The Great Turning Points of British History (22 page)

A new prime minister meant a new, more presidential, style. Asquith had desperately tried to preserve the ideal of cabinet government, even though it was ill suited to wartime centralization. Lloyd George, despite his liberal sympathies, was authoritarian – the type of leader ideal for the conduct of war. He brought to Downing Street the same dynamism, creativity and determination that he had earlier exhibited at the Ministry of Munitions and the War Office. This implied a willingness to slaughter sacred cows – nothing was allowed to stand in the way of victory.

Centralization brought homogenization. Britain became a single nation driven by a single purpose. While much local pride was invested in, for instance, the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Scots Guards, in truth regional differences were smothered by wartime unity and the democracy of death. War fostered a genuine sense of Britishness. The one notable exception was, of course, Ireland, where nationalists turned wartime calamity into opportunity. The Easter Rising of 1916 never had a hope of achieving its immediate aim of separation, but did change the face of Irish politics forever.

The sacrifice of youth first manifested on the Somme in 1916 continues to haunt Britain. That loss has, over the years, obscured a death at least as profound, namely the demise of the liberal ethos. Liberalism would survive the war but would no longer be the guiding principle of government. Wartime intervention carried the undeniable accolade of success – mobilization had won the war. In time, the lessons of war would be applied to the problems of peace, with the accompanying expectation that every calamity affecting society demanded governmental response. The welfare of the collective would be promoted at the cost of individual freedom.

One of the most striking lessons of 1916 was the ability of the nation to withstand massive loss. Ubiquitous death did not, as in Russia, inspire revolution, but rather brought out a stoic determination to persevere. The soldiers who survived wanted afterwards to join the system, not to destroy it. For them, wartime service came to imply the right to a political voice, increasingly expressed through the Labour Party. ‘Remember the Trenches’, a Labour poster enjoined in 1923. In a similar but less pronounced way, the women who once filled shells in the munitions factories were not radicalized by their experience, but they did gain a sense of service that was a step on the road to full citizenship.

‘I think of you the same and always shall,’ wrote Marian Allen in homage to her lover who died in the First World War. That sentiment seems appropriate not just to her loss, but also to the entire generation that died in 1916. The soldiers in khaki are frozen in time, forever young, forever innocent. The Britain they once inhabited, however, travelled resolutely forwards, on rails laid in 1916. The nation they had volunteered to protect was never restored. Today, the world of Asquith seems quaint, that of Lloyd George utterly familiar.

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The half-century from 1900 to 1949 brought the First and Second World Wars and the Depression. Those three calamities left Britain devastated. In 1900, it was a great power, in control of a massive empire and the largest navy in the world. By 1949, it was a second-rate power, helpless to stop the inevitable tide of decolonization. Once the world’s banker, Britain had become a major borrower, dependent upon foreign loans to keep the economy afloat.

These great developments are undoubtedly important to an understanding of Britain during the period, but perhaps not as important as the motor car, the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner and the cinema. Real life is shaped by trivialities. Great events fill newspapers and history books precisely because they are extraordinary and, as such, a far cry from the mundane lives that most people lead. The rituals of everyday life hold society together and provide stability in a threatening world. Despite the wars, depression and political upheaval of the period 1900–49, most British people got on with life and even prospered.

Much can be learned from studying changes in the British diet. During the First World War, the bread ration was
limited
to seven pounds per man per week. Bread, eaten with a bit of dripping, was the staple food for the working class. Meat was a rare treat, and vegetables even rarer. Oranges were given at Christmas precisely because they were so uncommon. No wonder that only 34 per cent of the British male population was technically fit for frontline service in 1914.

War, ironically, was good for the health of the British population. The shock of the Boer War, when Britain struggled to gather together an army healthy enough to fight, inspired the Liberal welfare reforms of 1908–14. Similar concern was shown after the First World War, though the scale of reform was limited by financial crisis. The Second World War inspired the creation of the welfare state, with its aim of care from cradle to grave.

At the same time that health improved, so too did quality of life. The washing machine and the vacuum cleaner relieved some of the drudgery of housework, while improving hygiene in the home. By 1939, there were more than one million cars on the road. That, combined with improvements in rail services, made travel around the country much more common. So, too, did the increased provision of paid holidays. Meanwhile, cinemas and dance halls provided escapist excitement for those otherwise trapped in monotony. In the interwar period, one-third of the British population went to the cinema at least once a week.

By 1949, it was difficult to define what was ‘great’ about Britain. A half-century of war and depression rendered the country weak and destitute. The average citizen, however, was better educated, healthier, and lived an altogether richer life mid-century than his or her ancestors in 1900. The decline of a nation did not, in other words, mean the decline of a people.

1901
Death of Queen Victoria
. This provided a symbolic end to an era. Meanwhile, the continued difficulties the British army was experiencing in taming Boer forces in South Africa raised serious doubts about the defence of the British Empire. After the war, Britain forged alliances of a sort with France, Russia and Japan in order to protect its colonies in Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, the poor quality of army recruits focused attention on the need for social welfare reforms, or what became known as ‘national efficiency’.

1908
Campbell-Bannerman’s resignation
. The Liberal prime minister’s departure brought Herbert Asquith to Downing Street and David Lloyd George to the exchequer. The change ushered in the phase of ‘New Liberalism’ inspired by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. The government embarked upon the most radical programme of reform since 1870, eventually introducing legislation covering employment, housing, pensions and health – all financed by a revolutionary ‘People’s Budget’.

