BRITISH CULTURE AND CIVILISATION

LECTURE NOTES

British Monarchy. Developments in British Political Life

The dawn of a new century after Victoria’s death brought a new, if not youthful (at almost 60
years), monarch in Edward VII, whose persona was far more fun loving than that of his mother.
Born on November 9, 1841, the future Edward VII (1901-10) was the second child and eldest son
of Queen Victoria. Bertie served as heir apparent longer than anyone else in British history. Failing
to flourish in the army or at university, he lacked focus or any outstanding abilities. As Prince of
Wales, Bertie became a playboy, famed for a string of indiscretions, including a divorce and
gambling scandals. His extravagant habits formed a model for the wealthy leisured people of the
day. Lavish country house parties, especially shooting weekends at Sandringham, were his
speciality. In 1863, he married the Danish Princess Alexandra (1844–1925), but his philandering
continued, including a high-profile affair with actress Lillie Langtry. Appalled by him, Victoria kept
him away from affairs of state, so he was badly prepared for kingship. By 1901, a long time in
waiting for the throne, Edward VII had grown outgoing and hedonistic, and stamped his reign with
that trait. He could be charming, pleasant, and diplomatic. Always impeccably dressed, he pursued
open philandering and headed the pleasure-seeking country house party set. Yet he was popular
despite his lavish lifestyle. Edward’s more serious interests lay in the armed forces, foreign policy,
and European diplomacy, although he is seen as having exercised little real political power. Some
of his views were liberal, others not—he was against votes for women. In particular, Edward played
an active role in encouraging military and naval reforms, pressing for the reform of the Army
Medical Service and the modernisation of the Home Fleet. He died before the constitutional crisis
that opposed the Conservatives to the Liberal administration could be solved by the latter’s victory
in the 1910 elections.
However, Edward VII’s time, known as the ‘Edwardian era’, was one of significant political
and socio-economic changes. It felt like a fresh start, filled with technological innovation. It is true
that Victorian attitudes still persisted. Wealthy industrialists still contributed large sums toward art
galleries and museums. Civic authorities proclaimed their importance with impressive buildings in
an overblown Baroque style. In 1903, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) was founded
for working adults, and military officer Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts in 1908, to
teach boys citizenship and leadership skills.
A racier edge to life also developed. Immediate precedent came from decadent tastes during
the turn-of-the-century years, spearheaded by figures such as writer Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and
Art Nouveau–Aesthetic artist Aubrey Beardsley (1872–98), with his stylized, daring illustrations.
Life in Britain was speeding up. There were car rallies and record-breaking flying contests.
For the wealthy, motorcars became far more common. Modern cars first appeared in the late 1800s.
In 1909, John Moore-Brabazon became the first resident Englishman to make an officially
recognized airplane flight in England. Electric trams replaced the Victorians’ horse-drawn trams,
transforming life and leisure for urban working people in the expanding towns and cities. The
Victorians’ railway system continued to flourish. For the wealthy, this was the heyday of luxury
transatlantic passenger liners, such as the Cunard Line’s Mauretania and Lusitania (both 1906), and
competition for the coveted Blue Riband award for fastest transatlantic crossing. People emigrated
abroad as third-class passengers on these liners in increasing numbers1.

1 A serious setback in the increasingly popular practice of crossing the Atlantic on board of passenger liners was the
sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912. More than 1,500 lives were lost when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, a
truly dreadful tragedy in human terms. But the disaster also dealt a shattering blow to British prestige and pride, denting
the confidence of the world’s first industrial power.
 The middle class, supported by business and industry, continued to grow, demanding large,
airy homes within easy reach of towns and cities. Spacious, well-planned suburbs sprang up on the
urban fringes close to railway lines. Inside homes, electricity became more widespread for the
better-off, although many poor families had to wait until the 1920s to enjoy this benefit.
Edwardian Britain saw a great gap between the extravagant aristocracy and the poor, and an
economic downturn relative to Victorian times was felt in some quarters. The rise of socialism and
demands for reform continued, responded to in part after the Liberal victory of 1906. The mounting
trade-unionism in Britain erupted in a rash of strikes and put the Liberals in power in the 1906
elections. The Liberal administration introduced a series of reforms towards the development of the
modern social security system:
● 1907 - free school meals to improve the health of Britain's children;
● 1909 – The Old Pension Law;
● 1911 – The National Insurance Act (those unable to earn money through sickness or
unemployment would be helped by the state.);
● 1912 – the Minimum Wage Law.
