История Великобритании

      The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 led to civil war between the Irish themselves. By this treaty the new "Irish Free State" accepted continued British use of certain ports, the sovereignty of the British Crown, and most important of all, the loss of Northern Ireland, which remained under British control. The pro-Treaty forces won, and the republicans, who insisted that all Ireland, including Northern Ireland, should be an independent republic, were defeated. But a group of republicans formed a new party, Fianna Fail, which won the election of 1932 and the new Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera, began to undo the Treaty and in 1937 declared southern Ireland a republic. The British Crown was now no longer sovereign in Ireland.

      Ireland and Britain today find themselves in the strange position of being entirely separate states, but by agreement their citizens are not considered foreigners in one another's country. Within the Republic of Ireland the majority have continued to believe that all Ireland should one day be united, but without the use of force. A minority, however, has remained since 1921 ready and willing to use violent means to achieve a united Ireland.

      Disappointment and depression

      The men who had fought in such terrible conditions during the war had been promised a land "fit for heroes". But this promise could not easily be kept, even by the popular new Labour Party.

      Alongside the social effects of the war were far-reaching economic ones. The cost of the war had led to an enormous increase in taxation, from 6 per cent of income in 1914 to 25 per cent in 1918. The demands of the war had also led to a doubling in the size of the civil service, and greater government control of national life. It was inevitable that there should be increasing disagreement between workers and the government. Just before the war in 1914 there had been an outbreak of strikes. Immediately after the war there were further serious strikes, and in 1919 and 1921 soldiers were used to break these strikes, and force men back to work.

      In 1926 discontent led to a general strike by all workers. The reasons for the strike were complicated, but the immediate cause was a coalminers' strike. An earlier miners' strike in 1921 had been defeated and the men had returned to work bitterly disappointed with the mine owners' terms. In 1925 mine owners cut miners' wages and another miners' strike seemed inevitable. Fearing that this would seriously damage the economy, the government made plans to make sure of continued coal supplies. Both sides, the government and the Trades Union Congress (representing the miners in this case), found themselves unwillingly driven into opposing positions, which made a general strike inevitable. It was not what the TUC had wanted, and it proved deeply damaging to everyone involved.

      The general strike ended after nine days, partly because members of the middle classes worked to keep services like transport, gas and electricity going. But it also ended because of uncertainty among the trade union leaders. Most feared the dangers both to their workers and the country of "going too far". The miners struggled on alone and then gave up the strike. Many workers, especially the miners, believed that the police, whose job was to keep the law, were actually fighting against them. Whether or not this was true, many people remembered the general strike with great bitterness. These memories influenced their opinion of employers, government and the police for half a century.

      It is possible to argue that Britain missed an opportunity to reform the economic structure of the country after the war. But instead of careful planning, businessmen were allowed to make quick profits, particularly in the cotton mills, the shipyards and engineering industries. But perhaps there was little the government could do to control the situation, as it was not in control of economic forces. All over Europe and America a serious economic crisis, known as "the depression", was taking place. It affected Britain most severely from 1930 to 1933, when over three million workers were unemployed.

      In Germany the depression was even more severe, and it destroyed Britain's second most important market from before the war. John Maynard Keynes's warning - that if Germany did not recover then neither would its European trading partners -became horribly true. Far worse, the economic collapse of Germany led to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

      Because the worst effects of the depression in Britain were limited to certain areas, the government did not take the situation seriously enough. The areas most affected by the depression were those which had created Britain's industrial revolution, including Clydeside, Belfast, the industrial north of England and southeast Wales. The working class in these areas still lived in poor conditions. Men and women could not expect to live as long as people in richer areas, and more babies died in the first year of life. There was little hope for these people because almost no one was willing to invest the large amounts of money needed to get industry working again. The Labour Party was no better at dealing with the situation than the Conservatives.

      It is surprising that Britain avoided a serious political crisis in the 1920s. The unfairness of the situation was so obvious to working-class people, who had neither political nor economic power. Two-thirds of the wealth of the nation was in the hands of only 400,000 people, less than 1 per cent of the population. In other European countries economic crisis and social unrest had led to great changes. In Russia there had been the Bolshevik revolution. Powerful new Nazi and Fascist governments were taking over in Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain, while France also faced political crisis. Britain's reasonably calm political life was proof of an astonishing level of popular agreement about the basis of government which did not seem to exist in many parts of Europe.

