the individualistic, ‘frontier spirit’ of the ‘American dream’, post-war European capitalism was a
collectivist, social response to the failures of the 1930s. The following are four broad characteristics that all the
welfare states share:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Government management of the economy: Welfare states gave governments an increased involvement
in planning and managing national economies. Goals and targets were set to improve production.
Public ownership of important sectors of the national economy: Welfare states nationalised key
industries and natural resources, bringing them under state or public ownership.
The use of taxation and social insurance contributions from those in employment to fund welfare
services: Welfare states provided social security pensions, unemployment benefits, medical services
for all citizens. These benefits were funded by tax revenues and social insurance payments paid by all
workers.
Broad-based co-operation between capital and labour: Co-operation between employers (capital) and
workers (labour) was a feature of welfare states. The role of trade unions in economic decision making
was established.
Liberal Democratic Welfare State – UK - By 1950, 20 per cent of all British industry had been placed under
public ownership. But there was less emphasis on state planning in Britain than in the French and Dutch welfare
states. The National Insurance Act (1946) provided unemployment and sickness benefits and old-age pensions.
Everyone paid the same contributions and was entitled to the same benefits. The contributions from the National
Insurance Scheme and revenue from income tax funded a range of services in the British welfare state. The
National Health Service (NHS) came into effect in July 1948. Under the Act free medical, dental and optical
treatment was made available to everyone. Hospitals were placed under public control. Between 1947 and 1950
an average of 170,000 new houses were built by the state each year. Complete new towns were also built to help
deal with the housing problem. Free primary and secondary education was provided for all school children. The
school leaving age was raised to 15. In the British welfare state trade unions became more actively involved in
national decision making. Trade unions co-operated with governments and employers in promoting economic
growth.
Social Democratic Welfare State - Sweden offers a model of the most extensive commitment by the state to
provide welfare services to all its citizens. The Social Democratic Party came to power in 1932 and governed
the country until 1976. The focus was on women and children, with generous children's allowances and state
support for students to attend university. Women were encouraged into education and the workplace though
state-funded child care facilities. Gender equality has always been an essential idea in the Swedish welfare state
(Scandinavian countries had been amongst the first in the world to give women the right to vote). Parental and
child benefits do not depend on marital status. Old-age pension schemes and unemployment benefits were
extended. Welfare benefits were universally provided for all citizens. The commitment to social equality went
further than the British model and is a core feature of the welfare state in Sweden. High taxation and
compulsory contributions from employers and workers were used to fund Welfare programmes. Employment in
the public sector increased dramatically. Sweden had a high level of trade union membership (over 80 per cent
of the workforce). The trade unions became recognised, formal participants in regular tripartite negotiations
with employers and the state. Strikes disappeared during the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1950 and 1973, Sweden
had an average unemployment rate of 1.8 per cent, the second lowest in Western Europe (after Finland).
Corporate Welfare State – France had a stronger tradition of state involvement in social and economic affairs
than most other countries in Western Europe. Jean Monnet’s plans brought economic success. Between 1949
and 1959 the French economy grew at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent. The French social security system was
linked to earnings and levels of insurance contributions. Pension and unemployment benefits were less generous
than in Sweden or Britain. Concerns about population decline made the French welfare state concentrate on
men, family allowances and subsidies for childbearing encouraged women to stay at home. Wives' and widows'
benefits were based on their husband's social security contributions. Under the French system patients paid for
doctor's visits and then applied to the local social security office for a refund. In 1959 the school leaving age
was raised from 14 to 16. The state ran 80 per cent of French schools. Attempts were made to make university
education more accessible to working-class children by providing scholarships. In 1948 the government began a
programme of house building, but by 1953 only 45,000 houses had been built. This was not enough to resolve
the housing problem. In that year the government began building high-rise housing complexes. They also built
nine new towns, five of them around Paris. As in other welfare states, French governments operated a
partnership with labour and capital. In 1950 a minimum wage was introduced. Trade unions moderated their
demands and co-operated in promoting industrial growth. Between 1950 and 1973 the average unemployment
rate was 2 per cent.
Immigration
The improving economy of Western Europe from 1945 to 1973 encouraged workers to move away from poorer
areas in Europe (usually rural) to prosperous places (usually industrial cities). The less developed southern
countries (such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia) sent workers to the more prosperous
north (including France, the United Kingdom, West Germany, Switzerland and the Benelux countries). By 1974,
about 2.7 million workers from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece lived in France and West Germany. Ten
million Europeans and their dependants took part in the migration movements between the 1950s and the early
1970s. Between 1960 and 1973, the number of migrant workers in Western Europe doubled, from 3 per cent to
6 per cent of the workforce. The large-scale move from the countryside led to a decline in agriculture. In 1950,
29 per cent of the West European labour force worked in agriculture. Except in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, less
than 10 per cent of people in Western Europe worked in agriculture in the early 1980s.
During the prosperous 1950s and 1960s, European countries
also recruited labour from their ex-colonies. The UK had an
'open door' policy for immigrants from its former colonies. All
Commonwealth residents had the right to free entry into the
UK. Most UK immigrants during the 1940s and the 1950s
came from the West Indies, India and Pakistan. In 1948 the
ship Empire Windrush brought 492 Jamaican emigrants to
London. Attracted by the prospect of good pay, most of them
had worked in England during the war. By 1958 there were
about 125,000 West Indians and 55,000 Asians living in the
UK, working in low-paid jobs. In the immediate post-war
years the French government needed immigrants to help
France's reconstruction and to offset France's low population
growth. Before the 1960s, the majority of immigrants into
France came from poorer regions of Europe and easily
integrated into French society. Their children qualified for
citizenship. As a colonial power, France attracted immigrants
from its colonies. Algerians were French citizens until 1962.
