А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

Edwardian Britain

Queen Victoria died in 1901 after the longest reign in English history. She was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII, who was nearly sixty and reigned for only nine years. Yet, in spite of the king’s death in 1910, the notion ‘Edwardian era’ normally covers the period from Victoria’s death till the beginning of World War I in 1914. Consequently, it would be of interest to discuss what is specific about this short period that makes it stand out in British history.

Edward VII

British society on the eve of World War I must have seemed remarkably unchanged. One per cent of the population still owned sixty-six per cent of all property and only a million people paid income tax. As an era, the Edwardian period has remained in the popular imagination as a golden age, especially as what followed it was a dramatic contrast. Edward VII and his queen Alexandra reigned over a glittering court that revived monarchical pomp and splendour. The new king took the monarchy back to London. A socialite, he showed himself everywhere and made fashionable society more cosmopolitan. It became popular to go on holiday to European sea resorts, such as Biarritz, in southern France. The small Victorian court circle was now greatly enlarged; and balls, elegant soirйes and aristocratic house parties became a common occurrence. It was an era when the new wealth of the financiers was added to the old wealth of the great families of landowners.

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А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

Direct taxation was still very low. The cost of living hadn’t yet risen, and there were masses of domestic servants, willing to be hired for absurdly small wages. Thus the upper classes indulged in great outward show of wealth and splendour. The old hierarchy of the Victorian age with its worship of respectability still seemed firmly in place. And yet beneath the surface the seeds which were to destroy that society were already there.

To make the picture of Edwardian society more vivid it is worth looking at the financial aspect of the life of different classes in those times.

An aristocrat could spend more than £1,000 on a weekend party. The Marquis of Bute, at his death in 1901, left a fortune of about £2 million.

At the same time, a cook was quite happy to earn £30 a year, and maids between £16 and £22 a year. Members of the working class earned approximately between £55 and £75 a year.

A pair of shoes cost 12s.6d. (20 shillings=1 pound; 12 pence=1 shilling (until1971)), a suit made to measure was 30s.

In between the upper class and the working class there were middle classes. The upper-middle class (manufacturers, merchants, solicitors) had a minimum of £750 a year, but most of them earned from £1,000 to £1,500. Their houses would cost between £1,500 and £2,500 (detached villas with small gardens and 3–4 servants), unless an imposing mansion was required (with 6–7 servants). The lower-middle class (shopkeepers, office workers, teachers, craftsmen, owners of small businesses, commercial travelers) earned from £150 to £500 a year, lived mostly in terraced houses (costing £550) or semi-detached villas and

employed one servant or a cleaning woman.

What was peculiarly Edwardian, making it a new age was the various challenges, rebellions, all the attempts to break away from Victorian conformity into a freer atmosphere. The period was thus a bridge between the Victorian age and a new one, which began in 1914. A lot of people were trying to cling to the past, while many others hurried themselves into a future. Inventions like the telephone and mass circulation newspapers revolutionized daily communications, while the advent of modern plumbing, electric light and central heating changed the traditional way of life.

New aesthetic tastes developed that revealed themselves in the avant-garde in the arts, the theatre, literature, painting and sculpture.

There were momentous changes in social and political life, too. The new generation of voters that grew up after the two extensions of franchise no longer believed in evolutionary reform but pushed for radical social reform and expected the state to remove the causes of poverty and unemployment. The years from 1906 to 1914 were a time of crisis and domestic violence: the duel between the two Houses of Parliament resulted in a drastic reduction of the powers of the Lords; workers’ strikes (especially powerful in 1912), women suffragettes demanding equal voting rights with men (in 1903 Women’s Social and Political Union was founded by Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst) and army officers disregarding the laws and constitutional customs of the land.

The Liberals returned to power in 1905 winning 377 seats, with the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists getting only 157 seats. The Liberals interpreted their electoral landslide as a mandate for social legislation, although they failed to fully appreciate the extent of unrest among the voters. The Liberal government was willing to make concessions to the political pressures of the disaffected social groups, whereas the Tories chose to use the Conservative House of Lords to prevent a drift to socialism and a welfare state. Initially the Liberals had no special plan, but gradually, during a decade in office, they were to set the agenda for the new century, one which represented a fundamental shift in attitude. During the Victorian period the execution of social legislation had been delegated to the local authorities. Now the state itself, bit by bit, took on those tasks.

