Into Europe

Early post-war signs of Russia's determination to build a bloc of satellite states dismayed her recent allies. The Security Council of the United Nations, charged with determining and recommending action on any breach of international peace, could take no action against aggression unless all five of its permanent members — the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Nationalist China — concurred. One veto immobilised the whole procedure. Every challenge to Russia over its repressive conduct met with a veto. The major powers did not want direct military confrontation; but a 'cold war' of political and economic manoeuvring began.

In April 1949 the USA, Canada, and ten Western European nations decided that to combat possible Russian aggression they should set up a defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Its original members were the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Canada. Later, in 1952, Greece and Turkey joined, and although the disarming of Germany had been one of the Allies' prime tasks, Russia's use of the eastern sector of the dismembered country in her military grouping led to West Germany's inclusion in NATO in 1955.

A united Europe depended not only on armed might. Discussions began on possible unification of agricultural and trade policies, and the elimination of differences in tariffs and taxes. In March 1957 France, West Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and Italy agreed by the Treaty of Rome to form a European Economic Community (EEC) or 'Common Market'. Britain debated whether to join or not. There were obvious advantages in such a partnership and the wide markets which would be opened up; but many MPs and, indeed, many of their constituents were apprehensive of the community's probable development into a political union. Also it would be necessary to drop Commonwealth preference, which seemed a betrayal of one's own family.

Britain suggested that the establishment of a free trade area within Europe need not rule out individual members' right to vary their tariffs on goods from outside the area. The prime minister, Harold Macmillan, encouraged negotiations, but France was suspicious. President de Gaulle put it bluntly: 'I would like you very much to come into the EEC, but from your point of view you cannot come in unless you bring your Commonwealth with you. We cannot have you in if you bring your Commonwealth with you. So I am afraid there can be no agreement.'

In November 1959 Britain played a major part in the formation of a rival consortium of seven countries into the European Free Trade Association (EFTA): Britain, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland.

The EEC was still the more tempting prospect. In January 1961 Macmillan met de Gaulle, still in the hope of making special arrangements for Commonwealth countries, but was told that full membership meant adherence to the Treaty of Rome without special concessions. The lord privy seal, Edward Heath, a committed pro-European, continued to negotiate, and by 1963 it was agreed that Britain should make unequivocal application for entry. It was taken for granted that this time all would go smoothly.

Instead, de Gaulle accused Macmillan of deceiving him over a nuclear deal Britain had been making with the USA which would seriously damage the balance of power in Europe; and said 'no' to British membership.

The Labour government of 1964-70 made another attempt in 1967, together with Denmark and Ireland. Although West Germany and other members were anxious for Britain to play her part and counterbalance powerful French influence, France again issued a veto. The Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, declared that he would try again in due course and would not take 'no' for an answer.

In June 1970 Edward Heath, now leader of the Conservative Party, became prime minister with the avowed intention of carrying Britain into the Common Market. His negotiator, Geoffrey Rippon, brought talks to a satisfactory conclusion in Luxemburg in June 1971.

On 1st January 1973 the United Kingdom became a full partner in that united Europe where, over the centuries, she had fought and won so many battles. (Burke)

Scotland in Europe

The growing sense of marginalisation felt by Scots was perhaps the prime factor that led to the political elimination of the Tories in 1997. Mrs Thatcher was unlikely to feel any sympathy with the view that Scotland was a country that ought to be viewed on its own terms, and her Scottish lieutenants – and her successor John Major – were doggedly unionist. And yet in many ways the country had never been so prosperous. Professional salaries were on a par with the rest of the United Kingdom. Following the UK's joining the European Common Market, later the European Community, in January 1972, farmers' incomes benefited from the Common Agricultural Policy. Though the BSE contamination of British herds hit the Scottish beef industry hard, support grants made some compensation. Effective worldwide marketing of whisky, and, to a somewhat less effective degree, of tourism, brought in increasing amounts of foreign revenue. The referendum on membership of the European Union, held in 1975, resulted in a substantial majority in favour. Only two island areas, Shetland and the Western Isles, recorded a majority against membership.The remoter or run-down parts of Scotland became eligible for grants of euro-money, paid from Brussels. These helped in the landscaping of many blighted industrial sites. Many of the most decrepit of Glasgow's tenement buildings were pulled down, and the city embarked on its slow and difficult transformation from a clanging, clanking centre of smokestack industry to a humming nexus of high-tech factories, financial management, and cultural tourism. The European connection was a source of confidence as well as funds. Scotland-in-Europe offered the possibility of a national entity within the protective embrace of the same multi-national union which had enabled the per capita income of Ireland to overtake that of Great Britain. Fishermen as well as farmers realised the importance of Brussels in their lives; it was there that catch quotas and net-sizes for the hugely depleted fish stocks of the North Sea were decided.

