Review by Choice Review
In this impressively researched and vigorously argued book, Brooke contests the widespread notion that the Labour party's participation in a coalition with the Conservatives from 1940 to 1945 fostered a wartime consensus that persisted well into the postwar era (and that dissipated the party's radical edge). Instead, Brooke takes seriously Labour leader Clement Attlee's pronouncement in 1940 that "the world that must emerge from this war must be a world attuned to our ideals." After chronicling the Labour party's prewar recovery from the debacle of 1931, the author charts its growing assertiveness and programmatic independence during the war itself. Whether in the various independent candidatures in the constituencies or in the radical currents in Labour policy on education, health, social insurance, and the economy, the party was not supinely acquiescent but effectively treading the fine line between responsibility and opportunity. Brooke's detailed and sometimes dry discussion of policy debates will commend his book primarily to specialists, but it ranks as one of the most important works on the domestic politics of the war since Paul Addison's seminal The Road to 1945 (1975). Graduate; faculty. F. Coetzee; Yale University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
