The 1951 election mobilized middle-class women against the egalitarian welfare state

Evidence

By that time, faced with weakening of the egalitarianism that had sustained the welfare state, the neoliberals had hardened their position. Allowing himself a hint of triumphalism, Hagenbuch noted that, while ten years ago people in Britain had believed everyone should receive a basic income from the state as ‘his social birthright’, this view had largely been abandoned. The turning point was the 1951 election, which saw the Conservative Party return to power, partly by mobilising middle-class women in ‘Housewives’ Committees’ that protested ‘the hardships that are being imposed on them’ – notably shortages of luxury goods, high taxes, and what one middle-class housewife called the gradual disappearance of ‘the things that made life gracious in the past’. In this climate, the neoliberals were in no mood for compromise. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 202

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in moral panics over ‘immodesty’ as class/identity signaling — the housewives’ nostalgia for ‘gracious’ living is the same class identity anxiety the reader knows from that article. — connects to: Women’s independence from men, not state dependence, drove welfare backlash — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 227; Working-class anxieties about upper-class rejection dampen support for equalitarian movements — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2243; Court-era welfare made poor women’s dependence public rather than mediated by men — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 226
• QUESTION: Were the Housewives’ Committees a genuinely organized force or a rhetorical invention of the Conservative campaign? Worth chasing the historiography.

Broader Connections

• Working-class anxieties about upper-class rejection dampen support for equalitarian movements #complicates (0.72) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2243
• Court-era welfare made poor women’s dependence public rather than mediated by men #complicates (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 226