The most fundamental measure of the global eclipse of Britishness is to be found in the politics of language. The narrowing semantic range of imperial Britishness was epitomized by India’s request for admission into the post-war Commonwealth in 1947 as the first member to adopt a Republican constitution. Resolving this dilemma also raised the question of whether the Commonwealth should retains its customary ‘British’ adjectvie, pressing the ‘British Commonwealth’ to the limit of its capacity to bind an increasingly atomized membership. By the early 1960s, the UK Government itself was inclined to repatriate the meaning of Britishness in official usage to refer only to themselves - itself a major landmark in downsizing the idea of Britain. This chapter traces the protracted diplomatic wrangling over the British name itself in the post-war world, with profound consequences for its future viability.

The National Government entered a new phase in the spring of 1937, as Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as Conservative leader and Prime Minister. As this chapter shows, appeasement, though controversial, preserved peace in the present and did little to disrupt the Conservatives’ continuing efforts to construct their popular appeals around the government’s record of economic recovery from 1931. Drawing upon all twelve constituency case studies, the chapter considers the impact of rearmament on employment levels and assesses the local implications of the government’s social reform programme, including the Education Act 1936, the Holiday with Pay Act 1938 and especially the impact of the Physical Training and Recreation Act 1937 on local government facilities. The chapter also demonstrates how Labour wrestled back some control of the political initiative in the late 1930s. It argues that Labour began to restore its own reputation for competent government through a well-publicised programme of municipal social reform in London, its growing presence in neighbourbood organization (including among the suburban electorate), and its critique of the government’s handling of the distressed area. In doing so, Attlee’s party not only contested the government’s narrative of recovery, it also began the process of articulating a particular version of 1930s Britain that ultimately defined Britons’ political and historical imaginary for several generations.