Despite problems there was some greater social mobility and improved literacy.
During the early 1900s, enraged by Parliament’s failure to introduce female suffrage and
give voting rights to women, “suffragettes” took matters into their own hands. With leaders such as
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, they began a campaign of demonstrations (1903-1906) and
escalating direct action. Yet, it was not until 1918 that women became entitled to vote from the age
of thirty. The first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons was Lady Astor in 1919. She
was joined in 1921 by Mrs. Wintringham.
The Edwardian Age was a fertile period for the arts, reflecting the shifting attitudes of the
time. The Modernist Movement (represented by writers like Henry James, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot
and Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster) emerged next to the growth of a more
conventional generation of Edwardians (like H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Rudyard Kipling and
William Somerset Maugham).
In 1910, after Edward VII’s death, the crown was passed to his son George V (1910-36).
Much quieter and not a party-goer, George V nevertheless continued the monarchy’s popularity
with the public.
The first year of George V’s reign witnessed a major political crisis in Parliament. In 1911,
the Liberal drive for reform was extremely unpopular with most Conservatives, who had a majority
in the House of Lords. There was a constitutional disagreement. The Conservatives still favoured a
two-house parliamentary system, but they now recognised that the Lords would have to be changed.
The Liberals wanted one strong house, with the powers of the Lords so weakened that it could not
prevent the will of the Commons from being carried out. The result of this constitutional debate was
the Parliament Act of 1911. Like much of British political development it resulted from a
compromise, but one in which the Liberals won most of what they wanted. The House of Lords lost
its right to question financial legislation passed in the Commons. Its powers in all other matters
were limited. It could no longer prevent legislation but only delay it, and for not more than two
years. The system still operates.
Britain had developed an isolationist tradition, depending on its navy to ensure national
security, and avoiding alliances with European powers. But in August 1914 the country was caught
up in the rush to war. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, and on France two days
later. That was the beginning of the First World War (1914-18). Britain’s Liberal government was
divided over whether to enter the war on the side of France. Britain had made secret military
commitments to the French but there was no formal alliance. However, the German invasion of
Belgium on August 4 provided a clear justification for a declaration of war, since Britain was a
guarantor of Belgian independence.
The British Army had prepared for a European war. A force of six infantry divisions and
one cavalry division was available for rapid mobilization and dispatch to the Continent. On August
9 the first elements of this British Expeditionary Force (BEF) left for France. At first, popular
expectation that it would be “over by Christmas” did not seem absurd, but with the stalemate of
trench warfare on the Western Front, the country was soon committed to fielding a mass citizen
army in a merciless war of attrition. The battles on the Western Front in France and Flanders in the
years 1916 to 1918 were industrialized warfare at its most destructive. Drawing on deep reserves of
patriotism, courage, and stoical endurance, British and Empire troops ultimately triumphed, but at
the cost of almost 1 million lives. In 1917, the increasing anti-German feeling led King George V to
change the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor.
George V also tried to play a conciliatory role during both the civil war in Ireland (which
started with the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916) and the Great Strike in 1926.
Supporters of the Home Rule for Ireland (the implementation of which was delayed by the
British government when World War I began in 1914) rebelled in Dublin, hoping to persuade more
Irishmen to join the republican movement. The “Easter Rising” (1916) was quickly put down, and
most Irish disapproved of it. But the British executed all the leaders, which was a serious mistake.
The public was shocked, not only in Ireland, but also in London. Irish Americans were also angry,
just at the moment when America had joined Britain in the war against Germany.
In 1918, the republicans won in almost every area except Ulster. Instead of joining the
British parliament, however, they met in their own new parliament, the Dáil in Dublin, and
announced that Ireland was now a republic. Irishmen joined the republic’s army, and guerrilla
fighting against the British began. As a result, the British government decided to make peace. By
the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921, it agreed to the independence of southern Ireland. But it also
insisted that Ulster, or Northern Ireland as it became known, should remain united with Britain.