Task 36. Consider British home policy in the second half of the XX century

Under the Conservative administrations of the 1970s and 1990s, the country's local government was twice drastically reorganised. The burghal structure that had existed in one form or another since the thirteenth century was abolished. The counties, of vastly varying size, that had administered life in the landward areas since 1889, were reduced in 1974 to nine mainland regions, Highland, Grampian, Tayside, Fife, Central, Dumfries and Galloway, Borders, Lothian, and Strathclyde. The two latter were much the most populous, with Strathclyde, which stretched from Lanark to Argyll, containing about a third of the entire population. Each region was subdivided into district councils, with minimal local autonomy. In addition, Island Councils were established for Shetland, Orkney, and the Western Isles. These provided local satisfaction, but the mainland arrangements, like all attempts to reconcile the management of Scotland's mixture of dense urban areas and sparsely populated countryside, were inevitably open to criticism. Generally, local government was felt to have moved further away from local people. With the arrival of European parliamentary elections, there were for a time four tiers of elective government. The rearrangement of 1994 abolished district councils and restored unitary authority to the four cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, which had previously been merged into their regions, along with 24 other 'single-tier' authorities.

In 1979, the first referendum on devolution was held, following the 1973 report of a Royal Commission which had recommended some form of Scottish Assembly. The rules had been framed to require the assent of at least 40% of the whole electorate for devolution to proceed. A somewhat half-hearted debate resulted in a narrow majority of support for devolution from those who voted. But they amounted only to 32.85% of the total electorate, and so no further action was taken. In any case a Conservative-Unionist government came to power in Westminster later that same year, and remained in power for the next eighteen. The experience of those eighteen years would have its effect on the 1997 referendum.

The large anti-Tory majority in Scotland was powerless to prevent the vast impact on the Scottish economy of the radical Conservative policies introduced by Mrs Margaret Thatcher, throughout the 1980s and early 90s, under her Britain-wide mandates. Mrs Thatcher had no truck with home rule, and rejected the suggestion that her government had no mandate in Scotland. She was reputed to care little for Scotland, which offered her little in return, except for some talented MPs very much of her own persuasion emerging from St Andrews University, which seemed a nursery of right-wing talent in a left-wing country. In the 1970s and 1980s, the last of the heavy industries which had created modern Scotland were swept away. The remaining coal mines were uneconomic. They closed. The steelworks of Motherwell were an unnecessary duplication of facilities elsewhere in the United Kingdom. They were dismantled. The shipyards of the Clyde, despite a repeated and increasingly desperate pattern of rationalisation and mergers, accompanied by much hostility between the workers and the management, found it impossible to compete with the low wages of the Far East or the highly paid Germans. The manufacture of cloth and thread on an industrial scale fell victim to competition from the Far East and materials created by new technology. Huge factories, like the Singer Sewing Machine works near Dumbarton, closed down. Nor was it only the older, nineteenth-century industries which collapsed. New motor works, aluminium works, wood-pulp mills, all built in the 1960s and 70s with the aid of huge amounts of taxpayers' money, were shut down from the early 80s onwards. Staple industries which survived, like tweed milling, agriculture and whisky distilling, found that technical advances enabled them to employ far fewer people. Distilleries once employed a dozen or more stokers simply to feed the furnaces beneath the stills. Now they just turned on the gas, and ran the whole complex operation with less than ten men. Some new indus­tries flourished. In 1990, it was estimated that Scotland produced one third of all Europe's personal computers, and electronic products formed 42% of manufactured exports. Electronics employed around 50,000 people, compared with under 15,000 in shipbuilding. Oil-related industry accounted for some 100,000 jobs. Service industries grew even faster. In 1992, the financial sector was estimated to employ 220,000 people, or 11% of the total work force. A huge shift was under way, from heavy industry, chiefly employing men, to light industry and service jobs in which women formed more than half the work force.

