The Story of Britain

by Patrick Dillon

  “Once fighting starts,” he reminded his followers, “it’s impossible to stop it. Violence only creates more violence!”

  So instead of setting off bombs, his followers simply refused to obey British orders; and when Gandhi was sent to prison, he went on hunger strike and stopped eating until he almost died. Seeing how bravely he stood up to the British, more and more people joined Gandhi, and his Congress Party became strong and well organized.

  During the Second World War, Indians stopped campaigning for freedom. Thousands of them joined the army and helped to fight the Japanese.

  “Listen to Churchill’s speeches!” they said. “The British are fighting for freedom, open elections and fair laws. That’s exactly what we want in India as well!”

  And when the war was over, the British agreed to grant India independence. But the difficulty was to decide how, for it was a huge country divided between many religions. Millions of Muslims lived alongside Hindus and Sikhs, but didn’t want to be governed by them.

  “All the leaders of the Congress Party are Hindus,” the Muslims said nervously. “After independence they’ll run India for themselves, and Muslims will be persecuted.”

  They were like the Protestants in Northern Ireland, who didn’t want to live in a country where most people were Catholic.

  “We want our own country,” the Muslims said.

  Everyone had forgotten the two lessons of toleration that John Locke had discovered centuries before – that religion should be kept apart from politics, and that people should respect each other’s faiths.

  And so India was divided, and a Muslim country called Pakistan was set up in the north (later, a third country called Bangladesh would be created as well). Muslims in the south sold their homes and set out for Pakistan, while Hindus in the north packed their bags and began the long walk south to India.

  At midnight on 15 August 1947 India became free. It should have been a time of rejoicing. But instead, Muslims and Hindus began fighting. People walking north attacked people walking south.

  “It’s the Muslims’ fault we have to leave our homes!” screamed the Hindus.

  “The Hindus have taken our towns!” shouted the Muslims.

  Gandhi was sad when he heard the news of fighting and death. He went on hunger strike to persuade Indians and Pakistanis to stop killing each other. But in the end Gandhi himself, who hated violence, was murdered by a Hindu terrorist who thought he had betrayed the Hindus.

  Religion stops people thinking fairly because it makes them sure they’re right and everyone else is wrong. India became free, but the moment of its freedom was spoiled by religion. Only Gandhi was wise enough to know that nobody understands everything, whatever religion they believe in. Once, somebody asked him if he was a Hindu. “Yes, I am,” he answered. “But I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.”

  As we reach the last pages of this book, you will realize this is a story that doesn’t have an end. The past turns into the present, and the present becomes the past. History goes on happening around us. And India and Pakistan are still quarrelling to this day.

  When they saw that India was free to govern itself, the other countries of the empire demanded freedom as well. One by one, Kenya and Uganda, Jamaica, Trinidad and all the rest left to become new countries. Sometimes they fought wars to free themselves, and sometimes they became free peacefully. But sooner or later the Union Jacks were taken down from the government buildings, and new flags rose in their place. The British Empire was over.

  Many in Britain were sorry to see it end. However, the truth was, Britain couldn’t afford an empire any more. It cost a fortune to maintain armies in every continent in the world, to keep hundreds of ships sailing the seas, and to pay for officials, judges and teachers everywhere from St Kitts to Singapore – and the British didn’t have a fortune any more. They were no longer the richest nation on earth.

  Two new powers had appeared, and they were both much stronger. In the east was the communist empire of Stalin. And in the west was Britain’s ally, the United States of America.

  The Cold War

  AMERICA and Russia couldn’t have been more different. America was a democracy, Russia – the USSR or Soviet Union, as it was still called – a dictatorship. America was powerful because its businessmen and inventors had made it rich; the USSR was a communist country where no one was allowed to own anything. Americans lived as they pleased; people in the USSR did as the communists wanted. For as long as they were fighting Hitler together, America and the USSR were allies; but as soon as he was beaten, they became the deadliest of enemies. For the next forty years they lived on the brink of war.

  At the end of the Second World War, the Americans advanced into Germany from the west, and the Russians from the east. When they met in the middle, Europe was divided in a line from north to south. Everything to the west became free and democratic like America, while the countries to the east – Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Poland – were turned into communist states.

  “An iron curtain has descended across the continent,” said Winston Churchill sadly.

  Germany was divided in two: West Germany was free, while East Germany became communist. Even the German capital, Berlin, was split in half, for the Russians built a wall through the middle to stop people moving to the west. There were machine guns on the wall, and anyone who tried to escape was shot.

  In the west America’s allies formed an alliance called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while the countries of the east joined an alliance with the USSR called the Warsaw Pact. People started preparing for a war between America and the USSR, but they quickly realized it would be even more terrible than the war against Hitler. The Americans already had atom bombs, and the Russians soon built A-bombs of their own. Then both sides invented H-bombs, which were even more powerful; missiles that could fly across continents in just a few minutes; and more missiles to shoot their enemies’ missiles down.