That led to civil war among the Irish themselves. The pro-Treaty forces won, and the republicans,
who insisted that all Ireland, including Northern Ireland, should be an independent republic, were
defeated. After the 1932 elections, the republican government began to undo the Treaty and in 1937
declared southern Ireland a republic (The Republic of Éire).
With prices more than doubled at home, with increased taxation and soaring burden of
domestic and foreign debt, a war-weary England was faced with the assimilation of about eight
million demobilized servicemen and with the fight for world markets now threatened by America
and Japan. The Liberal administration of David Lloyd George and the effective life of the Liberal
Party came to an end in 1922 in an atmosphere of social unrest at home and of a war-devastated
world abroad.
In 1921, an earlier miners’ strike was defeated and men returned to work bitterly
disappointed with the mine owners’ terms. In 1925, mine owners cut miners’ wages and another
miners’ strike seemed inevitable. Both sides, i.e., 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 in 1926 inevitable. 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. 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.
Mounting unemployment, the gradual drifting away of the overseas possessions from the
mother country, the deterioration of the continental peace caused two successive Labour
governments led by Ramsay Macdonald, in 1923 and 1929, the first avowedly socialistic
governments in English history. The Great World Depression from 1929 on brought about a
coalition government between 1931 and 1935.
At his accession in January 1936, Edward VIII was a popular King. A qualified pilot and a
highly popular public figure owing to his successful tours at home and overseas, his good war
record and genuine care for the unprivileged, he brought a fresh breath of modernity, glamour, and
relative youth to the stuffy image of the British monarchy. However, the Conservative Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin and other key Establishment figures, such as the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, disapproved of him. The British press shielded the public from
knowledge of the Prince of Wales’s private life, but insiders knew that Edward—like his
grandfather Edward VII—did not conform to contemporary standards of rectitude in sexual
morality. Baldwin was also troubled by the fear that the new King, who had loose sympathies with
Nazi Germany2 and Oswald Mosley’s Fascist BUP, would refuse to be governed by his ministers on
political issues.
A far greater storm than Edward’s political views was brewing from a quite different
direction. On November 16, Edward informed Baldwin that he was determined to marry an
American-born divorcée, Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Faced with a constitutional crisis, he chose to
abdicate on December 11, 1936. So he reigned less than a year during 1936 only to stage the first
voluntary abdication in British history. He became Duke of Windsor and his younger brother, the
upright, responsible Duke of York, became King George VI (1936-52).
Soon after George VI’s coming to the throne, World War II (1939-1945) broke out. In
September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Britain entered the war. From May to June 1940,
the German army invaded the Netherlands, attacked and defeated the French. France capitulated
within 11 days on June 10, 1940. The British army was driven into the sea and was saved by
thousands of private boats which crossed the English Channel at Dunkirk. In the summer and the
autumn of 1940, the German air forces (Luftwaffe) launched a major bombing and raiding
campaign over Britain. Their targets were: coastal shipping convoys, shipping centres, Royal Air
Force (RAF) airfields and infrastructure, aircraft factories and ground infrastructure. Finally, the
Lufwaffe resorted to attacks on strategic town areas which culminated in the serial bombing of
London that killed thousands of civilians and destroyed most of central London. In this time of
terror, Prime Minister Winston Churchill brilliantly managed to persuade a nation “on its knees”
that it would win. The failure of Germany to achieve its objectives of destroying Britain’s air
defences or forcing Britain to negotiate an armistice or an outright surrender is considered both its
first major defeat and one of the crucial turning points in the war. If Germany had gained air
superiority, Adolf Hitler might have launched Operation Sealion, an amphibious and airborne
invasion of Britain.
George VI gradually gained popularity especially owing to his great achievements during
World War II. He remained for most of the time at Buckingham Palace (the Palace was bombed
nine times during the war). He and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, visited severely bombed areas in the
East End of London and elsewhere in the country. He developed a close working relationship with
his wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, as most of Europe fell to Nazi Germany. Having
served in the Navy during World War I, the King was anxious to visit his troops whenever possible
(France in 1939, North Africa 1943, Normandy, Italy and the Low Countries in 1944).
After World War II ended, the British Empire gradually dismantled. When India and
Pakistan became independent in 1947, George VI ceased to be Emperor of India. Changes in the
Commonwealth, a free association of independent states, former British colonies, with the British
monarch as its head, meant that its tie was no longer based on common allegiance to the Crown, but
upon recognition of the Sovereign as Head of the Commonwealth.
