A Brief History of Britain 1851–2010 Read online

  Highlights from the series

  A Brief History of British Kings & Queens

  Mike Ashley

  A Brief History of the Crusades

  Geoffrey Hindley

  A Brief History of the Druids

  Peter Berresford Ellis

  A Brief History of the Dynasties of China

  Bamber Gascoigne

  A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths

  Stephen Kershaw

  A Brief History of Henry VIII

  Derek Wilson

  A Brief History of the Hundred Years War

  Desmond Seward

  A Brief History of Life in the Middle Ages

  Martyn Whittock

  A Brief History of Mankind

  Cyril Aydon

  A Brief History of the Middle East

  Christopher Catherwood

  A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors

  Anthony Blond

  A Brief History of Secret Societies

  David V. Barrett

  A Brief History of the Universe

  J.P. McEvoy

  A Brief History of Venice

  Elizabeth Horodowich

  A Brief History of the Vikings

  Jonathan Clements

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF

  BRITAIN 1851–2010

  JEREMY BLACK

  For Sarah

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface and Acknowledgements

  Prologue: An Imperial Presence

  PART ONE: 1851–1931

  1. Changing Country

  2. The Culture of Power

  3. Changing People

  4. Imperial Strength

  PART TWO: 1931–2010

  5. Changing Country

  6. Changing People

  7. Empire to Europe

  8. To the Present

  9. Contesting the Past

  Selected Further Reading

  Index

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Historians are of two types. One, pretending Olympian detachment and Delphic omniscience, tells you the answers and pretends that there is only one way to look at the past: their way. That is not my approach. I think it important to be frank about the difficulties of covering the past, about the choices made in what is covered, and how it is treated and organized, and about the degree to which others will take different approaches. That is particularly true of the treatment of the recent past.

  The key choices here are coverage and organization. In coverage, there is a determination not to put politics first but, instead, to focus on changes in country and people that reflected broader pressures as well as those arising from government policy. The two ‘changing country’ chapters cover environmental issues in the broadest sense and use this approach to discuss such topics as economic and transport history and the spread of the cities. The two ‘changing people’ chapters cover demographic history, including migration and health, but also social structure and such trends as the rise of the independent voice of youth.

  In each part, there is also a chapter on Britain’s international position, a key element of its lasting importance, as well as a chapter that seeks to link political and cultural developments. Political and cultural developments are often treated as different, but that is mistaken as they can be closely related. This is particularly the case if culture is understood in the. widest sense, namely to include public activities such as sport. In Britain, the key characteristics of the two relevant sections in this book, Chapters 2 and 8, is that the first saw the triumph of the market, while, in the second, the state became more significant. The book closes with a chapter-length conclusion that includes the way in which public history has presented the nation’s past.

  I am most grateful to Bill Gibson, David Gladstone, Keith Laybourn, Thomas Otte, Murray Pittock, Bill Purdue, Richard Toye and Michael Turner for their comments on all or part of an earlier draft. None is responsible for any errors that remain. Nor is Leo Hollis, who has been a most encouraging editor, or Jaqueline Mitchell, an exemplary copy-editor.

  This work takes me to my 100th single-author book, and I close the preface by recording my heartfelt thanks to Sarah, who has been there throughout all the books. I would also like to note my gratitude to the many others who have provided help and encouragement, a goodly number. I hope they take pleasure in what has resulted.

  PROLOGUE

  An Imperial Presence

  The Great Exhibition in 1851 was to speak for Britain past, present and future. Opened at the specially built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, it was intended as a demonstration of British achievement, and was a proclamation of the nation’s mission, duty and interest to put itself at the head of the diffusion of civilization, and thus to take forward history. The exhibition was seen as an opportunity to link manufacturing and the arts, in order to promote a humane practicality and inspired, progressive society in which Britain would be foremost, and from which the British people and economy could benefit. The exhibition proclaimed the supposed triumph of free trade which was linked to manufacturing supremacy. It also symbolized the coming of a less fractured and more prosperous society after the often divisive and difficult experiences of the 1830s and 1840s, notably the contentious repeal of the Corn Laws and the pressure from the Chartist movement for political reform.

  The exhibition, thus, reflected an attempt to embrace and to channel the country’s dynamic industry, the New Britain; an attempt in part arising from the visit to the manufacturing centre of Birmingham in 1843 of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert (1819–61) a key promoter of the exhibition. With its 24-ton (24.4-tonne) block of coal by the entrance, the exhibition was a tribute to British manufacturing skill, prowess and confidence in the future, one abundantly displayed in its central space, the first wonder of the modern world, Joseph Paxton’s (1803–65) iron and glass conservatory, which was 1,850 feet (564 metres) long (over three times the length of St Paul’s Cathedral), 460 feet (140 metres) wide and 108 feet (33 metres) high. It included 294,000 panes of glass and contained almost 1 million square feet of space. This was a public palace of Britain’s prowess and future, one that was more impressive than the royal palaces nearby. As a tribute to the importance of this British initiative, other countries sent exhibits, while the British public celebrated their future with their presence: some of the 6.2 million visitors in the 140 days of the exhibition came to London by means of the recent and expanding rail system.