  It was like the time before the Great War when Britain and Germany had started a race to build battleships; but the American and Russian race was far more frightening, because their missiles could blow the whole world up a thousand times over. Five hundred years before, people had been amazed by cannon that shot a cannonball just a few hundred metres. Now the two superpowers had weapons that could destroy the whole planet. Were people getting too clever for their own good?

  Children started having nightmares about atom bombs, dreaming they were living in a world ruined by a nuclear war. In their nightmares, cities were destroyed, millions died, the survivors were sick, and they lived in cellars in gangs, picking through ruined shops to find something to eat.

  Fortunately the war never started. Both the Americans and Russians realized there could be no winners or losers in a nuclear war, for everything would be destroyed. So the years passed in a sort of war without fighting, and the superpowers’ confrontation became known as the Cold War. During it, the Americans and Russians hardly spoke to each other. People in Poland couldn’t watch American films or listen to British songs, while in America anyone who talked about sharing things or looking after the poor was accused of being a communist.

  Because they didn’t dare fight each other, the Americans and Russians got their friends and allies to wage wars for them, so communists and capitalists fought each other in Korea, Vietnam and Africa, using guns the Americans and Russians gave them. Just as the world had set up the League of Nations after the First World War, after the Second World War it started an organization called the United Nations to prevent wars from happening, but the United Nations was too weak to stop the superpowers quarrelling.

  The Americans and Russians even carried on their rivalry in space. The Russians sent a man into space, using a rocket like the ones the Germans had designed to attack Britain. His name was Yuri Gagarin and he was the first astronaut. The Americans were furious that the Russians had beaten them at something, so they built an even bigger rocket, and
in 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to land on the moon. Millions of people around the world watched on television as he set foot on its surface, and listened to the first words ever spoken on the moon.

  “That’s one small step for a man,” Neil Armstrong said, “one giant leap for mankind.”

  The odd thing was that when astronauts looked back at the world from their spacecraft, they forgot about the quarrels of capitalists and communists, and the rivalry of America and the USSR. They just saw a small blue planet floating in an immense darkness, and wished the people who lived there could share it in peace.

  The Sixties

  BECAUSE of the rivalry between America and Russia, the people of Europe seemed much less important during the Cold War. That meant they had a chance to rebuild their countries after the terrible destruction of the two world wars. The Americans gave Europeans money to reconstruct factories, and it wasn’t long before people started trading again, opening shops, repairing churches which had been bombed, and replacing homes which had been turned into rubble.

  Europe started to get rich. Even Germany became wealthy, as the West Germans got rid of all traces of the Nazis, opened proper law courts, held elections, and made their country free and democratic, like Britain and France. The first half of the twentieth century was the most terrible Europe had ever known, but the second was the richest. And the people of Britain and Ireland became richer too.

  In 1952 King George VI died and his daughter Elizabeth became Britain’s first queen since Victoria. A Scot called John Logie Baird had invented television before the war, and thousands bought sets to watch Elizabeth’s coronation.

  But just as they had after the Napoleonic Wars and the Great War, many people felt restless after the Second World War. In particular, the young felt dissatisfied. They were fed up with hearing their parents talk about the empire, and tell stories about what it had been like in the war. They knew that Americans didn’t talk about the past, but about the future. Americans challenged things rather than doing what they were told. American kids even had their own music, rock ’n’ roll, which was loud and exciting. Grown-ups hated it, but the kids didn’t care!

  Copying the Americans, young people in Britain started wearing jeans and listening to rock ’n’ roll. Four boys in Liverpool started their own band to play American-style music. They called themselves the Beatles and, during the 1960s, became the most famous band in the world. Other British bands like the Rolling Stones and the Who became world-famous too. Soon British music was just as important as American, and British kids were just as rebellious.

  Boys let their hair grow long.

  “You look like a girl!” their fathers shouted.

  Girls no longer wanted just to get married and have babies. “Why shouldn’t we go to university and get jobs?” they complained. “Why shouldn’t we be treated equally?”

  Young people in the sixties thought everything was going to change for the better. They would be free, and have a chance to do what they wanted. A miner’s son could make a fortune; a shopkeeper’s daughter could become a famous actor or entertainer.

  And for a time, it seemed as if everything really could change for the better. But something was still wrong. They might have been rich and free, but the people of Britain were not content. They couldn’t get used to the idea that their country wasn’t so important any more.

  Britain in Trouble

  “WE used to have the biggest empire in the world,” the British grumbled. “Now look at us!”

  In just fifty years Britain had changed from being the most powerful country on earth to a small island on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The British didn’t know where they belonged. The other countries in Europe started a club called the European Economic Community, but though Britain applied to join, the French wouldn’t let them. Most British people weren’t that keen either, and even after 1973, when Britain at last joined the EEC – which later became known as the European Union – they kept complaining about it.

