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HIS 352 Professor Adelson

Contemporary Britain, since 1939

Because World War II had such an enormous impact on Britain, some have argued that the country went through its "French Revolution" in World War II, an era which leveled society and culture, and made the British state more national and democratic, less imperial and oligarchical. In short, Britain absorbed many revolutionary changes during and following World War II, an era which will be divided into three periods: from 1939 to 1951, from 1951 to 1970, and the years since 1970.
Background to World War II
1. The Versailles Treaty failed to establish an adequate basis for peace, with the US refusing to ratify the treaty and participate in the League of Nations and the USSR an outcast, and with European nations other than Britain and France wanting to revise the treaty, especially Germany, and Italy, not to mention Japan.
2. European diplomacy worked rather well in the 1920s, but not in the 1930s, after the Depression, when nationalism took on virulently fascist if not totalitarian forms in economics and foreign affairs, and made most Britons fear another war and led Chamberlain to try appeasement.
The course of the war and allied diplomacy outlined
1. "Phoney War" from fall, 1939 to spring, 1940
2. "Battle of Britain" during the summer and fall, 1940
3. "Battle of the Atlantic," US Lend-Lease & entry, 1941
4. "Desert Campaign," 1941-1942
5. Britain, the US and Soviet Union, 1942-1945: Axis defeated in North Africa in 1942, Italy in 1943, West and East Europe in 1944; Yalta Conference in February 1945; Berlin fell in May 1945; Japan bombed in August 1945; armistice and allied occupation, but no general peace conference except for the United Nations.
The impact of the war on the British Isles and the Empire
1. WWI's role in people's memories and as a bureaucratic model
2. Demographically, Britain lost 300,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers killed and 600,000 disabled, plus some 60,000 civilian air raid victims. British casualties must be related to WWII's 15 million military and 35-40 million civilian deaths, 20 million of which occurred in the Soviet Union (figures on China estimated between 40-75 million). Britain also experienced an internal migration of 4 million through the evacuations, blitz, and family separations. In 1942, birth rate rose for first time since 1880; baby boom stopped in 1948; no 1941 census
3. Economically, Britain experienced heavy war damage at home, affecting 1/3 of its housing and 13 million people, including some 500,000 homes destroyed and 4 million severely damaged. Britain lost f3 billion in war damages, f4 billion in overseas assets, Britain's external debt was increased by f13 billion despite higher taxation (income tax increased 42.5% in 1940, 50% in 1941, and excess profits taxed at 100%) and by borrowing from the Dominions, India, and Egypt. Through Lend-Lease, Britain became a dependent of the US. Churchill used the word "bankrupt."
4. Socially and culturally, the war put all civilians in the same boat and brought people together as never before and temporarily leveled classes.
The War Cabinets preoccupied by winning the war, keeping morale up
1. Chamberlain's mostly Conservative coalition, September 1939-May 1940
2. Churchill's War Cabinet, with more Labour members 1940-1945; "War Dictatorship," with government direction and planning; "War Socialism," with Beveridge Report of 1942, calling for social security and national health; the Butler Act of 1944 established a truly national education system, meant that twice as many students stayed in school until the age of 17 after WWII as before.
The British electorate from 1945 to 1951
1. The last election, in 1935, had 428 for National Coalition (including 387 Conservatives) with 157 Labour and 17 Liberals in opposition.
2. The 1945 election had 394 Labour, 196 Conservative, and 50 other MPs.
3. The Electoral Reform of 1948 (following those of 1832, 1867, 1884, 1918, and 1928) eliminated plural voting and representatives for Oxbridge, redistributed seats, and reduced MPs from 640 to 625.
4. In the February 1950 election, 315 Labour, 298 Conservatives
5. In September 1951 election, 321 Conservatives, 295 Labour (small Labour plurality)
Labour rule from 1945-1951 based on postwar austerity, not socialist manias
1. With Lend-Lease stopping abruptly at the end of the war, Britain's hardships worsened after the war with severe rationing from 1945-1948, devaluation in 1947; the Marshall Plan from 1948-1951 helped some with Britain receiving f681 million.
