The History of UK Politicum

Becoming British citizen is a defining character of a life committed to a system of shared values. Britain has a long history of providing home to successive waves of immigrants. London was first established as the capital of England by Romans from Italy. They were displaced by Saxons and Angles from Germany who were in turn invaded by Danes from Scandinavia. The origin of our parliament were in the early Middle Ages. In 1215 the great barons forced a charter of rights from a tyrannical King John. It was known as Magna Carta, the Great Charter. In the nineteenth century historians and statesmen presented it as a charter of liberties for all. But in fact it had little in it for ordinary people, even though centuries later a myth grew up that elaborated it into a modern charter of human rights.

For the king to make or reinterpret laws he had to act politically - in lawyer’s Latin, politicum: that is to consult and negotiate with powerful others. The English parliament certainly became the most developed in medieval Europe. Monarchs came to claim absolute power: previously they had accepted that power was divided between king, church, and the classes of society and represented in parliament. The English parliament survived because it was more broadly based than others.

Almost as important as the growth of parliament was the growth of individualism. In Saxon and Norman times the land was worked by peasants or serfs tied to a particular landlord by law, custom, and force, and forbidden to change masters. During the middle ages an English language and culture had gradually emerged blending Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. Great cathedrals were built, which are nearly all still standing and used - astonishing for their beauty and skill of their forgotten architects. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first books to be printed b William Caxton, importing and improving the new and revolutionary technology of the printing press from Germany. Henry VIII established a church of England which claimed to be Catholic in doctrine but whose bishops were appointed by the crown. This was the time of reformation all over northern Europe. A vital fact of British history is that the Protestant Reformation failed in Ireland where through rebellion a new national consciousness arose uniting a tribal society. In Scotland the Reformation had left the lowlands anxiously divided from the mainly Catholic highlands.

Generally the eighteenth century was a time of tolerance and domestic peace. Political philosophers and pamphleteers preached toleration but argued fiercely with each other about issues of the day. Toleration of diverse opinions was customary, if they were not too strongly held. Freedom of pen and print became firmly established.

Britain was the first western nation to industrialise. The first factories were built, villages grew into towns, and many migrated from the countryside into unplanned, unsanitary, and polluted northern and midland cities - what the poet Blake called ‘the dark satanic mills’. increased production brought increased overseas trade - and with trade, increased colonisation. For over a century and a half Britain was the wealthiest industrial and commercial country in the world.

For many indigenous peoples in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere, the British Empire often brought more regular, acceptable and impartial systems of law and order than many had experienced under their own rulers, or under alien rulers other than European. The spread of the English language helped unite disparate tribal areas that gradually came to see themselves as nations. Public health, peace, and access to education can mean more to ordinary people than precisely who are their rulers. One legacy of empire was that when nationalism grew most of those who first claimed self-government did so in terms resting heavily on European, on specifically British ideas of liberty and representative government.

As the Empire developed many people left the United Kingdom to find new opportunities overseas. French intervention helped the American colonists defeat the British army. In any case the American war was not popular in Britain. It was fought by a British professional army hiring German mercenaries and patriotic volunteers. War with France has culminated by Nelson’s famous victory at Trafalgar in 1805 over the combined French and Spanish fleets saw the end of any fear of invasion. British industry came to lead the world in the nineteenth century. The 1780s had seen a huge boom in canal construction to link the growing factory cities to the ports. By the early 1840s they were rapidly overtaken by a new technology, the railway engine pioneered by George and Robert Stephenson and then by the great bridge builder and engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The railway tracks were laid and the tunnels dug by immigrant Irish labour.