  Public improvement was a key goal of the exhibition and its profits appropriately led to the building of a series of museums and learned institutions in South Kensington, to the south of Hyde Park. The South Kensington Museum, later renamed the Victoria and Albert, was followed by the Natural History Museum (1873–81) and, in 1907, by the Science Museum. The Royal College of Music and the Imperial College of Science were part of the same development, while the Royal Albert Hall (1870) was added by a private developer. The Albert Memorial (1876) in Kensington Gardens contributed to the townscape of knowledge, the statue of Prince Albert shown holding the Great Exhibition’s catalogue and presiding over industry and the arts.

  The Crystal Palace itself was moved to Sydenham in 1852, and its use was championed by the railway baron Samuel Laing, but it hit repeated financial problems as its varied fare – concerts to dog shows, imperial festivals to balloon flights – attracted few. Partially damaged by fire in 1866, the building was totally destroyed by another in 1936.

  In 1851, the year of the exhibition, Britain’s rule, protected by the world’s greatest navy, stretched to include Aus
tralasia, Canada, India and much else besides, not least Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Singapore, Aden, Cape Town, the Falklands, Mauritius, St Lucia and Jamaica, most of which had been conquered or otherwise acquired over the previous seventy years. In 1852, Britain commemorated the life of the general who had helped create that empire, Arthur, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), victor over the Marathas in India in 1803, Napoleon’s vanquisher at Waterloo in 1815, and later Prime Minister (1828–30). His state funeral, carefully arranged by Prince Albert and the Prime Minister, Edward, 14th Earl of Derby (1799–1869), celebrated national greatness, and provided an opportunity to link people, state and Church in an exuberant patriotism. The Illustrated London News of 20 November 1852 declared:

  The grave has now closed over the mortal remains of the greatest man of our age, and one of the purest-minded men recorded in history. Wellington and Nelson sleep side by side under the dome of St Paul’s, and the national mausoleum of our isles has received the most illustrious of its dead. With a pomp and circumstance, a fervour of popular respect, a solemnity and a grandeur never to be surpassed in the obsequies of any other hero hereafter to be born to become the benefactor of this country, the sacred relics of Arthur Duke of Wellington have been deposited in the place long since set apart for them by the unanimous decision of his countrymen.

  In the 1850s, meanwhile, technology and enterprise were helping remould the country, and were doing so with a confidence in the future and in Britain’s role in it that was very different to the reluctance of today. On 29 August 1850, Queen Victoria (1819–1901) opened the Royal Border Bridge over the River Tweed at Berwick. Designed by Robert Stephenson (1803–59), one of the greatest engineers of the day, this viaduct of twenty-eight arches cost £253,000 and is still impressive today, the height of the bridge and the curve of the approach providing a fine vista. Moreover, this was a man-made vista, as those of Victoria’s reign increasingly were. Proving that technology can unify the state, the bridge provided the last railway link between London and Edinburgh; there, in 1853, 2,000 people came to the first meeting of the National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights, its support for Scottish rights not extending to nationalist pressure for separatism – again a marked contrast to the situation today.

  Stephenson also showed talent and social mobility in operation. His father, George, a colliery workman, had been a central figure in the development of railway locomotives, a development in which Britain led the world. Robert designed bridges across the empire, including the Victoria Bridge at Montreal (1859), was Conservative MP for Whitby, a sign of the openness of politics to wide-ranging talent, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, a recognition of the importance of engineering. As a reminder of the rush, freneticism and changes of these years, the Calais–Dover telegraph cable, another key sign of progress in communications, was laid in 1851, which was also the year when Charles Morton (1819–1904), seen as the ‘father of the music hall’, founded the Canterbury Theatre at Lambeth. Mass leisure for the popular urban audience was greatly taken forward by the music hall, which was more immediate, inclusive and populist than the pleasure gardens, such as Vauxhall, that had been so important a century earlier.

  In addition, the emphasis on public provision and governmental reform as the solution to problems was shown in 1851 when the Wiltshire asylum was opened in Devizes. Such asylums were to replace private madhouses run for profit and typified the Victorian belief in exemplary regulation. Similar public institutions, for these and other purposes, were built across the country, testimonies to the Victorian confidence that the community should and could provide for the weak.