  “We’re not really Europeans,” they said. “We’re different! Our empire used to cover the whole world!”

  Their memories were like a burden the British couldn’t put down. If you’ve run half the planet, it’s difficult to get used to being a small island. France became richer than Britain; so did Germany, Japan and Italy. British factories were old-fashioned, and British designers couldn’t come up with new ideas. Most of all, the unions seemed to have forgotten that unless their companies made money, Britain would keep on falling behind. They demanded pay rises even when their companies couldn’t afford it, and called strikes for no reason at all.

  “Britain’s rich!” they said. “There’s plenty to go round!”

  Too much power always spoils people. And when they realized they could stop the whole country working, power spoiled the unions as well.

  The coal miners went on strike. Soon there was no coal to run the power stations, so the electricity went off. Families sat huddled around candles in the cold and dark. Without electricity they couldn’t even switch on the television or play records. There wasn’t enough electricity for factories, so the government announced people would only work three days a week instead of five. Dustbin men went on strike, and rubbish piled up in the streets. Gravediggers went on strike, and bodies were left unburied.

  That wasn’t the only trouble Britain and Ireland faced. Fighting started again in Northern Ireland. Some Protestants began persecuting their Catholic neighbours, and though the British army was sent in to keep the peace, the Catholics thought it was there to help the Protestants. If they had listened to Parnell or Gandhi they might have fought for independence by peaceful means. Instead, they began a terrorist group they called the Provisional IRA to attack soldiers and set off bombs. They killed people in London and Manchester, in Belfast, Londonderry (which Catholics call Derry) and Enniskillen.

  By the end of the 1970s it felt as if everything was going wrong again.

  “It’s all up with us now,” people said gloomily. “Britain’s finished!”

  Maybe the two world wars had been too much for the British. Instead of looking for new things, they clung to old traditions, as if they knew their greatest days lay in the past and nothing exciting would ever happen again.

  It felt as if the story of Britain was over.

  Immigration

  BUT Britain’s story wasn’t over. It was about to start all over again.

  You might have thought that after the empire, people in places like India and the Caribbean would be angry, and want nothing more to do with the British. Instead, from all over the empire, Africans, West Indians and Asians set out for Britain to find a new life. And they brought new life to Britain as well.

  The people of Britain had always been a mixture of different races: English, Welsh, Irish and Scots; Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans; Huguenots and Jews. That was what made them so special, for to be British didn’t mean belonging to a particular race; it meant sharing a pride in the free life you could live here.

  The first ship to arrive from Jamaica was called the Empire Windrush. The Jamaicans coming to Britain brought thick coats because they knew it would be cold. Some of them were doctors or teachers, and carefully packed their certificates, dreaming of the jobs they would find when they reached London. On the journey they talked about the country they were travelling to. They had all learned the story of Britain in school. They knew about Simon de Montfort and Queen Elizabeth I, about the civil wars and the Glorious Revolution. They knew about the Great Reform Act, the unions and the suffragettes.

  “The British believe everyone is equal,” they said. “It doesn’t matter that we’re black. We’ll all have an equal chance.”

  “The British discovered how important it is to be tolerant,” said others. “We’ll be able to live the way we want.”

  “The British sailed all over the world to discover other nations. They’ll be interested in our West Indian culture.”

  “I
want to start a business,” said one man. “That’s easy in Britain. Think of the railways and factories! A new idea always has a chance in Britain.”

  But when they reached London, the immigrants had a terrible shock. London was not just cold but shabby. The great buildings were black with soot, and passers-by stared crossly at them.

  “You can’t stay here,” snapped landladies. “I don’t want black people in my house!”

  “You should learn to talk proper,” snarled pub landlords. “I can’t understand a word you say!”

  “Start a business?” laughed bosses when they asked for work. “Become a teacher? All you’re good for is sweeping my floor!”

  The West Indians moved to Brixton, in south London, where they could be closer together and felt safe.

  “What’s happened to the British?” they asked each other sadly. “When did they forget that everyone’s equal?”

  “When did they forget about toleration?”

  “When did they stop being interested in new ideas?”

  Asians moved to Britain from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and from Uganda, in Africa, where many Indians had lived during the British Empire. They found the same thing.

  “What’s happened to the British?” the Asians asked. “When did they become so small-minded?”

  But gradually, as the years went by, things began to change. The new immigrants brought new ideas, new music, new talents and energy, just as the Huguenots and Jews had done before them. And the sound of new voices and the sight of new faces woke Britain up. How could it live in the past when the British looked so new?

  It was time for the story of Britain to begin again.

  A New Start

  FIRST the British had to remember how to make money and become rich. In 1979 Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister. She was the first woman prime minister Britain ever had (eleven years later, Mary Robinson became Ireland’s first woman president). Her father had run a grocer’s shop, and she believed in hard work and looking after yourself.