by Jeremy Black
Class, however, lost its power to unleash such scathing anger, for to move from the 1950s to the 1960s was to move to the world of Alfie, a film character of 1966 (played by Michael Caine) for whom women, clothes and cars were graspable commodities that proved that one could get on in the world without the privileges of birth and education. His determination to enjoy life to the full, and his ability to do so, gave him no time to be angry.
As class-based criteria became less prominent in public discussion and government policy supported home ownership, the core description of the majority of the British by the 1990s was of a capitalist, consumerist, individualist, mobile, predominantly secular and urban, property-owning democrat. Moreover, compared with 1851, or indeed 1931, national broadcasting, state education and employment, nationwide companies, unions, products and pastimes had all brought a measure of convergence in behaviour and attitude. This convergence was seen in the decline of dialect and of distinctive regional differences in practice, for example in cookery. House types and furnishing were more uniform than in most other countries of comparable size.
Yet, there were variations within this society. The decline of the aristocracy robbed the upper class of symbols of differences, and the wealthy professionals who benefited from the expansion of the City of London were able to present themselves as middle class, although some gloried in a ‘barrow boy’ East End image. Yet, there were still major differences in opportunity within society, and there was also what was increasingly termed in the 1990s the ‘underclass’. This was not a new problem, and there were parallels with Victorian ideas of the unsocialized residuum, but there was a striking contrast between general affluence and, on the other hand, the homeless sleeping rough, notably in cardboard settlements, as on London’s South Bank, or the poverty and despair of run-down industrial areas.
Social classification was unsettled, with Thatcher claiming in 1987 that there was ‘no such thing as Society’, while in 1990 John Major talked about a ‘classless society’. A lack of clarity both affected political assumptions and created problems for politicians. It was unclear whether the basic distinction was of a broad propertied stratum and a disadvantaged underclass, or whether it was more appropriate to highlight contrasts among the propertied. Differences in disposable wealth were linked to variations in consumption patterns, such as car ownership and tourism. The creation and expression of social distinction through contrasting consumption patterns links this chapter to the discussion in Chapter 8. They also serve as a reminder of the extent to which real social contrasts existed alongside the creation in the 1940s of a war state and a welfare society both based on the idea of national unity.
Education
Education represented a key way in which the nation changed. In part there was a bringing to fruition of earlier plans for changing the educational system in order hopefully to forward the prospect for a new society. The latter theme, indeed, was a significant one throughout the period. Thus, the close of the First World War had seen not only the introduction of universal male suffrage, votes for women, and a government subsidy for council house building, but also a major reform of the education system. The 1918 ‘Fisher’ Education Act raised the school leaving age from twelve to fourteen and planned a further rise to fifteen. It was assumed that at fourteen most people would enter the workforce, but attend ‘continuation schools’ once weekly until sixteen. Government subsidies to local education authorities were increased.
This, however, was not a comprehensive change, and in that it reflected the extent to which state-directed change in a democracy, with its habit of ensuring powerful safeguards for other interests, did not equate to the totalitarian changes seen for example in the Soviet Union. The Fisher Education Act did not include the numerous Church or independent schools, let alone the universities. Moreover, the Act did not change the curriculum, and that reflected the conservatism of much of British public culture and ideology and, in particular, a reluctance to discard past methods in favour of new possibilities. Thus, the new Act offered little scope for science, technology and modern languages.
Furthermore, the implementation of the Act was partial, again a characteristic of much government (and not only in Britain), with implementation generally not matching up with legislative decision or administrative dictat. Local authorities, which enjoyed considerable independence, frequently acted slowly, employers did not wish to pay for workers to go to continuation schools, the ‘Geddes Axe’ of 1922 ended these schools, and the increase of the leaving age to fifteen was postponed indefinitely. An attempt to reach this limit was made under the second Labour government (1929–31), but was blocked in the Conservative-dominated House of Lords. In 1936, the age was raised to fifteen with effect from 1 September 1939, but with the outbreak of the Second World War this was further postponed.
As with much else, the Second World War led to plans for post-war social renewal that reflected both concern about pre-war conditions, wartime aspirations for a better society and the belief that state provision was best. The crucial measure for education was the ‘Butler’ Education Act of 1944, drawn up by the liberal Conservative R.A. (Richard Austen) Butler (1902–82), who was Minister of Education and whose legislation brought proposals to fruition during the war, unlike the Beveridge Report. With its statement that pupils should receive an education relevant to their ‘age, abilities and aptitudes’, the Act of 1944 had a clear social agenda. The minimum school leaving age was raised to fifteen from 1947, and fees in state-supported secondary schools were abolished. Legislation in 1947 extended the provisions to Scotland and Northern Ireland. The abolition of fee-paying in grammar schools would, it was hoped, encourage the entry of children from poorer families as entry into schools was to be on the basis of the eleven-plus examination. The Education Act obliged every local education authority to prepare a development plan for educational provision and the Ministry of Education imposed new minimum standards in matters such as school accommodation and size. This division was typical of the trend in relations between central and local government from the mid-nineteenth century: one in which the autonomy of the latter was gravely, and increasingly, limited. This trend gathered pace from the 1940s, in part due to the war, but was also due to the assumptions of the post-war Labour government.