Before the building of the Berlin Wall, some 14 million
migrants from Eastern Europe had swelled West Germany's
workforce. During the 1950s, the West German government
started to recruit Gastarbeiter (Right - guest workers primarily single young men) from Southern Europe to stay in
West Germany on a temporary basis. Many stayed on, but the
German government rarely gave citizenship rights to these
workers. Between 1955 and 1968, West Germany signed
agreements with Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Yugoslavia and
Morocco to recruit workers for German businesses. By 1965
there were 133,000 Turkish workers in West Germany.
Consumerism
These were the years of the ‘affluent worker’, and by the 1960s millions of ordinary Europeans began to share
the benefits of economic prosperity. Secure jobs, paid holidays and a range of welfare services meant the
working class became more socially mobile. Consumption went beyond the fulfilment of basic economic needs
(food, clothing and shelter) to satisfying personal desires for comfort and better standards of living. The
advertising business played a crucial role in the expansion of consumer demands. Newspapers, magazines and
TV advertising promoted the ever-growing range of labour-saving devices for the home. Advertising and
marketing companies targeted women in particular. Many domestic appliances and gadgets were now
considered necessities, useful and standard items for the average home. The consumer society led to a
spectacular expansion of the retail trade in general. Large supermarkets replaced small grocery shops.
American-style department stores, selling everything from clothes and footwear to home and beauty products,
caused a decline in the number of small individual retail businesses.
One clear indicator of the new affluence was the growth in ownership of private cars. Between 1950 and 1964
the number of private cars in Italy increased from 342,000 to 4.67 million. The mass production of cars and the
availability of cheap petrol made car ownership a reality for millions of families. Cars like the German
Volkswagen Beetle, the French Citroen DS and Renault 4 CV, the British Mini and the Italian Fiat 500 were
symbols of both affluence and a new form of leisure activity. By 1970 there were nearly 14 million private cars
in Germany, 13 million in France and 11.5 million in Britain. After the war, civilian use of air transport also
increased dramatically. Foreign package tours, with an 'all in' price for air travel and accommodation, provided
relatively cheap holidays. 'Sun holidays’ became popular. Before the 1950s Spain had few foreign tourists.
However, by the late 1980s over 54 million foreigners a year took holidays there. New holiday complexes were
built to cater for the mass market. In 1950 a small informal holiday camp for adults was set up on Majorca. The
idea took off and was developed into Club Méditerranée (Club Med).
The most spectacular change in communications came with the arrival of television. The world's first regular
television broadcasting began in 1936 with the BBC. The station had closed down during the war, but reopened
in 1949. At this stage, though, TV was a luxury item and was not available to the general public. By the 1960s
things had changed. In 1963 France had 3.5 million TV sets, West Germany 7.9 million and Britain 12.5
million, and by 1965 49 per cent of Italian families owned a TV set. In the 1950s TV viewing was usually a
collective form of entertainment. In West Germany, TV clubs were established. People who did not have TV at
home went to watch programmes in neighbour's houses.
Change and continuity - Youth Culture and Women
Taken for granted today, the idea that young people might have a different ‘culture’ to that of their parents was
developed for the first time in the 1950s. The concept of the ‘teenager’ had never existed before when children
were expected to go out to work at a very young age and instantly became adults when they did so. Extension of
fulltime education and more money, created a ready market for a teenage culture which had been first developed
in post-1945 USA. Fashion, cinema and popular ‘rock and roll’ music played on newly affordable portable
transistor radios, began to target the youth market with products designed to appeal to teenage sensibilities,
James Dean, Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, young American icons had universal appeal, which for some
critics seemed yet another damaging American ‘Coca Colonisation’ of traditional European values. Some
countries, notably France tried to protect domestic music and film industries by applying a quota system that
guaranteed the showing and broadcast of Francophone film and music
In the early 1950s women made up about
one third of the western European
workforce. Unlike in the communist east,
most of the jobs women did were low
skilled and low paid. The countries that
hadn’t already given women the right to
vote, did so - France (1944), Belgium
(1948) Italy (1946) and Greece (1942) –
but women’s participation in politics
remained low and much lower than in the
East. De Gaulle when asked about the
possibility of creating a Minister for
Women’s affairs, replied ‘A Ministry?
Why not an Under-Secretaryship for
Knitting?’ Some countries even went
backwards. Spain had extended the
franchise to women in 1931 but Franco’s
regime (1939-75) subjected women to the
authority of the father or husband and
effectively took away their political
rights. Throughout western Europe in the
1950s, the traditional women’s role was
domestic.
Legal
barriers
existed
everywhere. They were denied the right
of equal pay for doing the same work as
men and in law the man was considered
the ‘head of the household’. In France for example, before 1964 Women had to have her husband’s permission
to get a passport or open a bank account. And all the while, the domestic ideal was reinforced in popular glossy
magazines that encouraged a feminine ideal of beautiful wives and caring mothers
Activities
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
What were the main economic characteristics of the 1950s economic boom?
Explain the main features of the post-war European ‘welfare state’ and identify the main differences
between the three models that are presented.
Describe and explain the changing patterns of immigration in western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s.
What evidence was there of a ‘consumer boom’ in the 1950s? Do you think it was always welcomed?
Outline and illustrate with examples how the lives of young people changed, but those of women
stayed much the same.
Key question: How significant was the influence of the USA on the way Europe developed in the
1950s?
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