2. Britain was left with huge post-war and imperial commitments. In 1947, Britain still had 1.5 million soldiers in uniform; from 1948 to 1960, Britain also required two years of national service. Britain could not afford this so leadership in waging Cold War assumed by the US, with Britain reducing its overseas commitments by pulling out of parts of Eastern Asia, India, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe
3. The British Commonwealth of Nations, as labeled in the 1930s, was now changed simply to the Commonwealth, in order to reflect the racial diversity of its composition.
The "welfare state" and "nationalization" to 1951
1. Term coined by professor Alfred Zimmern in the 1930s to distinguish it from Hitler's "warfare state."
2. There are so many myths and US anxieties stirred about the welfare state that historians need to be as precise as possible about what it was and was not in Britain after World War II.
3. In 1946, the National Insurance and National Health Service Acts were passed, two mainstays of the welfare state.
4. National Insurance consolidated acts passed since the late 19th century, provided security against unemployment, sickness and disability benefits, maternity and death benefits, and payments to retired persons, widows, and orphans, paid for by weekly employee contributions supplemented by the National Exchequer. This was enhanced by the National Assistance Board to help those whose benefits fell below a specified minimum, which actually cost the British Government 11.3% of its overall budget in 1950, in contrast to 13.6% of its budget in 1938.
5. National Health went into effect in 1948, and within a year 95% of the British had signed up for it and 97% of the doctors participated. National Health became the most popular act Labour adopted, with bad health regarded as a social misfortune rather than a personal failure. Great strides were made in attacking widespread disease. Doctors were paid on the basis of the number of patients (2200 was the average per year); and the number of doctors in Britain increased from 36,500 in 1948 to 49,000 in 1958. Not just the working-class, but all were now covered and paid for specialists as well as GPs, and included free dental, eye care and prescriptions. The initial problem was with shortage of hospitals, equipment, and staff, not abuse of patients or doctors themselves.
6. Nationalization had been adopted in WWI and WWII, but from 1945-1951, 20% of the country's economy was put under the control of the national government. The Bank of England was nationalized in 1946, making it analogous to the US Federal Reserve. Aviation, overseas cable, electricity, gas, transportation followed. The coal mining industry, Britain's sickest with its 800 private coal companies and the one with the worst labor relations since the early 1920s, was nationalized under the Ministry of Fuel/Power. Steel too.
7. What is surprising is how little difference this made, as any state profits were pumped back into financing war damages and labor unrest persisted. Nationalization focused on unprofitable sectors.
Labour Unions and the Labour Party to 1951
1. The number of members of unions expanded in WWII (as in WWI) from 6 to 8 million. During the depression of the 1930s, unemployment had gradually diminished from its 1932 peak, but real wages actually increased for workers owing to the low price of food through depressed agricultural prices. During WWII, virtually full employment existed and the government's tight controls on wages and prices.
2. In 1946, the Labour government repealed the Tory's Trades Disputes Act, which had followed on the General Strike of 1926 that had depleted over 30% of the Trade Union Congress funds. The 1927 Act had outlawed general and sympathy strikes, and decreed that union members could contribute to the Labour Party on a voluntary basis only.
3. The Trade Union, headed by the Trade Union Congress with its headquarters in London, became an important pillar of Labour, but the unions did not dictate the program for the party.
4. The Labour Party moved so cautiously in setting up the welfare state that the Conservatives would leave it virtually intact when they came to power in the 1950s and stayed in power until the mid 1960s.
5. The Labour Party cabinet had 37 ministers, 8 of whom had been coal miners, and 11 had been trade-union leaders. All of them had a sense of social injustice, but their leadership was largely middle class with Oxbridge degrees; they approached foreign, imperial, and financial affairs with caution and moderation.