Throughout the late years of George VI’s reign and after the end of World War II, the
Labour Government (1945-51) promoted the British Welfare State policy, which consisted in
providing cradle-to-grave protection for the English workers.
● 1944: free secondary education for all, and further and higher education;
● 1946: the National Health Service, which gave everyone the right to free medical treatment;
● 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.
● nationalization: The Labour government took over control of credit (the Bank of England),
power (coal, iron and steel), and transport (railways and airlines). But nationalisation was a

2 As Edward had made no secret of his admiration for Nazi Germany, during World War II, he was made Governor of
the Bahamas to remove him from possible contact with Germans, who saw him as a future king of a fascist Britain.
 disappointment as only 20 per cent of British industry was actually nationalized, and these
nationalized industries served private industry rather than directed it.
The subsequent Conservative administrations 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 nationalization desirable for the British economy to operate at its
best.
In 1952, Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne. She had married in 1947 Prince Philip,
Duke of Edinburgh, the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and a great-great-grandson of Queen
Victoria. They had four children: Prince Charles, Prince of Wales; Princess Anne (The Princess
Royal); Prince Andrew; Prince Edward. Her grandchildren are: Peter and Zara Phillips (b. 1977 and
1981), the children of the Princess Royal Anne and of Mark Phillips of the Queen’s Dragoon
Guards; Prince William of Wales and Prince Henry of Wales (b. 1982 and 1984), children of Prince
Charles of Wales and Princess Diana (born Lady Spenser); Princess Beatrice of York and Princess
Eugenie of York (b. 1988 and 1990); and The Lady Louise Windsor and Viscount Severn (b.2003
and 2007), children of The Earl and Countess of Wessex.
As at the time of the abdication of King Edward VIII in 1936, the troubles of the modern
monarchy came from the collision between the demands of private life and public role. Elizabeth
herself, like her father and grandfather, seemed immune to this conflict; her personal life was erased
by the demands of royal duty. But members of her family were not. The first crisis of the modern
monarchy concerned Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret. She wished to marry Group Captain
Peter Townsend, who was divorced. The government, the Church of England, and the rest of the
royal family were united in opposition to the marriage, and in 1955 Margaret called it off. She was
not reconciled, however, to a life of duty. She married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in
1960, drifted into a number of affairs, and finally divorced in 1978. This was a foretaste of much to
come.
In the early years of Elizabeth’s reign the media was respectful and protective toward the
royal family. A rare criticism of the Queen’s manner of speaking—an article in 1957 that described
her as having the manner of a “priggish schoolgirl”—was greeted with united outrage by the press.
From the 1960s, this deference progressively eroded and was slowly abandoned—but this change
was slow to have effect. The success of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977 demonstrated the nation
continued readiness to celebrate the monarchy—even if the Sex Pistols’ ironic punk anthem God
Save the Queen topped the charts. The marriage of Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, and Lady
Diana Spencer in 1981 was, like the coronation, a romantic spectacle for the vast majority of the
population. By the early 1990s, the messy disintegration of Charles and Diana’s union,
accompanied by detailed revelations of adultery by both parties, seriously undermined royalist
sentiment. The royal family acquired a more complex kind of publicity particularly in 1992 which
Queen Elizabeth II termed as an ‘annus horribilis’ that culminated with the Prime Minister John
Major’s announcement that the decision of the Prince and Princess of Wales to separate “has been
reached amicably” after their mutual loathing had been on display for all the world to see through
the media. Despite Major’s reassurance that the “succession to the throne is unaffected” many felt
the separation as a serious challenge to the royal institution unprecedented since the Glorious
Revolution in 1688. With the marriages of two of Elizabeth’s other children, Princess Anne and
Prince Andrew, also heading for divorce, the royals were subjected to investigation of their private
lives, personal attacks, and caricature. Such disrepute of the monarchy had not been seen in Britain
since the Regency scandals of the early 19th century.
The extraordinary outpouring of grief that followed Diana’s death in a car crash on August
31, 1997 developed a distinct antimonarchist edge. The Queen’s lifelong reticence and reliance
upon formal protocol played badly with the public in the grip of heightened emotion. Realizing that
she needed to portray a less aloof image, Elizabeth was soon seen chatting with her people on
carefully stage-managed visits to pubs and council flats, while the media were offered behind-the-
scenes access to life at Buckingham Palace.