1924
First Labour administration
. After an election in December 1923 resulted in a hung parliament, the first ever Labour government took office in January, with Ramsay MacDonald as its leader. His government was too weak to achieve anything of substance, but did demonstrate, by its very existence, that Labour had supplanted the Liberals as the party of the left. A second election in October returned the Tories to power and further crippled the Liberal Party.

1929
World depression
. A general election in May resulted in Labour winning the most seats, though not a clear majority. MacDonald returned to Downing Street. The new government’s plans for social reform were rendered moot by the Wall Street Crash in October, which ushered in worldwide economic depression. Unemployment steadily rose, reaching 2.5 million by the following year.

1931
Formation of the National Government
. The worsening economic crisis and steadily rising unemployment figures placed enormous pressure upon the Labour government. With Britain on the verge of bankruptcy, the May Committee advised cuts in unemployment benefits. In August, the government broke up over the question of these cuts. A national government was formed that was essentially conservative, though MacDonald remained prime minister.

1940
Chamberlain’s resignation
. A succession of military defeats, combined with accumulated disillusionment over the failure of appeasement, resulted in the resignation of Neville Chamberlain as prime minister. Winston Churchill formed a coalition government notable for Labour’s enthusiastic support. Labour was rewarded with a number of important domestic ministries, in particular the appointment of Ernest Bevin as minister of labour. British cities were bombarded by the Luftwaffe.

1942
Beveridge Report
. The stunning defeat of the German Wehrmacht at El Alamein by British forces in November 1942 was followed by the publication of
Social Insurance and Allied Services
, commonly known as the Beveridge Report. It laid the foundation for the welfare state and was hugely popular among all classes in wartime Britain.

1945
Labour landslide
. The end of war in Europe was immediately followed by a general election that resulted in the shock defeat of Churchill’s Conservative Party. The landslide victory of the Labour Party further solidified support for the programme of reform that was recommended in the Beveridge Report. The election, which was surprising at the time, now seems the understandable expression of the collectivist sympathies encouraged during the war.

1946
Creation of the National Health Service
. At the peak of its popularity, the Labour government under Clement Attlee pushed through a series of social welfare reforms, including, most notably, the National Health Service Act. On another front, the government embarked upon a comprehensive programme of nationalization of key industries, including steel and coal. To fund the reforms, the government imposed severe austerity measures.

We can’t isolate British history in the second half of the twentieth century from world events. The year 1956 began with signs that the Cold War was thawing. In January, Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, admitted and denounced Stalin’s crimes. In April Khrushchev and the Soviet premier, Bulganin, made the first visit to Britain of Soviet leaders since 1917. They aroused popular curiosity and the concern of the security services who, apparently unknown to the prime minister, Anthony Eden, sent a frogman, Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, to inspect their ship. He did not return and his headless body was later found floating along the coast near Portsmouth. Doubts over how much Soviet attitudes really had softened were justified in October, when the Hungarian uprising against Russian domination was brutally suppressed.

The disastrous attempted invasion of Suez signified that Britain was no longer a first-rank power. In July President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the company that owned the Suez Canal, which was jointly owned by the British and French governments. Nasser was desperate to avenge the US and Britain’s refusal to offer Egypt financial support following its decision to sign an arms deal with the USSR; seizing control of the most direct route to Britain’s colonies in the East appeared to be the best way of going about it. Tension was also fanned by British concerns over Egyptian support for insurgents in Aden and Nasser’s support of the Algerians’ bloody battle for independence from France.

What followed was a shattering blow to British prestige. Following international attempts at mediation, in October, Israel, who feared Nasser’s growing strength, attacked Egypt in secret collusion with France and Britain. When Nasser refused to back down, British and French forces bombed and invaded Egypt. There was an international outcry, strong opposition in all political parties in Britain and France, condemnation from the United Nations (UN) and, most strongly, from the US. The value of sterling collapsed, the invaders were forced to withdraw ignominiously and Eden resigned, being replaced by Harold Macmillan.

Britain was fighting several other conflicts in its dwindling colonies. In Malaya a communist-led insurgency began in 1948 and ended with independence in 1957. In Cyprus, Greek nationalist violence led to their spiritual leader Archbishop Makarios’ deportation to the Seychelles in March 1956. After Suez, Macmillan began to negotiate independence for Cyprus, achieved in 1960. Kenyan nationalism led to Mau Mau guerrilla terrorism between 1952 and 1957. The British army failed to quell the uprising and Kenya gained independence in 1960. In September 1956, Britain agreed to independence for the Gold Coast, now Ghana. A ‘wind of change’ was indeed blowing through Africa, as Macmillan put it in 1960 – though not in South Africa where he coined the phrase. In 1956, Reverend Trevor Huddleston left the country, following the publication of his bestselling exposé of hardening apartheid,
Naught for Your Country
. For the next thirty-five years he was a leader of the British anti-apartheid movement.

Meanwhile six European countries moved towards signing the Treaties of Rome (March 1957). Yet Britain held aloof, giving priority to its ties with the Commonwealth and the US.

The mid-1950s saw important transformations within Britain, with unprecedented improvements in living standards and consumption. More houses were built, though in 1961 3.2 million people in England and Wales still did not have a fixed bath or shower. More people took holidays, some of them abroad. More owned vacuum cleaners, washing machines and television sets. Commercial television had been introduced in 1955, so there was now a choice of two channels. Recognizing that more people could save, the 1956 budget introduced Premium Bonds, described by the future Labour leader, Harold Wilson, as a ‘squalid raffle’. Leisure patterns changed: attendance at cinemas, spectator sports and religious services fell, while ‘do-it-yourself’ and gardening grew. Recorded crime also grew, but so did the efficiency of detection and recording.