6. As Arnstein pointed out in his text p. 373, "Whereas back in 1910 some 5 percent of the people managed to acquire 43 percent of after-tax personal income, by 1949 that top 20 percent received 45% of that income. (The latter ratio was to remain virtually unchanged during the next three decades and more.) At the same time, Labour had transformed Britain into one of the most regulation-ridden and bureaucratic of lands; by 1951, more than 26 percent of its people worked for the government at a time when 17% of Americans and 11% of West Germans did so." Some of this bureaucratization had to do not with social justice, but with the mismanagement of British finance and industry, there being no course in business administration offered in Great Britain until 1968.
7. In interpreting "war socialism" and the "welfare state," it is important to keep in mind the staggering costs of World War, which left Britain economically in a highly vulnerable position at the time it undertook new programs in health, education, and welfare that benefited the common people. This happened after centuries when the British state had been in the hands of the few and its powers had been used more to protect the property and privileges of the few than to develop the opportunities for its people.
Contemporary Britain, 1951-1970: much of the darkness and shadows cast by World War II and postwar austerity were lifted in the 1950s and 1960s, when the entire country celebrated a new monarch and consumerism. Britain's youth and outsiders affected popular culture without subverting most established institutions, which retained their hold on the bureaucratic state and the shrinking empire. Political and economic ties remained more with the United States and Commonwealth than with Europe.
Demography--stability except for new emigrants, racial heterogeneity
1. The birth rate remained low and the death rate lowered also to give the British populations a 1% per year increase overall, with 50 million in 1951 only growing to 55 million in 1971.
2. In order to reduce urban congestion, urban planning got underway in the 1940s, with "green belts" and "new towns" established. There were 16 of the latter by the mid 1960s.
3. Small emigration from the British Isles to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US, but a "brain drain"
4. Substantial white immigration from Europe during WWII era followed by "colored" Africans, Asians, and West Indians, whose numbers exceeded 500,000 by the early 1960s and led to governmental restrictions on immigration from the mid-1960s, when the "colored population" less than 3% of the total, but quite visible in certain areas and jobs; racism and backlash.
Economics-steady domestic growth, but internationally vulnerable
1. Great Britain experienced recovery in the1950s and 1960s, with gross domestic product growing at an average rate of 3.5% from 1949 to 1955, 2.2% from 1955-1961; 2.9% from 1961-1964; and 2.2% from 1964-1970. Note that these figures are low compared to the German and Japanese "miracles" derived from the defeated having to build new infrastructures, take lower wages, and compete. Such old British industries as cotton, textiles, coal, and shipping declined, although nonferrous metals and woolen textiles boomed, along with new industries in plastics, automobiles, airplanes, and electricity
2. Americanization of the British economy had many dimensions, US takeover in Britain; huge British investment in United States; dramatically different approaches to management.
3. Britain not only had unfavorable balances of trade, with imports exceeding exports and big problems with international balance of payments speculation and "stop/go" measures; devaluation in 1967 from $2.80 to $2.40; cuts in defense spending from 10% GDP in early 1950s to 5% by 1970.
4. Much economic growth was tied to consumer spending, with "hire purchase" installment-buying accompanying a housing boom; by 1961, 25% of Britons lived in post-WWII housing; in 1951, only 40% of houses had indoor bathrooms, but 90% had them by 1976. By 1962, 80% had TV. Youth consumption increased.
5. Britain protected its agriculture, with its farmers able to produce 50% of the country's needs by 1960 (only 33% in 1930) and farmers resisted entry into the European Common Market.
6. In 1951, 56% men and 25% of women workers were members of unions; in 1961, 53% men, 24% women; in 1971, 58% men, 32% women. Most strikes in 1960s "wildcat," not under leaders.
Society--greater mobility in geography, gender and class from the 1950s when attacks on the establishment started; following American models, greater visibility of youth and the "cult of youth"; more permissiveness, less censored media in the 1960s. 20% women worked outside the home in 1957; 60% by 1970. Divorces increased from 27,000 per year (1961) to 80,000 (1971); some abortions; homosexuality legalized in 1960s. Crime climbed from 300,000 in 1961 to 1,300,000 in 1969, the same year capital punishment was banned; comparisons with US.