      In the 1930s the British economy started to recover, especially in the Midlands and the south. This could be seen in the enormous number of small houses which were being built along main roads far into the countryside.

      This new kind of development depended on Britain's growing motor industry, which was based in the Midlands. In the nineteenth century, towns had been changed by the building of new homes near the railway. Now the country around the towns changed as many new houses were built along main roads suitable for motoring. Middle-class people moved out even further to quieter new suburbs, each of which was likely to have its own shops and a cinema. Unplanned suburbs grew especially quickly around London, where the underground railway system, the "tube", had spread out into the country. It seemed as if everyone's dream was to live in suburbia.

      Economic recovery resulted partly from the danger of another war. By 1935 it was clear that Germany, under its new leader Adolf Hitler, was preparing to regain its position in Europe, by force if necessary. Britain had done nothing to increase its fighting strength since 1918 because public opinion in Britain had been against war. The government suddenly had to rebuild its armed forces, and this meant investing a large amount of money in heavy industry. By 1937 British industry was producing weapons, aircraft and equipment for war, with the help of money from the United States.

      The Second World War

      The people of Britain watched anxiously as German control spread over Europe in the 1930s. But some had foreseen this dangerous situation. They believed that the reasons for German expansion could be found in the harsh peace terms forced on Germany by the Allies in 1919, and the failure to involve it in the post-war political settlement. In 1920 the Allies had created the League of Nations which, it was hoped, would enable nations to cooperate with each other. Although the League did not forbid war, its members agreed to respect and preserve the borders and territory of all other members. But in 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), a fellow member of the League. Britain and France were anxious to win Italy's co-operation against Hitler, who was illegally rearming Germany, and therefore decided against taking action against Italy as the rules of the League required them to do. This failure to use the League's authority had serious results. Italy's Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and Hitler realised that Britain and France lacked the will to make sure the standards the League demanded of its members were followed.

      For the next four years Germany, Italy and their ally in the Far East, Japan, took advantage of this weakness to seize territory of interest to them. There was good evidence that the demands of Germany could not be satisfied. But in order to avoid war in 1938, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, accepted and co-operated in the takeover of German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Chamberlain returned from meeting Hitler in Munich. He reassured Britain that he had Hitler's written promise that Germany had no more territorial ambitions, in the memorable words, "peace for our time". Six months later Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain, realising that war was inevitable, gave a guarantee of support to Poland if Germany invaded.

      Chamberlain was widely blamed for his "appeasement" of Germany. But he expressed the feelings of many people in Britain, to avoid war at all costs. As one of his opponents, Ernest Bevin, generously said in 1941, "If anyone asks me who was responsible for the British policy leading up to the war, I will, as a Labour man myself, make the confession and say, 'All of us.' We refused absolutely to face the facts."

      In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Britain entered the war. The British felt again that they were fighting for the weaker nations of Europe, and for democracy. They had also heard about the cruelty of the Nazis from Jews who had escaped to Britain.

      Few people realised how strong the German army was. In May 1940 it attacked, defeating the French in a few days, and driving the British army into the sea. At Dunkirk, a small French port, the British army was saved by thousands of private boats which crossed the English channel. Dunkirk was a miraculous rescue from military disaster, and Britain's new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, persuaded the nation that it was a victory of courage and determination at Britain's darkest hour. Although the army had lost almost all its weapons in France, Churchill told the nation there could be no thought of surrender or peace negotiation: "we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight on the hills; we shall never surrender. . . . until in God's good time the New World, with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." And he offered his countrymen nothing but "blood, toil, tears and sweat."

      Everyone in Britain expected Germany to invade, but the British air force won an important battle • against German planes in the air over Britain. This, however, did not prevent the German air force from bombing the towns of Britain. Almost one and a half million people in London were made homeless by German bombing during the next few months. Once again Churchill brilliantly managed to persuade a nation "on its knees" that it would still win.

