The People's Peace is the first comprehensive study by a professional historian of British history from 1945 to the present day. It examines the transformation of post-war Britain from the planning enthusiasm of 1945 to the ethic of Thatcherism. Its themes include the troubles of the British economy; public criticism of the legitimacy of the state and its instruments of authority; the co-existence of growing personal prosperity with widespread social inequality; and the debates aroused by the process of deconlonization, and by Britain's relationship to the Commonweatlh, the transatlantic world and Europe. Changes in cultural life, from the puritanical `austerity' of the 1940s , through the `permisiveness' of the 1960s, to the tensions of recent years are also charted. Kenneth Morgan examines the paradoxes of life in the modern United Kingdom: the growing affluence and the internal peace of mainland Britain, with its underside of disillusion and discontent. This book is intended for scholars and students with an interest in the 20th-century history of Britain; also post-war political, social, economic, and cultural history; trades unionists, journalists, political activists; general trade.