The right to vote was still based on possession of property, but it was put it on a more uniform basis, abolishing some ancient constituencies with few voters and giving more seats to the cities. This began to shift forever the balance of power from the landed interests to those of the cities, though for a while ‘masters and men’ were politically allied to achieve the abolition of the Corn laws. These had taxed, in the interest of landlords and farmers, imports of cheap grain from North America to feed the masses. Both the main parties split on the issue, dividing industrial and landed interest. In 1867 working class agitation, coupled with rivalry between the conservative party, led by Benjamin Disraeli and the Liberal Party, led by William Gladstone, resulted in the creation of many more seats in Parliament and to the lowering of the property qualifications to vote. The reforms of 1867 were intended to extend the franchise to the skilled and literate working man. Two years later, however still a third of men were entitled to vote. The parties were no longer simply parties in parliament. This was the beginning of something like democratic politics, even if universal suffrage (the right to vote) did not come until all men over twenty one and women over 30 gained the vote in 1918. Only ten years later did all women get the vote. This was the end of a long period of agitation, including civil disobedience, by the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Queen Victoria was brought out of seclusion following the death of her husband, Albert, and appeared to symbolise the moral values of family life, what later became ‘Victorian Values’.

Educated opinion believed that the civic freedoms of the ancient Roman Republic had collapsed because of imperial over-expansion. The First World War shattered the great illusion of progress. The civilised nations of Europe fell into the most terrible and bloody war since the wars of religion three centuries before. All the resources of new technologies, of bureaucratic control and fervid patriotism were used and exploited. Millions were killed and wounded. One battle alone, the British attack on the Somme for four months in 1916 led to about 400,000 British casualties, killed or grievously wounded. The whole British Empire was involved in the war at great cost. The 1920s saw great advances in public housing and a general rise in living standards, until the worldwide ‘Great Depression’ of 1929 created mass unemployment. The new labour party formed two governments, but without majorities in Parliament. In 1930 their leader, Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister, left this party to form a National Government with the Conservatives to deal with the economic crisis. So despite the unemployment, Labour did not form a government with effective power until after the Second World War.

The Germans prepared to invade Britain in the WWII, but needed to control the air before invasion ships could be launched. When Winston Churchill came to power in 1940 after the fall of Poland, France, and Norway, Britain find the war leader it needed so badly. Unexpected for the German’s plan of invasion, British engineers had developed the Spitfire, fighter plane of superior design and performance to those of the Germans; and the British invention of radar gave warning of attacks. But in the Far East we were caught off-guard and outnumbered. In Singapore, the huge British garrison and fortress meant to dominate the Far East, quickly fell to the Japanese. For a while they occupied most of Burma and India was threatened. However the war had exhausted Britain economically and only a few people seriously wished to hang on to India and the other colonies.

The Welfare State
In 1945 the British people had elected a Labour government despite the national admiration for Churchill as war leader. Clement Attlee, quiet, efficient and seemingly an ordinary man, he met the need of British people wanting a break from the past. A free National Health Service was established and the wartime ‘welfare state’, which had guaranteed a minimum standard of living for all, was maintained and enhanced. Unemployment vanished. The railways, the coal mines, gas, water and electricity supply were put under public ownership. The labour party established self government in the former colonies. However, the Labour Party had demanded too much austerity and restraint, when Britain was virtually bankrupt, having sold off most of its overseas assets. Food rationing, high taxes on unessential goods and tough monetary controls continued for some years after the war. Later the new conservative governments brought about consensus on what was called a mixed economy, a free market within a framework of public ownership of the key public utilities, transport, and communications industries and a welfare state.

Labour returned to power from 1974 to 1979. There were many educational and employment reforms. But Labour was weakened by constant economic problems of balance of payments, importing more than we paid for in exports, inflation and a new instability of international currency exchange rates. Britain was forced to devalue the pound. Shortage of labour led successive post war governments to encourage immigration. Labour was indeed a coalition- lively but contentious - of socialists, moderate reformers, and trade unions. Ultimately it lost authority by its failure to control large scale strikes.