      The war had begun as a traditional European struggle, with Britain fighting to save the "balance of power" in Europe, and to control the Atlantic Ocean and the sea surrounding Britain. But the war quickly became worldwide. Both sides wanted to control the oil in the Middle East, and the Suez Canal, Britain's route to India. In 1941 Japan, Germany's ally, attacked British colonial possessions, including Malaya (Malaysia), Burma and India. As a result, Britain used soldiers from all parts of its empire to help fight against Germany, Italy and Japan. But the weakness of Britain was obvious to the whole world when its army surrendered Singapore to Japan, described by Churchill as the worst surrender in British history.

      In 1941 Germany and Japan had made two mistakes which undoubtedly cost them the war. Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and Japan attacked the United States, both quite unexpectedly. Whatever the advantages of surprise attack, the Axis of Germany, Italy and Japan had now forced onto the battlefield two of the most powerful nations in the world.

      Britain could not possibly have defeated Germany without the help of its stronger allies, the Soviet Union and the United States. By 1943 the Soviet army was pushing the Germans out of the USSR, and Britain had driven German and Italian troops out of North Africa. Italy surrendered quickly following Allied landings in July 1943. In 1944 Britain and the United States invaded German-occupied France. They had already started to bomb German towns, causing greater destruction than any war had ever caused before. Such bombing had very doubtful military results. Dresden, a particularly beautiful eighteenth-century city, and most of its 130,000 inhabitants, were destroyed in one night early in 1945. In May 1945, Germany finally surrendered. In order to save further casualties among their own troops, Britain and the United States then used their bombing power to defeat Japan. This time they used the new atomic bombs to destroy most of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two large Japanese cities. Over 110,000 people died immediately and many thousands more died later from the after-effects.

      It was a terrible end to the war, and an equally terrible beginning to the post-war world. But at the time there was great relief in Britain that the war had finally ended. It had lasted longer than the First World War, and although less than half as many British troops had died this time, the figures of over 303,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians in air raids was a very heavy price to pay for the mistakes of the inter-war years. The Soviet Union, Germany and Japan paid a fair more terrible price, as did ethnic groups like the Jewish and gypsy peoples, several million of whom were deliberately killed.

      16    The age of uncertainty

      The new international order

      During the war the Allies had started to think of ways in which a new world order could replace the failed League of Nations. Even before it joined the war against the Axis powers, the United States had agreed an "Atlantic Charter" with Britain. The basis of this new charter was US President Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms": freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from fear; and freedom from want.

      At the end of the war the victorious Allies created the United Nations, which expressed the ideas of the Atlantic Charter. The Allies formed themselves into a "Security Council", into which they invited some less powerful nations. They hoped that the success of wartime alliance could be carried into peacetime. But this depended on a continuing feeling of common purpose, which no longer existed. The idea of the four allies (Soviet Union, United States, France and Britain) working together for the recovery of central Europe collapsed. Europe became divided into two, the eastern part under communist Soviet control, the western part under a capitalist system protected by US power.

      In 1948-9 the Soviet Union tried to capture West Berlin by stopping all road and rail traffic to it, and it was only saved by a huge airlift of essential supplies from the West, which lasted almost one year. As a result of the struggle for West Berlin, opposing alliances were formed: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of the Western nations, and the Warsaw Pact of the Eastern bloc.

      In 1950 the United Nations faced new difficulties in the Far East. Troops of North Korea, which was under Soviet control invaded South Korea, which was under US control. British troops formed part of the United Nations force which defended South Korea. Only fear on both sides limited the level and extent of the war. But while Britain became more fearful of Soviet intentions, it also became more unhappy with the forceful attitude of its ally, the United States.

      British foreign policy was not only concerned with the danger from the Soviet Union. It was also concerned with finding a new part to play in a fast-changing world, and getting used to changing relations with its friends, particularly with the United States, with the European countries, and with members of the Commonwealth, a new association of former British possessions.

      Britain still considered itself to be a world power, and this confidence was strengthened by three important technical developments in the 1950s which increased its military strength. These developments were in research into space, in the design of nuclear weapons, and in the design of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Britain's leadership in nuclear power resulted in the development of nuclear weapons. But it also led to the building of the first nuclear energy power station in the world in 1956. All these military and scientific developments drew Britain more closely to the United States, both for political and financial reasons.

