stablished in 1941 to combat low morale among Britain’s soldiers,the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) was a compulsory,one-hour-per-week education scheme that taught soldiers why they were fighting and about the world around them. The ABCA marked aradical shift in the army’s attitude towards the men and women underits charge. Although soldiers had limited access to army-sponsoredlectures prior to the establishment of the ABCA, the British army had not had mandatory education since Oliver Cromwell’s programsin the seventeenth century. Initially, the idea of soldiers discussing politically sensitive issues sat poorly with many government officials.Still, by the end of World War II, most Britons agreed on the generalimportance of compulsory army education. Despite this agreement, few contemporaries who commented on the ABCA agreed on its ultimatepurpose; a multitude of ideas circulated regarding the worthiness of the program. The rhetoric these contemporary commentators used inopinion articles, letters to periodical editors, and surveys helps explainsome of these divergences. Ultimately, these divergent justificationsreveal the way in which different conceptions of democracy in wartimecoalesced to form a consensus on policy. The historiography of the 1940s centers on the extent to whichthe Second World War produced a political consensus in Britain. In

The Road to 1945,

Paul Addison argues that Britons’ common wartimeexperience led to overwhelming support for the Labour Party’s socialistplatform in 1945.

Surprisingly, when the Conservatives regained

Paul Addison,

The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War

(London: Cape, 1975).

Theirs to Reason Why: Convergence of Opinion on the ABCA during World War II

ASON

UCKERBROD

power in 1951, they retained most of the socialist programs Labourenacted during its tenure; proponents of Addison’s view see this asan indication of consensus among Britain’s political parties. Underthis interpretation, Conservative and Labour ideologies convergedduring the war so that the series of governments after the war differedlittle from one another in both their achievements and philosophies.Furthermore, because Britain had a democratically elected parliament,this political consensus reﬂected, according to Addison, a consensus within public opinion. More recently, historians such as Rodney Loweand Steven Fielding have questioned the validity of this view. They argue that British opinion during this period was not homogenous, butinstead that Labour’s landslide victory reﬂected a vague desire among asmall majority to elect a new government.

Whether or not a “consensus” is a valid lens through which to view 1945, Paul Addison correctly identifies a connection betweenthe experience of World War II and the politics that emerged at itsconclusion. Regardless of political background, almost everyonein Britain agreed that winning the war would be good. Thereforeas long as most Britons believed that the ABCA would contributeto victory, they could agree that it was a worthy scheme. Only afterestablishing this foundation could observers build upon it with theirown political ideologies. Surprisingly, these observers from diversepolitical persuasions provided compatible justifications for the ABCA’smerit. Beyond merely helping the war effort, observers agreed that the ABCA would, for instance, help create a more enlightened version of democracy in Britain. For the ABCA, agreement over a small issue likethe program’s impact on the war effort proved strong enough to bridgeideological divides over larger issues. This analysis of the ABCA can help us better understand politicalconsensus formation in Britain. The convergence of public opinionon many issues during World War II which Paul Addison and othershave identified did not magically appear. Nor, for the ABCA at least,did it arise out of profound agreements on the fundamental structureof society. Observers agreed that the ABCA was satisfactory on one

Rodney Lowe, “The Second World War, Consensus, and the Foundation of the Welfare State,”

Twentieth Century British History

1, no. 2 (1990): 152-182; StevenFielding, “The Second World War and Popular Radicalism: The Signiﬁcance of the ‘Movement Away from Party,’”

History

80, no. 258 (1995): 38-58.

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level and subsequently projected their own interpretations of its meritson other levels. This analysis suggests that observers made up theirminds about the ABCA’s value before they reasoned through its meritsand shortcomings. This causality—of justifying the existence of thescheme only after acknowledging that it was beneficial—is the oppositeof how rational thought is typically conceived. The model here assumesthat contemporaries either agreed that the ABCA aided the war effortor did not agree, but does not explain how they reached that point inthe first place. This paper offers evidence of consensus formation butdoes not attempt to explain the cause of consensus formation.Instead, this paper shows how agreement on one aspect of a policy— the ABCA—evolved into different yet compatible justifications for thatpolicy’s more abstract implications. Retracing the ideological footprintsof public opinion on the ABCA shows that when people agree on the value of a policy, their root justifications of it tend towards something general and ideologically inclusive. Ultimately, this analysis questionsthe definition of consensus and prior approaches to understanding it.Consensus does not imply a convergence of ideologies, as Addisonsuggests, but rather an increase in their compatibility with one anotheron specific concrete issues. Ideological divisions did not change during World War II; the way in which they fit together concerning specificpolicies did.

t the beginning of World War II, most soldiers had little exposureto army education. The only sources of non-military lecturesuntil 1941 were the Army Educational Corps (AEC), which sentcivilian experts on regular army tours to lecture, and various RegionalCommittees, which outsourced education to local institutions inEngland but could only provide lectures to troops stationed nearby.No lectures from the AEC or Regional Committees were compulsory,and soldiers could often only obtain their services upon request froma commanding ofﬁcer. Demand for a new program ballooned in 1941as news spread of low morale among the troops. The war with theGermans was dragging on without hope of a boost from Americaninvolvement. At the same time, the army was having trouble meeting the educational demands of its more inquisitive soldiers. To solvethe problem, the War Ofﬁce enlisted the help of W. E. Williams, an

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