Eighty years ago this week austerity is firmly at home in Britain.
Britain's Labour government faced a censure motion tabled by the Conservative opposition in a lively debate in Parliament. Oliver Lyttleton led for the motion with a vigorous and telling speech. Given the scale of the challenges that faced the government to bring Britain back to a peacetime footing, he had easy targets. He described the massive residue of wartime controls as a "Whitehall twilight" which was holding industry back and extended the attack on heavy regulation by claiming that "thou shalt not" was the government's motto. He criticised the shortages still prevalent notably clothing which the government had promised to alleviate and the slow restoration of damage done by German bombs, of the replacement of bombs, "all words, no houses." Stafford Cripps delivered a lacklustre response for the government but its huge majority ensured that the motion was heavily defeated by 381 to 197. Afterwards Aneurin Bevan, responsible for the task as...