The Common Market

Meanwhile six nations in devastated post war Europe had pooled their iron and steel resources through the Treaty of Paris in 1951. By 1957 this had become the treaty of Rome, in which, led by a reconciliation of West Germany and France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands agreed to form a European Economic Community EEC. This create4d with a common agricultural policy of subsidies and quotas and powers to harmonise all manner of economic and trade regulations and to open frontiers. A largely consultative European Parliament was established in Strasbourg and a powerful civil service or bureaucracy in Brussels. The motives for integration were not solely economic. Economic integration would also make war between European nations virtually impossible ever again. In future political solutions to conflicts must always be found.

At first we did not seek to join. Under Churchill’s influence many still believed that the sea lanes to the United States and the former Empire were crucial. They thought the Commonwealth could form an effective ‘sterling area’. political leaders came to see the economic advantages of joining the EEC. Twice Britain’s application to join was vetoed, once under Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government in 1963 and then under Harold Wilson’s Labour government in 1967. The French President, feared that Britain’s influence would be too great and that we were too close to the United States, both culturally and politically. Finally Edward Heath, a Conservative Prime Minister, negotiated in 1972 Britain’s entry into the Common Market. Since then nearly every country in western Europe has joined and recently many of the countries in Eastern Europe too, following the collapse of Communism and the Russian Empire. The Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 renamed the Economic Community ;the European Union’ and increased central powers. This triggered fears by some that the EU was aiming to become a unified state rather than a loose union of convenience of sovereign states, each retaining a veto over important changes.

The Thatcher Era

The Conservatives won the general election of 1979 and stayed in office until 1997. There followed, under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, a period of return to the economic principles of a free market economy. But if she was passionate for free market economics, she loved national sovereignty too; so she had no love for the European Common Market and pursued a pro American rather than pro European foreign policy, believing that there was a special relationship between the UK and the USA. She privatized the nationalised industries and public services: electricity, gas, water and telephones, and eventually the railways. The Conservatives turned an old slogan into an effective policy: towards a Property Owning Democracy. The Thatcher years also saw a great rise in the financial power of the city of London as an international centre for investments, insurance and other financial services.

New Labour

By the time the Conservatives lost power, Labour under a new leader, Tony Blair, had taken on a new name, ’New Labour’. this was to mark a break from the old policies of public ownership and high taxation to fund public services. New labour did not attempt to re-nationalise any of the previously public enterprises, or to use taxation in obvious ways to redistribute income. Rather the stress was put on making existing public services more efficient and more accountable, above all education, and the health services. Public and private partnerships were favoured in many of those areas. Political decisions now increasingly turn on complex issues of the level and manner of regulation of public utilities, and the right mix of public and private enterprise, rather than on the old simpler arguments for or against state or local ownership.

Strong central control of local government has continued. But new labour put through devolution legislation creating a Scottish parliament and a Welsh Assembly which, although stopping short of a federal structure as in the United states, Germany, Australia, gives Scotland substantial powers to legislate and the Welsh Assembly fewer legal and legislative powers but considerable political influence.

Today British voters have become less predictable, more volatile, and not always tied to pas party principles or personal loyalties. Britons today seem more inclined than in the past to try to judge the performance of government rather than to vote out of traditional party loyalty. The parties themselves are less fixed in their policies than in the past, and sometimes differences of opinion within each party seem more intense than between the parties. Britain in the twenty first century is a more mobile and far less class conscious society than at the beginning of the twentieth century. Almost everybody is far better off in real terms, even if the gap between rich and poor has been increasing. The health of people has never been better. Infant mortality is low and people live longer, even if there are some marked differences between social classes. We have been, a multi national and multi cultural society for a long time now without losing both our over arching British identity or our cultural and national identities. We British may no longer be a dominant world power in either military or financial terms, as in the now distant days of Empire; and yet we seem determined to make our political influence felt on the world stage, not only in the Commonwealth. Our leaders and our press continuously debate whether this means a greater commitment to Europe or to the United States, or whether we can be some kind of bridge between.


Source:
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/ind/en/home/0/reports/life_in_the_uk.html
The Home Office Social Policy Unit,
6th. Floor, Apollo House, Wellesley Road,
Croydon CR9 3RR