USA
23%
Italy
19%
France
18%
Germany
11%
Total
24%
Figure 20.19. Most worrying issues nationally – Immigration control
Source: Ipsos MORI International Social Trends Monitor, Nov 2006. Base: c. 1,000
interviews in each country
major economy, and (Figure 20.19) were more likely than most European
neighbours to feel that their country was absorbing more immigrants
than similar-sized countries. The arrival of home-grown terrorism saw a
debate over multiculturalism.
But while a tiny minority of Muslims in the UK harboured radical views,
what is striking, even after the July 2005 bombings, was that although a
sizeable minority of British people were uneasy about multiculturalism,
the majority were not, and there was a good deal of common ground
between different groups. There was strong support for many policies to
encourage integration, among both Muslims and everyone else alike: the
idea that would-be citizens should pledge their primary loyalty to Britain
(76% support and 73% of Muslims), accept the authority of British institutions (91% to 93%), integrate fully into British society (69% to 73%) and
accept the rights of women as equal citizens (95% to 94%) – these all show
high levels of agreement on both sides. An overwhelming majority of all
groups thought immigrants should be made to learn English (90%
support, as opposed to 82% support amongst the population as a whole).
Application of Norman Tebbit’s Test showed that nine in ten Britons and
Muslims agreed British sporting success made them proud.
Asked if they thought multiculturalism is a mistake that should be
abandoned, the nation as a whole (68%) and British Muslims (74%) both
disagreed. Where there were differences of view was around culture and
traditions. Both groups agreed on using English, respecting British laws
and institutions, and accepting that Britain is primarily Christian. They
both agreed that new arrivals should ‘integrate’. But forced to chose
between two statements, either ‘ People who come to live in Britain should
adopt the values and traditions of British culture’ or ‘ People who come to live
in Britain should be free to live their lives by the values and traditions of their
own culture’ sharp differences were present between British Muslims and
the rest of Britain. Six in ten Britons thought immigrants should become
basically British in all senses (58%, but 35% did not). Amongst British
Muslims views were the other way around – most wanted to retain their
own culture. What Britain saw in this period was a hybrid and evolving
future, but retaining many ‘British’ principles of fairness, tolerance and
democracy. Only a minority of zealots on both sides did not accept that,
despite the tensions. While there were reactions both on the liberal left
and among more radical Muslim groups over the Blair government’s
reactions to the terrorist attacks, in one sense what is striking is that actually society remained pretty much in vague agreement about what
Britishness meant – even if opinion formers toiled over it.
Blair and public sector staff
One of the key impacts on public confidence in public services was public
sector staff themselves. One of the most ironic aspects of public opinion
during the Blair years is that the millions employed in the public sector
experienced considerable increases in pay – for example 64% more pay
for teachers alone, and GPs becoming some of the best paid in the world –
yet became increasingly negative about their employer. By 2007, public
sector staff were as likely to say they planned to vote Conservative as they
were to vote Labour, a reversal of Labour’s huge lead among this group in
1997, and this in turn impacted on public perceptions.
One of the biggest challenges for Blair, after spending hundreds of millions on extra pay and injecting new resources, was his inability to persuade public sector staff that his plans would improve services rather than
simply open them up to the private sector, or save money without
decreasing quality (Figure 20.20).
In particular, with over a million people in the NHS who went home
every night to friends and family to tell it ‘like it is’, Blair’s government
faced a real challenge. As the NHS under Blair shows, and indeed so does
all the textbook research on employee motivation, increasing pay does
not build motivation. Instead, showing that you value, respect, and listen
to people, and have a clear simple narrative are much more effective – but
Q Senior management have a clear vision of where this organisation is going
% Disagree
% Agree
Net ± %
All public sector workers
29
54
+25
NHS/Health
38
48
+10
Local government
31
51
+20
Education
19
67
+48
Figure 20.20. Attitudes to senior management
Base: All public sector workers (921), NHS/Health (216), Local government (149) and
Education (227) workers in Britain Oct. 2005, Feb. 2005 and April 2006, excludes selfemployed
on many of these aspects, Blair’s government was on either a deliberate or
accidental collision course. The result was that up to 70% of the most
trusted public servants in Britain – GPs – were negative about the direction of NHS reform to their patients and community.