 The popularity of the royal family was restored, based not on reverence, but on acceptance
of the royals as both ordinary human beings and celebrities. In Australia, a referendum to make the
country a republic was defeated in 1999, while in Britain, the abolition of the monarchy never
became a serious proposition. In 2002, the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s accession was
celebrated by about 3 million people in London.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the royal family entered a relatively tranquil phase
after the troubles of the 1990s, with the new generation taking center stage. Prince Charles, himself
divorced and widowed, married the divorcée Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil wedding in 2005.
The ending of resistance to divorce on the part of the Church of England and the Establishment in
general enabled the marriage to take place without Charles renouncing his right to inherit the
throne. Prince William and Prince Harry, Charles’s sons from his marriage with Princess Diana,
grew to adulthood enjoying a good level of popularity, despite occasional gaffes. Both continued
the royal family’s tradition of service in the armed forces. In 2010, William announced his plans to
marry Kate Middleton. A member of the middle class would once have been considered an
unsuitable match for a future king, but in this case, their marriage plans attracted a favorable public
and media response. The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, as well as
the birth of their children, Prince George Alexander Louis (2013), Princess Charlotte Elizabeth
Diana (2015) and Prince Louis Arthur Charles (2018), have improved significantly the image of the
royal family in the eyes of the British audience. In 2018, Prince Harry also got married, his bride
being the American actress Meghan Markle. The couple, which took the titles of Duke and Duchess
of Sussex, initially made efforts to live up to their royal responsibilities, but it seems that increasing
tension gradually affected family ties to the point that, after the birth of their son Archie
Mountbatten-Windsor (2020), the couple officially announced their decision to give up their
position as senior members of the royal family and moved to Canada.
In the public debate over the role of monarchy in the turn-of-the-millennium Britain, various
arguments have brought against and in favour of this institution. Some are given below:
Cons:
● Inherited titles cannot be justified in a democratic age.
● The functions of monarchy are meaningless and time-wasting ceremonials that have been
taken over by the executive in virtually every respect.
● Monarchy is very expensive with the Queen as one of the richest women in the world for her
personal fortune calculated at £ 6.7 billion in 1990 by Sunday Times, receiving an annual
grant of nearly £ 6 million to meet the expenses of the nearly 400 strong royal household.
● Monarchy no longer holds the country together and no longer has an effect on people’s
behaviour.
Pros:
● Monarchy strengthens awareness of national identity and respect for the authority of
government.
● The pageantry and glitter of monarchy attracts thousands of tourists to London and,
consequently, is crucial to the nation’s tourist economy.
All in all, republicanism does not exist as a major political force in Britain and the British sense of
compromise will most likely find the means to adjust the ancient institution of monarchy so that it
may meet the requirements of a modern democratic country like Great Britain.
The second half of the twentieth century found Queen Elizabeth’s II’s Britain vacillating
between two major power poles in international politics, Europe and the USA.
In 1949, Britain had joined with other Western European countries to form the Council of
Europe, “to achieve greater unity between members”. In 1957, Britain refused to join the six other
European countries in the creation of a European Common Market. Britain was unwilling to
surrender any sovereignty or control over its own affairs, and said it still felt responsibility towards
its empire. Finally, in 1961, the Macmillan administration decided in favour of British entrance into
the European Common Market abandoning the neutralist, nationalist traditions of the
Conservatives. But it was too late: when Britain tried to join the European Community in 1963 and
again in 1967, the French President General de Gaulle refused to allow it. Britain only became a
member in 1973, after de Gaulle’s retirement. In 1973, Edward Heath successfully negotiated
Britain’s entry to the EC in 1973 which was confirmed by a referendum in 1975.
Although trade with Europe greatly increased, most British continued to feel that they had
not had any economic benefit from Europe. This feeling was strengthened by the way in which
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher argued for a better financial deal for Britain in the Community’s
affairs. It is not surprising therefore that Britain’s European partners wondered whether Britain was
still unable “to take part seriously in any Pan-European system.”
The pressures in the 1990s for more integration and unification in the European Community
resulted in the new Conservative Prime Minister John Major’s active role in having the Maastricht
treaty approved by the EC states.
