The British, as we shall see, were constrained to accept years of ‘austerity’ as the price for economic recovery. In France or Italy, where there was almost no long-term private capital market, all major investments had to be publicly funded—which was why the first Monnet Plan was skewed towards capital investment in major industries at the expense of domestic consumption, housing and services. The political consequences of this were predictable: by 1947 France, like Italy, was threatened with strikes, violent demonstrations and a steady increase in support for the Communist Party and its
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