The Act did not prescribe the types of secondary school. That came in subsequent guidance to local authorities and reflected the recommendations of the Norwood Report of 1943, which claimed that there were three kinds of minds: abstract, mechanical and concrete. This led to a tripartite structure of secondary schools: the grammar, secondary modern and secondary technical. In the event, successful pupils at the eleven-plus went to the grammar schools; the next tranche to secondary technical schools, very few of which were built; and the 75 per cent who failed, to secondary modern schools, which drew heavily on working-class pupils.
To some critics, this system was unfair and socially discriminating, and criticism increased from about 1950: already in 1945–7 Ellen Wilkinson, the Labour Minister of Education, had fought strongly for the comprehensive principle, with individual schools incorporating all pupils in their catchment area. Although popularly acclaimed in 1944, the Butler Education Act was academically reviled by 1956. Moreover, there was rising social disquiet because, although most grammar school pupils continued to come from the middle class, the grammar school system did not satisfy enough of them. In part, this reflected the inability of the grammar schools to expand to cope with the post-war baby boom, and, on a longer time scale, the problems posed by wide variation in grammar school provision across England and Wales.
The comprehensive model was tested in the late 1940s and the first purpose-built comprehensive school, Kidbrooke, in south-east London, opened in 1954. Two years later, Anthony Crosland, an able and determined theorist of the left, published, in his Future of Socialism, a call for egalitarianism through comprehensive education. He vowed to close every grammar school, and, when he became the Minister of State
for Education in Harold Wilson’s Labour government, he set comprehensivization in process with Circular 10/65 of 12 July 1965. This obliged local education authorities to draw up plans for replacing the tripartite system. In education, Labour’s re-election in 1966 was crucial, for by the time the Conservatives returned to power in 1970 much of the old system had been destroyed. Margaret Thatcher (1925–), as Secretary of State for Education, replaced the Crosland Circular, but a large number of comprehensive school approvals came during her period as Secretary of State and the number of pupils in comprehensives rose through the 1970s, so that the system became the norm.
The school leaving age was raised to sixteen in 1972, but many pupils continued to leave school without the necessary literacy and numeracy to make them readily employable. Moreover, despite their deficiencies, grammar schools may have achieved greater social mobility than comprehensives, an issue that contributed to the ideological battleground over education. There were also serious problems with education from the economic point of view. Technical skills among school-leavers remained deficient, in part because of the perceived superiority of academic over vocational education. The situation in Germany, Japan and China was very different, and this difference can be linked to their greater economic growth. The bulk of the British workforce certainly did not measure up to their Continental, East Asian and American counterparts in many respects, and this contrast owed something to educational factors. It has been argued both that too much emphasis was placed on equality and social opportunity and too little on raising educational standards, and also, from a different direction, that there was too great an emphasis on education, rather than training in skills. These views were aired extensively from the 1980s, but it was unclear how best to remedy the problem, and the granting of university status to the polytechnics as a result of the Education Act of 1992 made the situation more problematic at the level of higher education.
Both political parties sought to address the problem at the school level. Distrustful of local government, the Conservatives attempted, with the ‘Baker’ Education Act of 1988, to raise standards by creating a national curriculum. Established practices in teacher training, school government, and educational supervision were all replaced, but it proved difficult to use the educational system to address more widespread social issues affecting educational aspiration and performance. These included widespread poverty, poor housing and low expectations.
All remained serious issues affecting the health and education of much of the population. Tony Blair came to power in 1997 emphasizing his commitment to ‘education, education, education’, but was also unable to do much to improve the situation. In practice, the national straitjacket of control was measured in terms of more exams and a greater role for national standards, the results of which were presented in school league tables, but education failed to deliver the ‘outcomes’ anticipated by the government.
Conclusions
This failure contributed to the sense of national malaise, not least to a mismatch between claims and reality that hit the Labour government hard. It could press buttons, as when ASBOs (anti-social behaviour orders) were introduced to try to control bad behaviour, but could not seem to affect public attitudes or conduct. Thus, the Conservative opposition referred in the late 2000s to a ‘broken society’, one of people excluded from the benefits of economic activity, let alone growth.