On the other hand, British governments after World War II sought to strengthen their
relationship with the USA. The Marshal Aid Programme which benefited Britain like most post-war
Western Europe had led to economic boom and improved living standards during the 1960s (the
‘swinging sixties’). If, after the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, Britain was a useful ally to
the USA acting as “junior world-policeman”, during the 1960s and early 1970s, this special
relationship weakened as Britain could no longer afford to patrol large areas of the world. Ever
since 1945 the United States and the political right in Britain were more openly hostile to the Soviet
Union. The Europeans and the British political left were, on the whole, just as suspicious of Soviet
intentions, but were more anxious to improve relations. However, even under Labour governments,
Britain remained between the European and American positions. It was natural, therefore, that
under Thatcher, who was more firmly to the right than any Conservative Prime Minister since the
war, British foreign policy was more closely linked to that of the United States, particularly with
regard to the Soviet Union. Britain sided with the United States in other foreign policy matters too,
which alarmed its European partners. In 1986, for example, it allowed US aircraft to use British
airfields from which to attack the Libyan capital, Tripoli. One thing was clear from these events.
Britain still had not made up its mind whether its first political loyalty lay across the Atlantic, or in
Europe.
By far one of the most important political figures of post-World War II Britain is Margaret
Thatcher, Britain’s first woman Prime Minister. She was first elected in 1979 because she promised
a new beginning for Britain: She called on the nation for hard work, patriotism and self-help. She
was not a typical Conservative, but she described herself more like a nineteenth-century Liberal.
She wanted free trade at home and abroad, individual enterprise and less government economic
protection or interference. She wanted more “law and order” but was a good deal less willing to
undertake the social reform for which later nineteenth-century Liberals were noted.
Thatcher’s firm leadership during the Falklands War captured the imagination of the nation,
and that partly helped her win the elections in 1983. However, her victory was more a consequence
of a split opposition vote between Labour and the Alliance (senior right-wing members of the
Labour party together with the small but surviving Liberal Party). Thatcher had promised to stop
Britain’s decline, but by 1983 she had not succeeded. She had begun to return nationalised
industries to the private sector. By 1987 telecommunications, gas, British Airway, British
Aerospace and British Shipbuilders had all been put into private ownership. She could also claim
that she had broken the power of the trade unions. In fact, the trade unions had been damaged more
by growing unemployment than by government legislation. She could be less confident about
increased law and order. In spite of increasing the size of the police force, there was a falling rate of
crime prevention and detection. In addition, the rough behaviour of the police in dealing with
industrial disputes and city riots had seriously damaged their reputation. The most serious
accusation against the Thatcher government by the middle of the 1980s was that it had created a
more unequal society, a society of “two nations”, one wealthy, and the other poor. According to
these critics, the divide cut across the nation in a number of ways. People saw a divide between:
● prosperous suburban areas and neglected inner city areas of decay;
 ● the north and south of the country. People were aware of growing unemployment in the
“depressed” areas and fewer hopes of finding a job.
● The black community also felt separated from richer Britain. Most blacks lived in the poor
inner city areas, not the richer suburbs, and unemployment among blacks by 1986 was twice
as high as among the white population.
In spite of these problems, Thatcher’s Conservative Party was still more popular than any other
single party and won the 1987 election.
Due mention must also be made of the fact that especially over the last decades of the
twentieth century, Queen Elizabeth II’s UK faced the rising tide of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern
Ireland. The principal issues at stake in the ‘Troubles’ were the constitutional status of Northern
Ireland and the relationship between the mainly-Protestant Unionist and mainly-Catholic Nationalist
communities in Northern Ireland. The ‘Troubles’ had both political and military (or paramilitary)
dimensions. Participants included politicians and political activists on both sides, paramilitaries (the
Ulster Defence Association UDA on the Protestant side and the Irish Republican Army IRA on the
Catholic side), and the security forces of the United Kingdom and of the Republic of Ireland. The
uncontrollable spiral of violence led to the suspension of the Northern Ireland Parliament that
governed between 1921 and 1972 and a transfer of full responsibility for law and order to
Westminster. British soldiers were stationed in Northern Ireland, which gave the impression of a
military occupation to the outside world. Efforts to increase understanding between the two
communities did not meet with much success. The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 provided the
unequivocal acceptance that the problem in Northern Ireland was a joint one and guaranteed that the
constitutional status of Northern Ireland would not be altered without the consensus of the
population. The Anglo-Irish Settlement concluded in 1998 with its urgent provisions: disarmament
of the paramilitary units, removal of Protestant control upon the police, retreat of the British
military forces from the province (this has been in abeyance ever since because of the IRAs
reluctance to accept total disarmament).
