In my opinion, the 1950s cannot be seen as a period of prosperity for the people of Britain for a number of reasons which I will explain further on. I believe that source 1 mainly agrees with the above statement, however, there are some areas in the source which can display ways in which the source doesn’t fully agree with the above statements. Source 2 also, somewhat agrees with the above question, however, there are a greater number of aspects of the question which can imply that the statement is not 100% true. Source 3 is the source which mostly disagrees with the above question for a number of reasons.
I believe that the 1950s were not years of great prosperity for the people in ...view middle of the document...
Furthermore, source 2 states that there were ‘periods of hardships for some of the population in Britain under the Conservatives’ which means that many people did not have any improvements in their living conditions, in effect rather then it getting better in some cases the living conditions were getting much worse, this is again further emphasised in source 1 with the reference to ‘most people’ and not to all shows that although there was prosperity it was extremely limited. Some of the ways in which the minority groups suffered hardship was through the Rent Act of 1957. This Act did stimulate the rented property market; however, it was due to this Act that ensured the rent rose a great deal making it extremely difficult for the lower earners to afford the leases, thus making the poorest worse off from what they were before. As this source is by Michael Lynch from the book Britain 1945-2007 and was published in 2008 it can trusted more than the speech as it has the benefit of having hindsight and also to evaluate all information before coming to a conclusion therefore, making it more accurate.
Finally, source 3 refers to the ‘economic difficulties which had begun in the second half of 1955 thus stating that there was in fact limitations to the prosperity people were facing. In addition source 3 also suggests that the 1957 was not a year of complete prosperity and there were underlying problems that were connected to it as a state of prosperity would not last forever and eventually prosperity would come to an end as inflation would end up disturbing the prosperity and would essentially kick prosperity out and bring back the inflation problems for the majority of the people thus ending the period of prosperity. This is because as the inflation increases, foreign countries would be less willing to import from Britain as the prices would be extremely high thus they would not be able to afford the importation and exportation prices. This became clear at the end of the 1950s when inflation was at one of its highest points and led to stagflation (this is when there is low economic growth and rising unemployment). This was due to the fact Britain had not been developing their goods...
