THE ULTIMATE
On January 3rd 1883, British Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee was born.
Attlee became the first majority Labour Party Prime Minister in 1945, and during his period in office created the Welfare State - of which the NHS is a crucial part still to this day, enabling people to get free healthcare at the point of use, paid for by those in work through taxation. The Welfare State that Attlee's government created, brought into being the report made by Liberal politician Beveridge during the Second World War, that called for the tackling of 'Five Giants' - Squalor (poor housing); Idleness (unemployment); Disease; Ignorance (lack of education) and Want (Poverty). Attlee's government also pursued an economic policy of state involvement in the economy, known as Keynesianism. Around a fifth of the British economy was nationalised, brought under government control - including coal, railways, gas, electricity, steel and the Bank of England. Having served with Winston Chuchill in the wartime Coalition government, Attlee campaigned for the creation of a Welfare State, and a 'Land Fit For Heroes' in the 1945 General Election to reward the British People for their sacrifices during the war. Attlee defeated the Conservative war winning Prime Minister, Churchill, in the election as the population moved on from war to what they felt was needed in peacetime.
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On this day, May 5th 1818, Karl Marx was born in Germany, he became a key Political Philosopher, whist also influencing other subjects such as History, Sociology and Economics.
His key works include Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. Working with Friedrich Engels, who supported Marx and provided evidence of capitalism from his families factories in England. Marx put forward a radical version of Socialism, based upon the belief that all human history was that of a struggle between social classes, that eventually leads to a revolution before society advances to a new level of development. He claimed that capitalism was the last but one stage in Human History, where the divide between the Bourgeoisie (the few wealthy factory owners) and the Proletariat (the many poor workers) would grow so great that the workers would realise their position and hold a revolution, to overthrow capitalism, and replace it with a new system, Socialism, that would then develop into Communism, where all would be equal, without differences of social class. His ideas inspired Socialist / Communist revolutions around the world during the 20th Century, most famously Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, leading to the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). |
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