Culture--more popular less elitist, but 20%, still had half the wealth
1. More secondary education since 1940s, but the 11+ exam determined if you went to "secondary modern" or "grammar" schools; in 1970, 90% of Conservative MPs had been to "public" schools; non-Oxbridge "plate glass" universities; the Open University of the 1960s.
2. Religion in absolute terms declined; only 13% went to church regularly. Non-Anglicans also declined somewhat less; Presbyterianism in Scotland, Methodism in Wales, Roman Catholicism, Judaism and Islam still community-based, but increasing intermarriage.
3. A renaissance of the arts--government subsidizing the arts, museums, theater companies, etc.
Politics--compared with 1950, the welfare state in 1970 spent 50% more on health, and 100% more on education; "less guns, more butter."
1. The Conservatives under Churchill (1951-1955); Eden, (1955-1957); Macmillan (1957-1963); Home (1963-1964)
2. The Labour Party under Wilson (1964-1970)
3. Bi-partisanship in foreign, imperial, and economic policies
4. Parties played to different constituencies, but moderate in office
5. Astonishingly little change in elections of the 1950s and 1960s, even with 18 year-olds getting the vote.
Contemporary Britain, since 1970. Because historians cannot disassociate themselves from the present, partisanship affects their interpretations of the recent past. Yet, by following the familiar analytical pattern of this course and looking at demographic, economic, social, and cultural factors, the politics of Britain can be approached in a less partisan fashion.
Demography since 1970
1. Birth rate declined and death rate lowered, so increase in population dropped to less than 1%.
2. The numbers in old industrial regions of the north and west continued to decline, while those in service sectors primarily in the south and east continued to rise, especially around London.
3. While limits placed on immigration, the second generation of West Indians, Asians, and Africans expanded at a faster rate than the white population and concentrated in certain parts, where riots broke out in 1985 in London (Brixton), Liverpool (Toxteth), and other urban areas.
4. For immigrants to enter, at least one parent had to be British-born, or had to have a good, guaranteed income (difference between rich and poor from Hong Kong).
5. Even work visas harder to get, given high unemployment.
Economics
1. Oil: Britain harmed by the quadrupling of prices in 1973, when most of its oil still imported from Middle East, which led to an enormous increase in inflation; in the late 1970s Britain became a net exporter of oil once "North Sea Oil" off the coast of eastern Scotland came on line.
2. European Economic Community: most politicians backed British entry in 1973 (along with Ireland and Denmark, bringing the original six to nine) and Britons voted 2 to 1 confirming entry in a 1975 referendum. British also decimalized currency, measured in meters and centigrade, changed to value-added tax, and backed tunnel underneath English Channel. By 1979, West Germany became Britain's main trading partner, with imports to and exports from EEC rising to 40%+ and with Commonwealth declining to 10%+. The trend continued.
3. Industrially, Great Britain did not compete as effectively as its international rivals, with the pound floating in the 1970s, low worker productivity, and unions demanding higher wages, which led to strikes so tense as to bring down Conservatives in early and Labour in late 1970s. Unions very powerful in the 1970s, but their power reduced in 1980s.
4. Financially, Britain still highly international, most closely tied to the US (in 1985, 24% of new investment from Britain and 10% from Japan). While London's stock exchange smaller than New York and Tokyo, London remained the world's main exchange for currency, gold and silver, and insurance.
5. Management remained hopelessly unsatisfactory in the private as well as the public sectors even as the public sector diminished.
6. Governmentally, Labour and Conservatives had different national approaches to the economy. They adopted various measures to balance their international payments, nationalized and de-nationalized certain enterprises, etc., yet all such tinkering amounted to dividing up a British economic pie that got smaller and smaller by the 1990s.
Socially, the class system survived in the monarchy, the peerage (with the Conservatives in the 1980s reviving the hereditary peerage, which had been abolished in the 1940s), the established church, elitist education, and accent determining status more than wealth. And, as Arnstein pointed out on p. 373 of his text, the top 20% of the population (as in 1949) still received 45% of the after-tax personal income in the 1990s
1. Divorces increased six-fold from the 1950s to the 1990s
2. Only 25% of Britons disapprove of children born out of wedlock; illegitimacy increased in one generation from 4% to 25%. Single-parent households and youth, drugs, etc.
