Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945-1951

In the years immediately following the Second World War, Britain peacetime conscription was practiced for the first time. L.V. Scott examines the military thinking regarding conscription, showing how the 1947 National Service Act came to be regarded by the military as deficient and expensive. The demands of conscription retarded the development of an efficient post-war regular army. Scott explores the policies of both Labour and Conservative parties, tracing the process by which Labour, previously bitterly opposed to conscription, came to pass the 1947 Act. His book is a valuable analysis of an important political question and of changing assumptions about British defense priorities in the pivotal post-war years.