In his famous book English History 1914-1945, A.J.P Taylor begins with the words: “Until August 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.” Since then, the British state became vastly more powerful and intrusive.
Not only was a huge system of welfare created; we became, as F.W. Maitland, an earlier historian, had foreseen, “a much governed country”, with every area of life regulated. At the beginning of the last century, the government took and spent well under 10 per cent of national income; by its end, the proportion had risen to well over 40 per cent.
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