      However, by the early 1960s Britain was increasingly interested in joining the new European Community (EC). Britain wanted to join the Community because of the realisation that it had lost political power internationally, and because of a growing desire to play a greater part in European politics.

      It was in Egypt that Britain's weakening international position was most obvious. Until 1956 Britain had controlled the Suez Canal, but in that year Egypt decided to take it over. Britain, together with France and Israel, attacked Egypt. But the rest of the world, in particular the United States loudly disapproved of Britain's action, and forced Britain to remove its troops from Egypt. Until Suez, Britain had been able to deal with the United States and the Soviet Union as an equal, but after Suez this was no longer possible. From now on, Britain was viewed in a new light, not only by the two Great Powers, but also by many weaker countries in Asia and Africa, particularly by the Arab countries. They began to challenge Britain's authority more openly. Even more importantly, Suez opened a painful debate inside Britain, in which politicians tried to define Britain's new international role after such a humiliating political defeat.

      The welfare state

      In 1918 there had been a wish to return to the "good old days". There was no such feeling during the Second World War, when Winston Churchill had told the nation, "We are not fighting to restore the past. We must plan and create a noble future." At the end of the war many reforms were introduced, both by Conservative and Labour Party ministers. Most of them agreed that there were social wrongs in British life which had to be put right. The reforms introduced were based on the "New Liberal" reforms which had been carried out just before the First World War. But they went much further, and it could be said that the whole nation, Conservative and Labour, had moved politically to the left. This move was one of the greatest achievements of the British labour movement, and its effect was felt for the next thirty years.

      In 1944, for the first time, the government promised free secondary education for all, and promised to provide more further and higher education. In 1946 a Labour government brought in a new National Health Service, which gave everyone the right to free medical treatment. Two years later, in 1948, the National Assistance Act provided financial help for the old, the unemployed and those unable to work through sickness. Mothers and children also received help.

      Progress in these areas was the result of new ideas about basic human rights. Important citizens' rights, particularly freedom of speech, had been firmly established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Political rights, particularly the right to vote, and to vote secretly, developed during the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century people began to demand basic social rights, such as the right to work, the right to proper health care, and the right to care in old age. The Times newspaper wrote in 1940: "If we speak of democracy we do not mean democracy which maintains the right to vote but forgets the right to work and the right to live."

      The Labour government went further, taking over control of credit (the Bank of England), power (coal, iron and steel), and transport (railways and airlines). These acts were meant to give direction to the economy. But only 20 per cent of British industry was actually nationalised, and these nationalised industries served private industry rather than directed it. Nationalisation was a disappointment. Even the workers in the nationalised industries did not feel involved in making them succeed, as the planners had hoped. Strikes in the nationalised industries were as big a problem as they were in privately owned industries.

      As a result of the changes which gave importance to people's happiness and wellbeing, the government became known as "the welfare state".

      For the next quarter century both the Conservative and Labour parties were agreed on the need to keep up the "welfare state", in particular to avoid unemployment. Britain became in fact a social democracy, in which both main parties agreed on most of the basic values, and disagreed mainly about method. The main area of disagreement was the level of nationalisation desirable for the British economy to operate at its best.

      However, although the welfare state improved many people's lives, it also introduced new problems. Government administration grew very fast in order to provide the new welfare services. Some people objected to the cost, and claimed that state welfare made people lazy and irresponsible about their own lives.

      Youthful Britain

      Like much of post-war Europe, Britain had become economically dependent on the United States. Thanks to the US Marshall Aid Programme, Britain was able to recover quickly from the war.

      Working people now had a better standard of living than ever before. There was enough work for everyone. Wages were about 30 per cent higher than in 1939 and prices had hardly risen at all.

      People had free time to enjoy themselves. At weekends many watched football matches in large new stadiums. In the evenings they could go to the cinema. They began to go away for holidays to low-cost "holiday camps". In 1950, car production was twice what it had been in 1939, and by 1960 cars were owned not only by richer people but by many on a lower income. It seemed as if the sun shone on Britain. As one Prime Minister said, "You've never had it so good," a remark that became famous.