3. Increased crime, especially theft of property, although rape was only 25% and armed robbery 20% of that in the United States.
4. In housing, more Britons were buying their homes and flats in the 1980s, although their mortgage rates fluctuated (unlike the fixed system in the US) while their utility costs were four times higher than those of the US by the 1990s.
5. About 95% of the British population availed themselves of the National Health Service, manned to a considerable degree by Asian doctors, with many Britons going abroad where they could practice privately, although the Harley Street Physicians and private hospitals persisted for the rich at home and from abroad.
6. Inter-racial and inter-generational tensions seem to have reduced throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Politics since 1970
1. Imperially, the main streams of the two parties differed in degree rather than kind, with smaller role in the world, although the Conservatives were more closely linked to the United States than Labour; the Falklands War demonstrated close association; Ronald Reagan and Caspar Weinburger both honorary "knighthoods" for Falklands; and close cooperation between Britain and US against Ghaddafy and Saddam Hussein. The Commonwealth persists as a club; Hong Kong's status until 1997. British troops have been in Northern Ireland since 1969, with no government able to bring the Ulster Protestant militants and the Irish Republican Army terrorists under sufficient control from moderate leaders to resolve their differences; more hopeful signs in the late 1990s.
2. In Europe, most main-stream party leaders of the Conservatives and Labour have recognized that Britain must be a part of Europe, although back benchers and radicals in both parties resent European intrusions into British interests and sovereignty. Britain never allowed itself to be bullied by Europe after DeGaulle.
3. Nationally, the parties have diverged significantly, with the Labour Party leadership becoming hostage to the angry unions in the 1970s and Labour leaders embracing left-wing ideologues in the early 1980s. This helped Liberals gain more popularity, especially as moderate Labour MPs left the party to become Social Democrats. This split in the Labour Party enormously helped the Conservatives to gain power in the late 1970s and to retain it throughout the 1980s. While Mrs. Thatcher's party won a big electoral victory after the Falklands War in the early 1980s, her popularity soon slipped and her effectiveness and importance have been exaggerated by US media.
4. In terms of policy, Labour in the late 1970s and early 1980s got hung up on unilateral disarmament and socialism before it moderated its stance and stopped alienating voters in the 1990s. Conservative policies of privatization have been a mixed economic blessing for Britain, but Mrs. Thatcher dared not destroy the welfare state. She could only make some cuts, but not reverse the course of a century-long trend.
5. In taxation, the Labour Party favored progressive taxation, while the Conservatives supported regressive taxes, with Mrs. Thatcher's "poll tax" becoming a political liability for the Tories.
6. In local government, Labour in the 1970s and 1990s continued to move toward greater decentralization of management of the welfare system, with local authorities spending more to provide more services. Mrs. Thatcher changed that trend, re-centralizing policy to keep local authorities under national bureaucratic scrutiny since the National Exchequer mostly funded welfare.
7. At the risk of over-simplification, British politics may be said to have changed relatively little since the outbreak of World War II, the "haves" voting Conservative and the "have-nots" looking to Labour.
Culture since 1970
1. Religion remains in decline; indeed, Britain may be one of the most secular countries in the West.
2. Educationally, Labour launched "comprehensive" schools modeled on US high schools; some Labour leftists wanted to abolish all "public schools," which continue to thrive as parents pay lots of money to insure that their children speak and act the "right" way so as to be able to get on with the "right" sort of people. Universities have grown and become much more egalitarian, but Mrs. Thatcher's severe cutbacks made her so unpopular that Oxford refused to give her an honorary degree.
3. The differences between "hi-brow," the "middle-brow," and the "low-brow" culture are clear in the entertainment and sports preferred by the upper, middle, and working class in society. While the big markets are with the working and lower classes, the greatest power is still in the hands of the upper and upper-middle classes, who dominate the institutions of British government and society nationally and internationally, if not always locally in the cities. The countryside still remains largely an aristocratic preserve.