The period of Tony Blair’s premiership from 1997 to 2007, on behalf of the Labour Party,
brought some radical reforms in Britain’s system of government. Blair’s Labour administration
embarked upon a ‘new Britain’ project to modernize the economy, to readjust the welfare state, to
adopt constitutional reform and to provide the nation with a new identity. His ambitious plan of
moulding old and new Britain into the ‘Cool Britannia’ pattern, the model twenty-first century
nation, was best epitomized in his own vision of future Britain as “the best place to live, the best
place to bring up children, the best place to lead a fulfilled life, the best place to grow old.”
Since the 1970s, the Scottish National Party (SNP) had been a significant force in British
politics. Blair was not prepared to accept the SNP’s demand for independence, but instituted a
Scottish Parliament with a devolved government exercising considerable powers in 1999. Wales
was also given its own assembly. When a Catholic-Protestant power-sharing executive was made to
function in Northern Ireland, England was left as the only part of the United Kingdom without a
devolved parliament and government. There was also a radical change in Westminster. All but 92
hereditary peers lost their seats in the House of Lords in 1999.
One significant aspect of the 1997 election was the number of seats won by women MPs—
119 in all, compared to 24 women elected in 1974. This reflected ongoing changes in attitudes
toward women and their expectations. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, 70 percent of
British women had paid employment, one of the highest in the world. Although a lot of these jobs
were part-time and women remained under-represented in boardrooms, it was true that many
barriers to women’s advancement had crumbled and gender roles had become far less sharply
defined.
The issues of race and immigration remained contentious, despite the officially adopted
ideology of multiculturalism and generally high levels of integration. The West Indian and Asian
presence in Britain was long established, but the expansion of the European Union to include the
countries of Eastern Europe in 2004 was followed by a fresh influx of immigrants. In 2008, more
than one in 10 of the UK population had been born abroad.
 Altogether, Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ policy still failed in many respects:
– economic stagnation remained a grim reality in the old industrial cities;
– the outrageous behaviour of the British hooligans has become a characteristic of
Britishness;
– the nationalistic aspirations in the historical provinces have determined the (re)opening
of Parliaments in Scotland and Wales while the ‘troubles’ in Ireland have continued to
worry Westminster;
– immigration of unprecedented scale has forced Britain to adopt restrictive measures;
– Britain’s foreign policy wavering between loyalty to the USA and her European partners
is threatened by the spectre of globalization and the dominance of an American English
speaking empire.
The growth of international Islamic terrorism and British military involvement in
contentious wars in Afghanistan and Iraq led to concerns about the allegiance of Britain’s Muslim
minority. In July 2005, suicide bomb attacks on Underground trains and a bus in London killed 52
people. Three of the men responsible for the atrocity were British-born Muslims. Britain’s security
services reacted to the threat of terrorism efficiently, stopping many plots from reaching fruition,
but also committed serious errors, notably the killing of the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de
Menezes in the wake of the 2005 bombings. The use of special powers to combat terrorism led to
fears of an erosion of civil liberties. Britain in the twenty-first century is characterized as much by
its profusion of security cameras and large prison population as by its tolerance and diversity.
The problem-plagued premiership of Gordon Brown, Blair’s Labour successor to
premiership, lasting from 2007 to 2010, was followed by a close-fought general election and a
coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The Brown administration steered a
perilous path through the economic crisis of 2007–08, avoiding a banking collapse and alleviating
recession. The negative political effects of the crisis were magnified by a scandal involving MPs’
expenses. In the election of May 2010, David Cameron’s Conservatives won only 36 percent of the
popular vote and no overall majority in Parliament. Cameron negotiated a coalition with Nick
Clegg’s Liberal Democrats to become Prime Minister, embarking on a rigorous policy of public
spending cuts.