The North Sea oil and gas fields, discovered in the 1960s and 1970s, created a sense of new hope for economic growth and stimulated substantial investment in 'offshore' industries. The Cromarty Firth, made redundant as a naval base with the abolition of the Home Fleet, saw more stable prosperity with the servicing of oil rigs. Other coastal locations also benefited, and Aberdeen became one of the world's offshore oil capitals. But those who cried 'It's Scotland's oil', cried in vain. The huge royalty revenues generated by North Sea oil did not re­main in Scotland, and the oil industry did not provide an adequate counter-bal­ance to the drastic slide into oblivion of traditional heavy industry. Scots looked enviously at Norway, which was developing its oil-fields on a long-term basis and using the revenues for its own social improvement. The only exception was Shetland, where the vast Sullom Voe terminal was set up, and where agreement between the Shetland Council and the oil companies, sanctioned by the government, enabled a fund to be set up to improve the islands' amenities.

By no means all the changes were negative. Oil also brought new prosperity to ports like Peterhead, and prompted government to improve the Highland road network. But the general perception was negative. The shock of drastic change, together with the severe economic recession of the early 1990s, came after several decades in which the Scots had felt a growing attrition of their country's resources. Unemployment was high, reaching 9.2% in 1993 – though far below the level of the 1930s – and always proportionally higher in Scotland than in England. The railway system had been heavily cut back in 1964-1966, and only vociferous protest from every section of the community had saved the lines north and west of Inverness from being shut. But others, such as Stranraer-Dumfries, and Edinburgh-Hawick-Carlisle, were not spared. The fishing industry, once a source of livelihoods all round the coast, was much reduced, and concentrated in a handful of ports between Buckie and Aberdeen. Meanwhile the inhabitants of Coigach could see the night horizon illuminated by 'Klondikers' who had come from the Black Sea and the Far East to fill the holds of their factory ships. Irked by the demands of government, and by a growing disparity between public and commercial pay scales, the public services were restive and increasingly militant. Teachers, always a significant element in Scottish society, were locked in a long and bitter dispute with the government over professional standards and status.

Successive Conservative governments were sustained by the heady cocktail of monetarism, belief in the effectiveness of competition, and belief in the ability of market forces to create a satisfactory basis for social life. This led to a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. The privatisation of national and municipal resources made it possible for a few determined and well-placed people to make fortunes on a Victorian scale. People might admire the entrepreneurial energy by which former employees took control of a newly formed company and became wealthy businessmen and women, but they did not see a better service resulting. Only public outrage at the selling of a natural resource prevented the government from selling off the Scottish water authorities in the early 1990s. Particularly from the 1950s, councils had been the most important providers of housing; by 1990, more than 200,000 council homes were sold to their tenants. An unwise decision to use Scotland as the test-bed of the new poll tax in 1989 prefigured the shambles that would follow in England and Wales. Like the rest of Great Britain, Scotland saw the growth of the quango – 'quasi-autonomous nongovernment offices' – set up to run great swathes of the national life. Quango members were appointed, not elected, and often seemed able to maintain more than one highly paid position. The amount of patronage dispensed by the Secretary of State caused comparisons to be made with the 'reign' of Henry Dundas in the eighteenth century. The sense of personal and public accountability diminished.

