The years of discontent

During the 1950s and 1960s Britain remained a European leader economically as well as politically. But Britain suddenly began to slip rapidly behind its European neighbours economically. This was partly the result of a new and unpleasant experience, a combination of rising prices and growing unemployment. Governments were uncertain about how to solve the problem, and no longer agreed that the state had a responsibility to prevent unemployment.

How real were Britain's economic problems? Most people's wealth had continued to grow. By the end of the 1970s four-fifths of homes had their own telephones and refrigerators, and two-thirds owned their own homes and cars.

Compared with its European neighbours, however, Britain was certainly doing less well. In 1964 only West Germany of the six European Community countries produced more per head of population than Britain. Thirteen years later, however, in 1977, only Italy produced less. Britain eventually joined the European Community in 1973, hoping that it would be able to share the new European wealth. By 1987 this had not yet happened, and Britain has continued to slip behind most other European countries. The British Ambassador in Paris wrote in 1979, "today we are not only no longer a world power, but we are not in the first rank as a European one . . . We talk of ourselves without shame as being one of the least prosperous countries in Europe . . . If present trends continue, we shall be overtaken ... by Italy and Spain well before the end of the century." And he pointed out that for the first time in three hundred years the average individual income in Britain was well below that in France. France itself, however, made a great economic recovery in the seventies. Some believed that Britain could do the same.

Britain also experienced new social problems, particularly after the arrival of immigrants in Britain. All through British history there have been times when large numbers of immigrants have come to settle in the country. But until recently these people, being Europeans, were not noticeably different from the British themselves. In the fifties, however, the first black immigrants started to arrive from the West Indies, looking for work. By 1960 there were 250,000 "coloured" immigrants in Britain and also the first signs of trouble with young whites.

Later, Asian immigrants started to arrive from India and Pakistan and from East Africa. Most immigrants lived together in poor areas of large cities. Leicester's population became 16 per cent immigrant, Wolverhampton and Bradford about 8 per cent each. By 1985 there were about five million recent immigrants and their children out of a total population of about fifty-six million. By 1985, too, almost half this black population had been born in Britain. Even so, there were still white people who, in the words of one newspaper, "go on pretending . . . that one day the blacks can somehow be sent 'home', as though home for most of them was anywhere else but Britain."

As unemployment grew, the new immigrants were sometimes wrongly blamed. In fact, it was often the
immigrants who were willing to do dirty or unpopular work, in factories, hospitals and other workplaces. The relationship between black immigrants and the white population of Britain was
not easy. Black people found it harder to obtain employment, and were often only able to live in the worst housing. The government passed laws to
prevent unequal treatment of black people, but also to control the number of immigrants coming to Britain.

The old nineteenth-century city centres in which black immigrants had settled were areas with serious physical and economic problems. In the 1980s bad housing and unemployment led to riots in Liverpool, Bristol and London, worse than any seen in Britain since the nineteenth century. Black people were blamed for causing these riots, but they were in fact mainly the result of serious and longstanding economic difficulties, which affected the black population living in the old city centres more than the white.

There were other signs that British society was going through a difficult period. The Saturday afternoon football match, the favourite entertainment of many British families, gradually became the scene of frightening and often meaningless violence. British football crowds became feared around the world. In 1984 an English crowd was mainly responsible for a disaster at a match in Brussels in which almost forty people were killed. People were shocked and ashamed, but still did not understand the reason for the violence. The permissive society and unemployment were blamed, but the strange fact was that those who started the violence were often well-off members of society with good jobs.

Women, too, had reasons for discontent. They spoke out increasingly against sexism, in advertising, in employment and in journalism. They protested about violence against women and demanded more severe punishment for sexual crimes. They also tried to win the same pay and work opportunities as men. This new movement resulted from the growth in the number of working women. Between 1965 and 1985 the number of wives with jobs increased from 37 per cent to 58 per cent. In 1975 it became unlawful to treat women differently from men in matters of employment and pay. But this law was not fully enforced, and it continued to be harder for women to take a full part in national life.

Unemployment increased rapidly at the end of the 1970s, reaching 3.5 million by 1985. In many towns, 15 per cent or more of the working population was out of work. Unemployment was highest in the industrial north of England, and in Belfast, Clydeside and southeast Wales, as it had been in the 1930s depression. Things became worse as steel mills and coal mines were closed. In 1984 the miners refused to accept the closing of mines, and went on strike. After a year of violence during which miners fought with the police the strike failed.

The defeat of the miners showed how much power and confidence the trade unions had lost. This was partly because they faced a government determined to reduce the power of the unions. But it was also because they seemed unable to change themselves to meet changed circumstances, and they seemed afraid of losing their power.

Inflation had made the situation more difficult. Between 1754 and 1954, prices had multiplied by six. Then, they multiplied by six again in the space of only thirty years, between 1954 and 1984. In such circumstances it proved almost impossible to make sure that all workers felt that they were fairly paid.

Industrial problems also increased the differences between the "comfortable" south and the poorer north. It is easy to forget that this division already existed before the industrial revolution, when the north was poorer and had a smaller population. The large cities and towns built during the industrial revolution have had great difficulty in creating new industries to replace the old.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 1050