Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Demographic Change, 1951-64
- Health and life expectancy
- Birth rates ran consistently
ahead of death rates
throughout the post-war era.
- Baby boom
- Medical treatment
improved under the
welfare state.
- Standards of nutrition
and hygiene improved
steadily.
- Inward migration
- Continuing flow of arrivals
from the Irish Republic.
- Starting in 1948, about
250,000 New Commonwealth
immigrants arrived.
- Outward migration
- In the 1950s, Australia was particularly
keen to attract new citizens.
- Steady flow of British
emigrants to North America.
- 1950s: 1.32 million Britons left
- How and where people lived
- Difference between town
and country sharply drawn.
- Countryside was
dominated by agriculture.
- Rural areas not yet faced by the
creeping urbanisation that was to
threaten village life later on
- Communities had a strong
sense of local identity.
- Most people lived close to
their extended families
- This was about
to change.
- Various forms of social mobility,
above all mass car ownership,
started to drain the population away
from town centres
- Britain's infrastructure
- Run-down and badly
needed modernising.
- Desperate need for housing
development to replace war damage
- From 1951, the Conservative government set
the ambitious target of building 300,000 new
houses every year.
- Local government spent millions on clearing
pre-war slums and building new towns on
green field sites.
- e.g. Harlow in Essex
- Travel
- Movement of
population hollowed-out
inner cities.
- Many town centres found themselves
separated from the suburbs by a belt of
dereliction and neglect
- Intensified by the
impact of private car
ownership
- Changed the ideas of holidays and leisure
- Housing development was pushed further outside towns and cities
- Great demand for new roads to be built.
- Motorways - unknown in Britain
- Construction of M1 began in '58
- 1957-63: 1,200 miles
of new main roads
- Cheaper than railways
- Railways went out of fashion.
- British Railways,
nationalised in '48, struggled
to modernise the rail system
- The Beeching Report of '63
recommended the closure of more than
30% of the rail network
- Too far?
- Caused fundamental social change,
leaving many rural areas isolated