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 Health Minister, described the temporary housing programme as "well under way" with 500 to 600 units being built. The prefabricated houses had a design life of ten years but some still stand today. 

The shadow of austerity  was also present in the debate on the £1bn US loan offer negotiated by Lord Keynes. Its terms were not appealing but the only alternative was autarky which would hurt living conditions further. The Conservative leadership abstained from the vote but backbenchers on both sides spoke vehemently and voted against, largely as a protest against the inequity of the agreement given the scale of Britain's sacrifice in the war. Bob Boothby led the opposition to an "economic Munich" which he contrasted , with some irony, to the "princely" terms secured by Stanley Baldwin after the First World War. Once again Stafford Cripps delivered a leaden response for the government.

General George Patton suffered a car accident in Germany which broke his spine. He had already fallen from his wartime peak as the one Allied general whom the Germans truly feared. Even then he had been a controversial figure but his anti-Semitic and pro-German comments after victory led to his dismissal from command. He knew that his life in any meaningful sense was over but lingered on for some days.