No turning back: the peacetime revolutions of post-war Britain
"Since the Second World War, Britain has been transformed by a series of peaceful revolutions---the rise of multiculturalism, the permissive society, and the service-based consumer economy, among many others. These, Paul Addison argues, have been more powerful agents of change than the Battle of the Somme or the Blitz ever were." "No Turning Back looks at the changing face of Britain in this period of rapid transformation, highlighting just how much has been gained---but not forgetting that much, too, has been lost." "Historian Paul Addison was born in the 1940s. In No Turning Back, he surveys the vast changes in the character of British society that he has observed in the period since. A series of peaceful revolutions has transformed the country; the comparative peace and growing prosperity of the second half of the twentieth century, he contends, have been more powerful agents of change than the Battle of the Somme or the Blitz." "The Second World War led to the welfare state but in some ways reinforced a conservative way of life. The changes unleashed by the Sixties and Seventies were more radical. Much of the sexual morality preached, if not practised, for centuries has been dismantled with the creation of a p̀ermissive society'. The employment and career chances of women have radically improved. A white nation has been transformed into a multiracial one. An economy founded upon manufacturing under the watchful eye of the g̀entlemen in Whitehall' has morphed into a free market system, heavily dependent on finance, services, and housing; a predominantly working class society has evolved into a predominantly middle class one. And the United Kingdom, which once looked as solid as the rock of Gibraltar, now looks increasingly fragile, as Wales and especially Scotland have started to go their separate ways