The impact of technology
Blair’s years saw the internet, mobile phones and recently user-generated
content revolutionise many aspects of our culture – Blair embraced much
of this technology as offering improvements in public services, greater
power to ordinary people and faster, easier access to public services.
Under Blair internet access grew from some 40% to 60% plus, digital
interactive TV took off from nowhere reaching 80% plus of households,
and the web finally came of age. While this can be overstated, in terms of
its impact, given that only some 8% of working-class pensioners were
online by the time he left office, nevertheless, as part of its modernisation
of Britain, Blair’s government spent millions on projects to give all school
children internet access, to improve government websites and to ensure
all public services were accessible either online or by phone. In one sense
one could argue that much of this investment had little impact on user
experience, where expectations rose considerably. Over the six years from
1998 to 2004, the proportion of the public saying public services failed to
meet their expectations increased from 40 to 51%, but this obscures the
scale of the change that was under way in terms of accessibility to services,
where the private sector stole a march which the public sector struggled
to keep up with.
Blair and major British institutions
Blair was elected promising to modernise Britain, and by the time he left
office, fewer men were wearing tights in the House of Commons. But how
did underlying attitudes shift? Despite his ‘people’s princess’ moment
and the dramatic events surrounding the death of Diana, British attitudes
to the monarchic principle actually remained virtually unchanged –
apart from a small wobble in the aftermath of her death, only 20% of
people wanted a republic in 2006 – the same as in 1986. Indeed attitudes
to many key British institutions actually changed relatively little under
Blair. While devolution in Scotland and Wales fundamentally changed
the landscape, it is hard to talk of a shift in public attitudes that would
anywhere near match up to the rhetoric of modernisation, except in
terms of ongoing scepticism about national politicians.
Similarly, the BBC, despite a fairly ferocious battle with the government over the Kelly affair and the resignation of its Chairman, remained
trusted, and confidence in it was little changed. By August 2003, as the
Kelly affair broke, the BBC was more trusted than Blair and has remained
so since (Table 20.1).
Despite modernising parliament and the end of the hereditary principle in the Lords, overall attitudes moved less than one might have
expected. Overall attitudes towards the way Britain was governed did not
really improve, although neither did they fall as precipitously as some
commentators would have us think. For example with a popular vote for
devolution in Scotland, and Wales, one might have expected public
support for their local assemblies – but actually five years on in 2004, 36%
of Scots thought their new parliament had achieved nothing at all, and
fewer than one in ten thought it had achieved a lot.
One of the challenges Blair faced was that in some ways, the country
was less willing to change than he was – on the NHS, for example, around
three quarters of the population consistently believed that it should be
maintained at whatever cost – with this figure hardly varying despite constant efforts at reform, introduction of more private sector provision,
reconfiguration and so on.10 The idea, popular in Downing Street, that it
10 Ipsos MORI research for Department of Health 2000–2006
Table 20.1
Base: All British
Trustworthy
Not
Don’t
Net trustadults 18ϩ(982)
%
trustworthy
know
worthy
%
%
% Ϯ
Tony Blair
41
49
10
Ϫ8
Alastair Campbell,
14
60
Ϫ26
Ϫ46
the Prime
Minister’s
Director of
Communications
Andrew Gilligan,
32
30
38
ϩ2
the BBC
journalist
Geoff Hoon, the
24
45
30
Ϫ21
Defence
Secretary
The BBC
59
26
15
ϩ33
needed physically recasting, with a major reduction in state-controlled
healthcare (as opposed to state-provided) only appealed to between one
in four and one in five people. Indeed one of the things that stands out in
an examination of the British over this period is how deep-rooted and
unchanging values were.
Culture and the arts
In June 1998 Blair invited the key art world figures to a No. 10 summit on
Labour’s policy on the arts. As Nicolas Serota, who opened Tate Modern
under Blair, put it in an interview in The Guardian: ‘The long freeze on
arts funding begun by the Conservatives was over, thanks to a three-year
settlement worth an extra £290m. Museums, galleries and the performing arts all benefited. It meant Tate Modern would be able to open with
free admission.’