  The progress of the world’s leading economy, an economy visibly transforming both country and people, was seen as calling forth a regulation of society directed on moral lines. The Western Luminary newspaper in its issue of 5 June 1855 pressed the case for legislation that amounted to a caring set of Victorian values, which is not the usual view of these values:

  The Factory Act set limits to the demands of the mill-owner upon the strength and endurance of young people; the statute abolishing the use of children in the abhorrent practice of climbing, in the process of cleansing, chimneys; and the salutary provision of interdicting the employment of females in coal mines; – all these prove that the instincts of humanity are not only alive in us, but have been aroused and actively exerted in vindication of our character as considerate and civilized beings. … of a people who, above all others, feel it a duty to succour the oppressed, and pride themselves upon a ready and liberal redress of grievances and suffering.

  Optimism in the expansion and application of knowledge was widespread. The narrator in Edward Bulwer Lytton’s (1803–73) ghost story ‘The House and the Brain’ (1859) explained his theory that ‘what is called supernatural is only a something in the laws of Nature of which we have been hitherto ignorant’. A sense of the congruence of Christianity, reform and science played a major role in this optimism, although the Religious Census of 1851 produced a major shock, suggesting that Britain was not a truly Christian country and revealing that Christian belief and observance varied greatly. In the Welsh county of Radnor, half of the population attended no place of worship. Indeed, the need to support the consolations of religion was an aspect of the Victorian cult of progress, which was not seen as anti-religious by its protagonists.

  To contrast 1851 with the present is to be aware both of the extent of change over only a few generations and also of changes unanticipated at the high tide of Victorian glory. The empire is no more, a fundamental change not only for the world but also for Britain. The importance of this change explains why 1931 has been chosen as the chronological dividing point for this book. The divide at 1931 reflects more than the convenience of a midway year, for there are other years that are possible, for example 1918 with the universal male franchise and votes for women. The year 1931, however, has been selected because of the great importance of Britain’s global position. Although 1901, the year of Queen Victoria’s death, and 1914, when the First World War broke out, might seem tempting, much of the world of late-Victorian Britain continued into the early twentieth century despite the savage and deep disruption of the First World War (1914–18). Indeed, Britain’s international position reached its imperial and colonial height after the war, and that position provided much of the context for the history of the British Isles, not least as it contributed to the impression and reality of the nation’s extraordinary importance and range. Britain ruled the world’s most populous and extensive empire.

  1931, however, saw the successful Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the key industrial region in China. This invasion proved a major breach of the liberal post-war order over which Britain had presided, and one that saw the beginning of a period in which Britain was to be reactive and on the defensive. Two years later, this process was taken further with Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, a rise that led directly to the Second World War (1939–45). Although Hitler talked of friendly relations with Britain, everything he sought and stood for was fundamentally opposed to the liberal and tolerant assumptions of British public culture and society.

  Hitler (1889–1945) was defeated in a war that exhausted Britain and strained the cohesion of its empire, but this hostile international environment was to continue after the Second World War, with the threat from the Soviet Union in the Cold War; and this environment provided the backdrop for Britain’s decline, first in imperial power, and then in relative consequence. We are still in that situation of decline today, and it reflects the way in which we look at the past. Stemming from this decline is the loss of any sense of Britain as having an historic mission or as being special: in a religious sense or as a governmental system or as a society. Whereas in the 1920s and 1930s there was still a feeling of particular value, and strong identity, in the British constitution, governmental system and national character, this feeling has largely ceased, and the once strong belief that Britain and the British had special God-given roles to fulf
il has gone.

  To compare modern celebratory occasions, the Millennium Dome at Greenwich in 2000 or the preparations for the Olympics at Stratford, London in 2012, with the Great Exhibition of 1851 or with the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, an exhibition that encapsulates the world that was to be swept away from the 1930s on, is to be aware of a totally different situation, both within the country and as far as Britain’s international position is concerned. That change is the theme of this book, our history, a nation transformed. The very weakness of the Dome as an image alongside Paxton’s iron and glass creation, at once sparkling and dominant, reflects the sense of present-day weakness and uncertainty.

  This transformation is also that of image and identity, and that change is an important part of the story. It is valuable, and ironic, to note the comments of George Orwell (1903–50), a leading novelist and key public intellectual of the 1940s. In his essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’, which he reworked as The English People (1947), Orwell wrote:

  … there is something distinctive and recognisable in English civilisation. It is a culture as individual as that of Spain – it is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. It has a flavour of its own. Moreover, it is continuous, it stretches into the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in a living creature … The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered into your soul.

  Yet, in 2010, none of these definitions resonates in the same way, and even talking about ‘the English people’ would be seen as non-inclusive and inappropriate in many quarters. Diet has become lighter, with muesli replacing bacon and eggs. Sundays have become less gloomy because changes in law and custom have ensured that Sunday observance is far less common and, indeed, possible, while the television schedules make Sunday much like any other day. Towns have become less smoky as a result of the Clean Air Acts of 1956 and 1968 and the creation of smokeless zones.