Prevailing impressions of Britain in 1950s-1980s
I was born in the early 1950s and I took for granted most of the attitudes that were prevalent at the time: that Britain was a ‘good’ country; that people believed in the concept of ‘fair play’ – being fair and honest with people and clapping when the opposition won.
Most people I knew were proud of the Empire and believed Britain to be a benevolent, united country under a beaming monarch. We looked after our own people with the NHS and the Welfare State. The police policed on the basis of consent and were not, in the main, corrupt. They were certainly not perceived as politically biased. Dixon of Dock Green springs to mind. The law was applied to everyone, regardless of social standing, race or religion. We also believed we ran our empire with the same attributes, as well as with a degree of compassion that had not been apparent in other European empires. We fought, quite correctly and with courage and determination, in World War 2, to rid Europe of fascism, bigotry and hate. It was something we can all be proud of. The present support for the Ukrainian government and people in the war with Russia is also something we should applaud.
But why did we not respond in the same way to the war in Syria? Questions such as this have made me look deeper into our past.
Understanding the truth about slavery
At school, I learnt about slavery and some of the horrors endured, but the focus was on the efforts of Wilberforce in abolishing the abhorrent system. It is only recently that the true extent of slavery has hit home.
It was a shock to read Peter Wilson Coldham’s ‘Emigrants in Chains’, about the use of ‘indentured’ labour in the early American colonies in the seventeenth century. The term referred to criminals, vagrants and ‘other undesirables’ rounded up, and shipped to the colonies to work on plantations without payment or rights, until the term of their indenture was over. This was nothing more than slavery.
This treatment of British people did not bode well for the African slaves who were shipped to the American colonies when the supply of indentured labourers from England dried up. When the Caribbean plantations were established, the increased demand for free labour led to the commercialisation of African slave trafficking. This provided vast profits which fed into national institutions in Britain, with the cognisance of the British government, royalty and the Church of England.
The truth about the Industrial Revolution
During the Industrial Revolution, there was massive migration of agricultural workers from rural areas in Britain, to the new urban conglomerations where industries were growing up. Workers had to bear treatment that was little better than slaves: poor wages, child labour, appalling living and working conditions. Disease and malnutrition were facts of everyday life. There was no consideration for the safety or welfare of the workers. The factory owners wallowed in wealth on the back of this labour. Attempts in parliament to introduce legislation to improve working conditions for children in the factories and mines were unsuccessful until the 1833 Factory Act.
British rule in India
The exploitation of the Indian subcontinent by the East India Company eventually reached such excesses that in 1857, a mutiny erupted, forcing the British government to step in. As a punishment, food stocks in some local areas were destroyed, causing famine and countless deaths.
Britain and Ireland
The policies of the British government and failure to intervene during the Irish potato famine or the Great Hunger of 1845-1852, caused untold misery and death amongst the labouring classes of Ireland. It was particularly the rural Catholic tenants of the absentee landlords who were affected. These landlords were, in the main, members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, who considered it their birthright to collect rents, without regard for those suffering the consequences of the famine. Death and emigration as a result of the famine caused the population of Ireland to fall by as much as 30% in some areas.
Britain and China
There was a lucrative trade with China particularly for tea, but also for porcelain and silk. Chinese merchants required payment in silver for their goods, but Britain used gold as the standard. In order to raise the amounts of silver required, British merchants illegally started selling Indian opium for silver. The Chinese authorities attempted to stop the smuggling of opium, resulting in The Opium Wars (1839 and 1842). By the end of the wars, there were millions of Chinese addicts making huge profits for British trading companies. So, Britain became the first international drug smuggling cartel. As a result of the wars, Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in perpetuity. Who says drug smuggling doesn’t pay?
Architects of concentration camps
We, the British, were the first to implement the policy of concentration camps during the Anglo-Boer War. Poor administration, inadequate medical provision and general neglect led to thousands of deaths, mainly among the women and children who were interned in the camps.
Intentions of Empire
The Empire existed to further the wealth and power of the mother country. The resources taken from the colonies were not to the benefit of the people of those colonies, but purely to the benefit of Britain. The British Empire lasted almost 400 years, brought untold wealth to Britain but left a mixed legacy in the countries colonised. Britain imposed their rule of law invested in superstructures, including railways and education. Often, as in the case of the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, the determination to maintain law and order resulted in excessive violence.
The legacy of our empire
Today the Empire has gone, but some of our politicians continue to try to project Britain as a powerful diplomatic and military country, with an influential voice in international affairs. Recent events now show Britain in a very different light on the international stage. The chaos in our economy caused by Brexit, and the farce played out by the Tory party in the latest leadership contest, has the world wondering what on earth has happened to our supposedly sensible and steady political system.