The Scots were also keenly aware of the fact that much of their new or surviving industry and commerce was not rooted in Scotland, or even in Britain. America, Japan, Korea and Germany were the places where decisions were taken, and often where basic research was done. International companies could change locations tactically and ruthlessly, depending on where the incentives were best. Scotland-in-Britain felt vulnerable on these counts. The frequency of government initiatives in job creation and investment policy, from both major parties, merely revealed, each time, the inadequacy of the previous scheme. Industrial relations, never easy in a country where the master-servant roles had long been established, became stormier as industries declined and unemployment rose. Two areas of industry in particular were storm-centres, the Clyde shipbuilding yards and the coalfields. In 1984, the remaining Scottish pits joined in the last great miners' strike, against a government which had no intention of yielding. In the previous decade, with much rhetoric from their leaders, the workers at the amalgamated Upper Clyde Shipbuilders staged a 'work-in' in 1971, in defiance of the threat of closure. The workers could not prevent the death of their industries. And in less traditionally militant areas, the implicit threat of no investment without good behaviour was a powerful one. New industries wanted assurances of no strikes, and, though their 'human resources' management was often good, they did not like unions. Trades unions, which had become a powerful force for industrial protectionism, lost both influence and membership with the abolition of the 'closed shop' and other established rights. No longer had all new employees to join the union. No longer was the shop steward as powerful as the company director. In a trades union with vastly reduced bargaining power, or in no union at all, individual workers, within companies large and small, became isolated and felt a new insecurity both as workers and as citizens.

The Referendum and the New Parliament

The 1997 referendum came shortly after the election of the first Labour government of Great Britain for eighteen years. Through successive elections for the Westminster parliament, the Scots had elected a Labour majority, only to see it engulfed by the Conservative majority elected by their fellow-Britons in England. But ever since the 1970s, the political debate north of the border has been conducted well to the left of the political centre as perceived in England.

In a referendum held in September 1997, the electorate of Scotland voted, by a substantial majority, in favour of the reinstatement of a Scottish parliament. This parliament was to have strictly limited powers and to operate under the aegis of the British parliament. However, the electors did agree to its possession of restricted powers to raise or lower income tax. The result was received with great public satisfaction. For some it represented as much independence as Scotland required. Others – including its opponents – saw it merely as a first step towards the re-establishment of Scotland as a fully independent nation-state.

The new parliament would have little in common with its predecessor. The body which voted for its own abolition in 1707 had had full independence, but was far from being the forum of the whole nation as only a tiny proportion of the male population had the right to vote. Everyone over the age of eighteen would be eligible to vote for the new Scottish parliament. Using the 'additional member system', it provided for two kinds of member: those directly elected by constituency votes, and those nominated by parties winning a sufficient share of the total vote. Some welcomed this as a means of introducing to parliament able candidates whose abilities might not include the robust business of local electioneering. It was also seen as a means for the larger political parties to reward their faithful followers whatever those persons' talents might be. More constructively, it allowed for small minority parties to obtain at least a single voice in the national forum – the Scottish parliament of 2003 included seven Green, six Socialist, one Senior Citizens United Party, one Local Health Campaign, and three Independent members.

Post-Devolution -Taking Stock

In May 2003, elections for a second Scottish parliament were held. Just over half of the electors – 51.6% – did not vote at all. This evidence of widespread apathy, indifference, or even hostility to devolved politics was widely discussed. The excitements of 1997, with the majority vote for limited self-government, and of 1999, with the opening of the first parliament, seemed a long way off. The election results confirmed the continuation of the left-of-centre Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition which had formed the first government, with both parties achieving a small increase in the constituency votes, and ending up with 67 out of 129 seats.

If the limited powers of the Scottish Executive were responsible for voters' lack of interest in the election, then there was no sign of a great desire to see those powers widened. The Scottish National Party's share of the constituency vote fell by 4%, though it retained the second-largest share. 'Voter fatigue' was suggested: Scotland sends members to three parliaments – of Europe, of the United Kingdom, and its own national parliament in Edinburgh. But other countries, including Germany, have a similar three-tier system. Most observers registered a certain degree of disillusion with devolution among the Scots.