Although Blair and his government spent their first five years having
constant problems with the Dome, the arts did see major investment, and
with free admission and Lottery money, there was a revival of museum
and gallery attendance. Box office numbers in the seven major regional
theatres rose by nearly 40% in the five years to 2007, and similarly there
were nearly 30 million extra visits to England’s national museums
Which, if any, of these have you done in the past months?
Eating out in a restaurant
88%
Gardening
65%
Cinema
62%
A short break
62%
A holiday of 7 days+
60%
Library
58%
Historic building/palace
47%
Museum or art gallery
45%
Theatre, opera or ballet
38%
Zoo or other wildlife attraction
34%
Live sports match
34%
Theme Park
29%
Orchestral concert
21%
None of the above
2%
Figure 20.21. Leisure Habits of the British Public
Base: All British adults aged 15ϩ (1.010). May 2003
and galleries, five years after entry charges were scrapped. Consider the
world’s most successful modern art museum, Tate Modern. It had over 4
million visitors in 2006, compared with just over 2 million visitors to New
York’s much longer-established Museum of Modern Art.
More generally the consumption of arts, books and film all rose, as did
consumption of all types: eating out continued to rise in prominence,
and during this period London’s restaurants, and indeed those across the
country, improved to a point where several made it into international lists
of the top fifty worldwide (Figure 20.21).
But if Blair’s government boosted participation in the arts, it made less
progress in widening access – there was a boost in people from workingclass backgrounds visiting museums and galleries, but so too in visits by
the traditional middle classes.
While the Dome was reviled by most critics and the media, overall
public attitudes towards Labour’s arts spending seem to have been
benign. ‘The past 10 years have given the arts the stability to behave creatively,’ said Christopher Frayling in 2007: ‘People talk about the golden
age of the 1950s, but it’s nothing compared to now. Then there were 26
organisations funded by the Arts Council. Now there are 1,100.’
Despite ire at the later freezing of expenditure after the initial rise in
investment , Blair’s three administrations were widely regarded as investing in cultural excellence, at least by their most obvious beneficiaries. The
Tate’s Serota argues that excellence and vibrancy goes beyond theatre: ‘in
�
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architecture, the visual arts, theatre and in writing, the work that’s been
produced has been admired internationally to a degree that hasn’t been
the case for most of the second half of the century.’
So despite the arts fraternities’ more general suspicion of Blair, and
despite their near universal revulsion at the invasion of Iraq, there has not
been the same visceral hatred of the 1980s, characterised by Elvis Costello
imagining Thatcher’s burial with relish in ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’.
It may not have been a golden age, but as far as the public were concerned, there was more of it, and ageing facilities have been revitalised,
boosted by Millennium spending, and ratings of quality of life in the
centres of British cities, where the grand projets were concentrated, rose.
The rise and rise of celebrity culture
In 1996, Peter Mandelson and Roger Liddle, in The Blair Revolution, set
as the central aim of Blair’s government the re-creation of Britain as a
‘young’ country. Even before his election, Blair sought to identify with the
icons of Britain’s resurgent pop scene. In early 1995, Blur’s singer Damon
Albarn was invited to meet Blair at the Commons. Once in office, with
‘Cool Britannia’ parties in Downing Street at the start of his term of office
to his holidays with ageing pop stars, Blair enjoyed and participated in the
cult of the celebrity that saw X Factor, Big Brother, and shows like I’m a
Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here come to dominate mainstream entertainment. Even in a 2003 interview with Saga magazine to celebrate his 50th
birthday, Blair said: ‘I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly.
But the truth is, I’m more likely to listen to rock music. I listen to what the
kids play.’
Blair was keen to communicate that he was culturally in tune with the
public – describing himself as a ‘regular guy’, sharing his tastes in music
(his Desert Island Discs selection, for example, managed to incorporate
practically every major musical genre from Debussy through to the
Darkness) and, in 2007, taking part in a TV comedy sketch, albeit for
charity, asking the character Catherine Tate whether he looked ‘bovvered’.
And for a time, this flirtation with popular culture worked. Oasis came
out in full support of Tony Blair, a story which was picked up in the press
with many papers leading with the headline ‘What’s the story? Don’t vote
Tory’. Some went even further: Paul Conway, Managing Director of
Virgin Records said of Blair ‘here is a person of our generation who
BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007 Page 73