Our inhumane processing and treatment of asylum seekers at the Manston Asylum Centre in Kent shows a Home Office that’s totally incompetent. By their own admission, the system is ‘broken’ and not fit for purpose. The lack of compassion shown people in such misery does not reflect the British people’s affinity for charity.
Failure to take care of our own
This lack of compassion is visible in the government’s attitude to people at home, too. Not only to those who are unable to work through illness or disability, but also to those in work, and in key services who do not earn enough to feed their families and heat their homes. Allowing the slow disintegration of the NHS, social care, mental health provision, and the ambulance service, can be little other than a deliberate policy to move those services towards a private solution.. Twelve years of austerity by this government, added to the difficulties caused by the pandemic, Brexit and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused a huge spike in the number of people now dependent on food banks, whether they have jobs or not. Homelessness is on the increase because of cuts in local government funding, and lack of affordable housing, and this is likely to get worse with the recent increase in mortgage rates.
A political system that doesn’t represent the people
The current government promotes a political, economic and tax system that secures the wealth of a minority of the richest in the land and allows so called ‘non doms’ the privilege of not paying taxes. It penalises particularly youngsters, and those working the ‘gig’ economy, who are trying to afford accommodation, heating and food. Our voting system reduces the choice of the people to be represented by a government with their interests and concerns at heart. We have an unelected upper house of nearly 800 members where one of the main qualifications for entry has become how much they have donated to their political party, which makes a mockery of our ‘democracy’. This ‘chumocracy’ leads to corruption, as shown by the government’s now notorious ‘VIP lane’. It was set up to award lucrative contracts to organisations with close relations with government ministers to supply personal protection equipment during the Covid pandemic. Where corruption in government leads, so the rest of the country will follow.
Public services failing to serve the people
The police service in the country is losing whatever respect it had because of issues with racism, misogyny, and a failure to apply the law equally. The number of deviant and criminal officers within the service has never been so high due to a failure of proper vetting and budget cuts. A damning report by the Inspectorate of police and fire and rescue services tells a similar story about the fire service. Our public services are crumbling while the government squabbles amongst themselves.
Huge inequalities in our society
The great institutions of state are awash with money (including the monarchy and the Church of England). Meanwhile the public are struggling to cope with the present cost of living and the country has slipped into the deepest recession since records began. There is no leadership and the political class seem to be caught up in a vortex of bargain-swapping between different factions.
Our public utilities have been sold off to mainly foreign governments or companies whose main interest is making a profit for the shareholders with little reinvestment in their infrastructures. The government responds with the same meaningless comments that we get from the water companies pouring untreated sewage into our waterways.
In my youth and naivety, I was always proud of being British. Now I’m not. I am angry when I see my country has lost its way, and its place on the international stage. I recognise now that it was ever thus; we just didn’t have the evidence we have today! Nowadays the corruption is laid bare. We are witnessing our democracy being replaced by chumocracy and lies. We sell arms – probably our main manufacturing industry – to regimes that have no human rights. Apparently, we are the second largest supplier of weapons in the world. Our present King has accepted donations from Middle Eastern families and regimes for his charities, all apparently checked for due diligence. I do not feel optimistic about our future.
References:
The British Inheritance edited by Elizabeth Hallam & Andrew Prescott pub PRO 1999
An Illustrated History of England by John Burke pub by BCA 1974
The Horizon History of the British Empire edited Stephen Sears pub American Heritage publishing assoc BBC/TV & Time-Life Books. 1973)
British Library website Georgian Britain the Industrial Revolution by Matthew White. 2009.(EK embedded link)
The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes pub Collins Harvill 1987
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple pub Bloomsbury 2019
Sahib, The British Soldier in India by Richard Holmes. Harper Collins 2005
Rediff.com The forgotten brutality of the 1857 Mutiny
By Rudrangshu Mukherjee Aug 2017
BBC History website The Irish Famine by Jim Donnelly 2011
History Website updated Aug 2022
The Opium War published by Foreign Languages Press Peking 1976
The Horizon History of the British Empire edited Stephen Sears pub American Heritage publishing assoc. BBC/TV & Time-Life Books. 1973
National Army Museum website
An Illustrated History of England by John Burke pub by BCA 1974
The Imperial Achievement by John Bowle pub Little Brown 1974
An Illustrated History of England by John Burke pub by BCA 1974
The Imperial Achievement by John Bowle pub Little Brown 1974
The Fall of the British Empire by Colin Cross pub by Picador 1968