What were the achievements of the first term of the modern Scottish parliament? Not least, it had become the focus of national life to a great extent. Perhaps this should not have been a surprise, as it controls such essential matters as health, education, social welfare, transport, environment and agriculture. Many people had however expected a Scottish parliament to act as a kind of shadow to Westminster, following the lead of the British government in framing and enacting legislation. This was especially to be expected when both British government and Scottish Executive were controlled or dominated by the same political party, as was the case in 1999, and again in 2003. But by early 2001, it was clear that the Scottish parliament was taking a different view of social policy to that of Westminster.

In 2000, it had been enacted that Scottish students at college and university within Scotland would have their tuition fees paid by the state. This was contrary to the policy of the UK government. In the same year, a Royal Commission reported on the controversial matter of care for the elderly in Scotland, and how it should be managed and paid for. The Commission's recommendation was that such services should be freely available to those in need of them. Early in 2001, heavily nudged by their Liberal-Democrat coalition partners, the Labour majority in the Executive accepted the report in principle and proposals for implementing free care were implemented by parliament. This was most definitely not a policy which the UK's Labour government intended to pursue for England and Wales.

By the end of 2003 it was clear that devolved government could make a difference. In certain respects at least, it could support the kind of society which the majority of Scots felt appropriate to their country. If this society should differ in certain provisions from that of England and Wales, then that was exactly what devolution was meant to achieve. In some areas, its limitations were also apparent. Farming and fishing, both of great importance to the Scottish economy, though nominally in the charge of the Scottish Executive, were in fact subject to close control by the European Union – an organisation within which the Scottish government had neither influence nor representation. With a growing assumption in London ministries and quasi-governmental bodies that Scotland now looked after itself, or that it was too difficult to take account of separate Scottish legislation, there was a danger of vital Scottish interests being neglected.

In some respects, it was also felt that the Executive had a lot to learn. A debacle over school leaving examination results in 2000 raised important questions about efficiency and management, as did the Executive's defensiveness and secrecy over the deeply embarrassing and ever-rising cost of the parliament's new building.

In considering the calibre of their MSPs, particularly those of ministerial rank, the Scottish electors could not fail to note that in the British cabinet, the number of Scottish members was proportionately much greater than the number of Scottish seats. The leader and deputy leader of the Westmin­ster Liberal Democrats were both Scottish MPs. In November 2003, the Queen's Speech to the Westminster parliament announced one of the con­sequences of devolution – the long-anticipated reduction in Scottish seats in the House of Commons. Infighting and pressures, particularly within the Labour Party, had been evident for some time, as MPs struggled to establish their claims to the smaller number of constituencies. (D.Ross)

Task 37. Britain in the XX century QIZZ.

1. When and why did the name Windsor appear as the name of the Royal family?

2. Enumerate some features of The Great Slump period in Britain.

3. What were the circumstances that brought Elisabeth’s father onto the throne?

4. Whose reign was the longest in the XX century?

5. Who were Britain’s allies in WW I?

6. With the use of what weapon is the battle of Ypres associated?

7. What were the results of the Irish struggle for independence?

8. Who were Britain’s allies in WW II?

9. Where did Churchill meet with his allies? (Enumerate the places of such meetings)

10. What is General Montgomery famous for?

11. What is known about Dunkirk?

12. When is Victory in Europe day celebrated?

13. Enumerate at least 5 countries of the Commonwealth.

14. Name at least 3 Prime Ministers after WW II.

15. When did Britain become part of United Europe?

References

1. This Sceptred Isle by Christopher Lee, London: 1997

2. The History of The English-Speaking Peoples by Sir Winston Churchill, London: Rev. ed. 2003.

3. Kings and Queens of Great Britain by Josephine Ross, London: 1982

4. History of England by John Burke, London: 1974

5. Scotland. History of A Nation by David Ross, Lomond Books: 2004

6. www.answers.com/topic/great-depression-in-the-united-kingdom