Indeed, in 2009, when, at a time of high unemployment, an unprecedented 477,000 people enrolled in university, there was no adult working in 16.9 per cent of working-age households, a percentage that reflected a lack of ability, opportunity and drive, as well as the social benefits system, notably the ‘welfare trap’ discouraging the unemployed from seeking work. This high percentage contributed to a reality and sense of poverty, and notably the psychological poverty seen in families in which more than one generation had no or little experience of work. This situation, and the anxieties it gave rise to, contributed to opinion polls that indicated that, although the British lived longer, many were dissatisfied with the nature of British society and fearful of the future. Polls also indicate that many are fearful, for example on ‘sink’ housing estates where ASBOs have failed in practical terms to curb or control anti-social behaviour, especially among young people.
Meanwhile, the unprecedented rate of large-scale immigration constituted an experiment with the very nature of the people. In 1997–2007, the total net inflow of foreign citizens was 3 million strong, about 5 per cent of the population, a figure that excluded illegal immigrants, who possibly comprised another 600,000 people. The resulting pressure on housing and infrastructure is relatively apparent, and there is also the central question of the consequences of clashing values in an increasingly heterogeneous society.
7
EMPIRE TO EUROPE
The transition from world’s leading empire to a member of the European Union was one of the most significant of the period, and one that captured the decline in Britain’s role and reputation in the world. This decline continues to attract attention elsewhere, and not least because the former empire comprises much of the world. It was not apparent at first, and indeed Britain played a key role in the Second World War, but by 1965 the empire was largely gone, and the context of British power was transformed as a consequence.
The Empire of the 1930s
The empire was still a reality in the 1930s, even though there was Arab violence in Palestine in 1936–9, as well as resistance in Waziristan on the ‘North-West Frontier’ of India (now the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan), and pressure for independence from the non-violent Indian National Congress. These were serious problems, but containable ones, not least due to the military resources provided by the empire, especially the Indian Army, the largest volunteer army in history. Instead, British military resources were put under mounting pressure from outside the empire, from the need to consider German rearmament, Japanese aggrandizement and Italian ambitions, and from the constraints created by domestic financial problems.
Alongside tensions within the empire, disparate elements also interacted to create a sense of imperial partnership, camaraderie, even nationalism. New air routes linked the empire to Britain, while Imperial Trade Preference, introduced in 1932 as part of the new protectionist regime, helped ensure that trade within the empire held up better than that with other countries. Imperial protectionism benefited from the lack of energy in the long-established Free Trade arguments at a time of heightened international protectionism during the Depression, although an over-reliance on easy and guaranteed imperial markets helped dull the competitive edge of British business, a predicament underlined subsequently when such trade became less important to the economy. Commitment to the empire in the 1930s was demonstrated, in different forms, by the major and expensive new naval base for the defence of the Far East built at Singapore, and by the majestic buildings designed for the official quarter in New Delhi.
Empire was also important in British consciousness. The demand for empire was seen in inter-war films such as The Drum (1938) and The Four Feathers (1939). Based on A.E.W. Mason’s (1865–1948) novel of 1902, the latter was a presentation of imperial endeavour in Sudan as a definition of manliness and heroism. Now, instead, there is a pervasive anti-imperial liberalism that excludes earlier narratives of national glory, presenting them as anachronistic. Yet, on Empire Day in the 1930s, schools staged pageants and displays, souvenirs were issued, and large parades were held in Hyde Park. The Daily Express launched an ‘Empire Crusade’ and legislation sought to give substance to imperial interests. The Government of India Act of 1935 moved India towards self-government, but was designed to ensure British retention of the substance of power.
The strength of the empire in the 1930s puts into perspective the later sense that its collapse was inevitable, and the same point can be made for the imperial hub, Britain. In comparison with the weaknesses and collapse of democracy over much of Continental Europe in the 1930s, the success of the N
ational Government was a triumph, and one that was important to national survival in the Second World War. In opposition to the Communists and to Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (established in 1932), which he presented as un-British, Stanley Baldwin, the dominant figure in the National Government from 1931 to 1937 and Prime Minister from 1935 to 1937, stressed national identity, continuity, distinctiveness and solid common sense. Baldwin did so not in order to embrace political reaction, but rather to use images to lessen tensions arising from economic change, particularly rivalry between capital and labour. He was photographed with pigs and five-bar gates, helping to underline an identification with an image of rural values.
More valuably, alongside the serious hardships of the 1930s, with 2.2 million people still unemployed in 1938, there was also much prosperity. GNP (Gross National Product) in 1934 returned to its 1929 figure, the economy recovered more than the economies of France and the US, about 2.6 million jobs were created in 1933–8, real wages rose, and prices fell. This improvement helped explain the National Government’s overwhelming victory in the general election of 1935, its ability to act as a force for stability, and Britain’s success in holding political extremism at bay. Thanks in part to the absence of any system of proportional representation, the British Union of Fascists did not win council seats in elections. In addition, Mosley failed to contest the general election in 1935; his earlier New Party had been unsuccessful in 1931.