The contradictions between the UK and the EU began to intensify even more in 2010, with
the coming to power of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. Refusing to participate in the
Eurozone summits and vetoing the new EU fiscal policy agreement, Prime Minister David Cameron
opened both the path to an active Euro-sceptic opposition in the European Parliament and,
ultimately, to the 2016 in-out national referendum dubbed Brexit.
The unequivocal question posited to the British citizens was ―Should the United Kingdom
remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? – which should not have
raised any problems of (mis)understanding. On June 23rd, 2016, ~52% of the voters chose to
‘leave’ and only 48% to ‘remain’, which is consistent with the opinion polling carried out since
2010, in which the options were evenly divided. (…) [T]he British media played an important role
in shaping the citizens’ options, imposing themselves as actors in the construction of a sociological
phenomenon with serious effects and consequences. Just like the two campaigning groups, Britain
Stronger in Europe, in favour of ‘remain’, on the one hand, and Leave.EU (supported by UKIP) and
Vote Leave (supported by the Euro-sceptic faction of the Conservative Party), on the other, the
British media divided their readership into supporters of the two options. The media in favour of
‘leave’ went to unprecedented lengths to ‘speak,‘ loudly, in a language that any voter could
understand, of three major issues that should have determined the British citizen to want ‘out‘:
immigration (here including the imposed refugee quota and a labour market open to Polish,
Romanian and Bulgarian workers), financing the poorer EU states, thus disfavouring the local
economy, and last but surely not least, the imposition of various policies by Brussels or, even
worse, by Germany and France. Relying heavily on the British mindset and views on their relations
with the continent, (…) – we are with Europe but not of it -, and also on in-your-face arguments
placing the Britons in a position of a ‘self’ undermined and threatened by the foreign (European)
‘other’, the ‘Leave’ newspapers contributed to a great extent to the shaping of the 2016 vote and, by
way of consequence, to the situation the country finds itself in at this moment (…).
Interestingly enough, the people of the United Kingdom seem to have awoken, post factum,
to the prospects of the country after its self-imposed isolation from Europe. Resting on a significant
number of arguments in favour of ‘Remain’ – e.g. an online list of no less than “98 Reasons to Stay
in the EU: Benefits of Membership for the UK” (which had better been outlined before June 23 rd,
2016), throughout 2018 and in the first months of 2019 (before [Conservative Prime Minister’s]
Theresa May’s stepping down from office) – the Brits looked into ways of annulling the effects of
their vote. Unilaterally revoking Article 50 (“Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the
Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.”) was an idea; a re-referendum was
another, though the latter was quickly dismissed.
After repeated attempts to close a deal with the European Union, thwarted by the opposition
in the House of Commons, Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May announced her resignation,
on June 7th, 2019. Her service as Prime Minister continued until July 24th, 2019, when Boris
Johnson, a former journalist, Mayor of London and MP, a known supporter of the ‘Leave’
campaign who had faced allegations of racism and Islamophobia in the past, was elected the leader
of the Conservative Party and appointed Prime Minister. (…) Johnson made clear that Britain
would leave the European Union with or without a deal (“no ifs, no buts”), going as far as to request
the prorogation of the Parliament from Queen Elizabeth II. Three Courts, including the Supreme
Court of the United Kingdom, declared the prorogation unlawful and consequently ruled against its
entering into effect. However, his bombastic, over-confident, and informal rants against “doomsters
and gloomsters” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history,” (The Guardian 2019)
occasionally resembling President Trump’s fanfaronades, eventually bring about the long-debated
but predictable ‘divorce’ between the UK and the EU, which enters into force on January 31st, 2020.

References
Gavriliu, Eugenia (2001) British History and Civilization. A Student-Friendly Approach through Guided
Practice, Galaţi: Fundatia Culturală “Dunărea de Jos”
Gheorghiu, Oana Celia (2019) ‘Brexit Framing in British Media’. MCDSARE: 2019. International
Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on the Dialogue between Sciences & Arts, Religion &
Education, e-ISSN: 2601-8403, 321-325
Grant, R.G., Kay, Ann, Kerrigan, Michael and Parker, Phillip (2011) History of Britain and Ireland. The
Definitive Visual Guide, London, New York, Melbourne, Munich and Delhi: Dorling Kindersley
McDowall, David (1995) An Illustrated History of Britain, London: Longman
Praisler, Michaela and Gheorghiu, Oana Celia (2020) ‘History in the Making. Literary and Filmic Snapshots
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