AQA_2024: A-level History - Component 2S The Making of Modern Britain, 1951–2007 (Merged Question Paper and Marking Scheme)

AQA_2024: A-level History - Component 2S The Making of Modern Britain, 1951–2007 (Merged Question Paper and Marking Scheme) A-level HISTORY Component 2S The Making of Modern Britain, 1951–2007 Friday 7 June 2024 Materials For this paper you must have:  an AQA 16-page answer book. Instructions Afternoon  Use black ink or black ball-point pen. Time allowed: 2 hours 30 minutes  Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Paper Reference is 7042/2S.  Answer three questions. In Section A answer Question 01. In Section B answer two questions. Information  The marks for questions are shown in brackets.  The maximum mark for this paper is 80.  You will be marked on your ability to: – use good English – organise information clearly – use specialist vocabulary where appropriate. Advice  You are advised to spend about: – 1 hour on Question 01 from Section A – 45 minutes on each of the two questions answered from Section B. IB/M/Jun24/7042/2S 3 key areas: 1. Post-War Recovery and the 1950s:  Winston Churchill’s Return (1951–1955): Post-war recovery, austerity measures, and the Suez Crisis (1956).  Eisenhower and the "Special Relationship" with the USA.  Economic difficulties, including rationing, and the role of Labour governments in nationalization. 2. The 1960s – Social and Cultural Change:  Harold Wilson's Labour Government (1964–1970): The “white heat of technology”, focusing on modernization and reform.  Key social reforms: the abolition of the death penalty, legalization of abortion, and the permissive society.  Cultural revolution: the rise of the counterculture, the Beatles, and the Sexual Revolution. 3. Economic Challenges and the 1970s:  Edward Heath's Conservative government (1970–1974): Struggled with inflation, union power, and the miners' strike.  The 1973 oil crisis and the rise of stagflation.  Callaghan's Labour government (1976–1979): The Winter of Discontent (1978–1979), leading to widespread strikes and loss of public confidence. 4. Thatcherism (1979–1990):  Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government: Major economic reforms, including privatization, reducing the power of trade unions, and embracing free-market policies.  The Falklands War (1982), which boosted Thatcher’s popularity.  Social and economic polarization: “Victorian” values and the rise of the yuppie culture.  The Poll Tax and the growth of class tensions. 5. Economic and Political Shifts in the 1990s:  John Major’s government (1990–1997): Economic instability due to Black Wednesday (1992) and the UK’s exit from the ERM.  The end of the Cold War, EU integration, and the focus on social reforms.  The rise of New Labour under Tony Blair. 6. New Labour and the 2000s:  Tony Blair's leadership (1997–2007): Major reforms in education, health, and devolution for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.  The Good Friday Agreement (1998) and peace in Northern Ireland.  Foreign policy: The UK’s involvement in the Iraq War (2003), which led to significant controversy and political fallout.  Economic prosperity early in Blair’s tenure, followed by challenges in dealing with inequality and housing. These key areas summarize the main political, social, and economic developments in Britain between 1951 and 2007. Turn over ► IB/M/Jun24/7042/2S 4 IB/M/Jun24/7042/2S IB/M/Jun24/G4006/E3 7042/2S Section A Answer Question 01. Source A From a major televised debate on the state of the Labour Party by the moderate MP, Stephen Haseler, March 1980. Haseler was expelled from Labour and joined the SDP, 1981. I joined the Labour party, the party of Attlee and Gaitskell, over 21 years ago, seeing it as a vehicle for achieving social progress for working people. Now that party is changing fundamentally. It is being taken over, unrecognisable with its past. We on the right of the party have warned of this development for years. The moderates in the party are increasingly intimidated by the extremist infiltrators. What to do about it? What is the position of people who stand in the moderate tradition of social democracy? Some, understandably, will fight on within the party but I believe that once the Left has completed its takeover of the party our nation is finished. We’re doomed forever to a struggle to the death between a Marxist-based party on the one hand and a party of the privileged on the other. I believe the country is yearning for some escape from the two extremes, for the birth of a new radical centre social democratic force to bring hope and national unity. 5 10 Source B From ‘The Downing Street Years’, an autobiography by Margaret Thatcher, 1993. Thatcher is commenting on the state of the political opposition at the time of the 1983 UK general election. The opposition itself was divided between Labour and the new SDP, which claimed to have truly broken the mould of British two-party politics. But we were the mould breakers. I always felt that the leaders of the SDP would have done better to stay in the Labour Party and drive out the Far Left. SDP support had peaked by 1983. As for Labour, it had continued its unstoppable leftward shift. Michael Foot is a highly principled and cultivated man, and was invariably courteous in our dealings. In debate and on the platform he has a kind of genius. But the policies he adopted were not only catastrophically unsuitable for Britain, they also provided an umbrella beneath which sinister revolutionaries, intent on destroying the institutions of the state and the values of society, were able to shelter. The more the public learned of Labour’s policies and personnel the less they liked them. There was no doubt that in the extreme form adopted under Michael Foot’s leadership Labour was easier to beat. 5 10 3 Source C From reminiscences given in an interview for a book on Militant Tendency by Mike Hogan in Liverpool, 2012. Hogan was a left-wing Labour activist in the early 1980s. Growing up on a working-class estate in Liverpool, I was already aware of the class struggle. So many workers were being thrown out of work at that time, it felt like everything was collapsing around you. I started going to Young Socialist meetings and got recruited into Militant Tendency. Militant was proper Labour. It was all about believing the working class can run things. It seemed to me for the first time in my short life that there was hope. That’s where I was coming from. I was at the huge demo outside Liverpool Town Hall in March 1984 against Thatcher’s rate-capping. About 50 000 people packed the city centre. I spoke from the top of the Town Hall steps about youth unemployment and how the council was prepared to fight and do something about government cuts. To be honest with you, we had a kind of arrogance, a sure belief we knew what needed to be done. But we were betrayed by the leadership of the Labour movement. 5 10 0 1 With reference to these sources and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these three sources to an historian studying the problems of the Labour Party in the 1980s. [30 marks] Turn over for Section B IB/M/Jun24/7042/2S Turn over ► 6 IB/M/Jun24/7042/2S Section B Answer two questions. 0 2 To what extent were the lives of British people transformed by Conservative governments in the years 1951 to 1957? [25 marks] 0 3 ‘Britain’s international position grew stronger in the years 1970 to 1974.’ Assess the validity of this view.