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А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

Under Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) the Liberals passed some significant legislation. The Trade Disputes Act (1906) granted trade unions full legal immunity, freeing them from restrictions and liabilities. Responsible government was granted to the Transvaal and Orange Free State. In 1907 probation for offenders was introduced. Even more significant reforms followed when in 1908 Campbell-Bannerman resigned, to be succeeded by Asquith. Together with Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer Asquith pushed new important social legislation through Parliament. The Old Age Pension Bill (1908) provided a noncontributory pension of 5 shillings a week for each citizen over 70. The Trade Boards Act of 1909 set up trade councils which fixed by law a minimum living wage and maximum hours of work. Labour Exchanges were established to help the unemployed find work. One of the most important was the National Insurance Act (1911), which provided for insurance and protection against sickness, disability and unemployment (specifically against seasonal laying-off). An important feature of the Act was that the government, worker and employer alike were to contribute to the payment.

To be able to pay for the old-age pension programme, as well as other schemes, Lloyd George proposed new taxes in what was called the People’s Budget (1909). The new budget established the principle that taxation ought to be related to capacity to pay. It introduced a super-tax (sixpence in the pound, payable at Ј3,000) on annual incomes over Ј5,000; income tax on unearned incomes over Ј700 was increased from 1s. to 1s.2d., on earned incomes up to Ј2,000 it remained at 9d., but went up to 1s. in the Ј2–3,000 range. Death duties were increased to15 % (when the death duty was first introduced in the 1894 budget the maximum rate was 8 %). Lloyd George also proposed a tax on petrol, a motor car licence and a land tax (a half-penny in the pound levy on the value of undeveloped land). All in all, the key feature of these measures was that they affected only a small number of rich people. Income tax liability, which began at Ј160, included around one million people, and there were only 25,000 taxpayers above the Ј3,000 level.

It’s no wonder that the Lords rejected the People’s Budget. This move plunged Britain into a constitutional crisis involving two general elections. In the middle of the crisis Edward VII died and was succeeded by his son George V, who was persuaded that if it proved necessary he would create about five hundred new Liberal peers in order to pass the bill. Faced with this prospect the Lords finally gave in. Added to the measures proposed in the People’s Budget, the Parliament Act of 1911 permitted the Lords to delay a money bill for only one month (other bills could be delayed for a period of up to two years), introduced a salary for MPs of Ј400 pounds a year (enabling working class to aspire to a political career) and reduced the life of Parliament from seven to five years.

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А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

Britain and the two World Wars

At the turn of the century the British foreign policy dominated by Lord Salisbury remained that of splendid isolation: Britain’s relationship with Europe had left her without allies. The British were complacent; it was generally felt that nothing and nobody on the Continent could affect or challenge the mighty and glorious Empire. It was only in 1904, when it became evident that Germany had built a very powerful navy, that relations with France were repaired by the Entente Cordiale. In 1907, when Russia joined the alliance, it became the Triple Entente. The British government was not prepared to accept German domination of Europe, so when Germany invaded Belgium Britain sent it an ultimatum to withdraw. When no reply was received, on 4 August 1914 Britain and the British Empire declared war on Germany. No one at that time believed that the war could last more than a few months. Both sides expected a short war like the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and planned accordingly. However, this proved to be a long war of a different kind, with no swift or heroic offensive. Instead, there were armies dug into trenches facing each other across a narrow strip of land. In May 1915 a coalition cabinet was formed that included eight leading Conservatives and one Labour member. In January 1916 conscription for all adult males between eighteen and forty-one was introduced and in December Asquith was replaced as Prime Minister by Lloyd George, who greatly accelerated government control of the economy through Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA).

The war lasted for more than four years; it was only on 11 November 1918 that an armistice was agreed to. Peace brought a feeling of triumph, but then came the realization of how terrible it had been. The immediate effect of the war was disillusionment. Progress and reason were no longer self-evident truths. The war had affected everyone in a way unknown before. 760,000 British soldiers had died and another 1,700,000 were wounded. Although the other major belligerent countries had lost larger numbers of people, British losses were highly selective as many of the casualties came from the families and public schools that had traditionally provided leadership in public life. The absence of this generation of talented young men was keenly felt by the country for many years afterwards. Besides, a whole generation of those who became adults during or just after the war was emotionally traumatized. Both those who died and those who survived were to be known as the Lost Generation.

The war also accelerated the pace of changes already taking place in Britain: the loss of old beliefs and values, the further development of political democracy, a shift of wealth to new classes, the emancipation of women, and the expansion of state planning and controls.

In 1918 the Franchise Act, responding to the post-war mood of expectancy and recognizing the important contribution made by women workers during the war, gave the vote to every man over 21 and every woman over 28, thus trebling the electorate and increasing the membership of the House of Commons to 707. Ten years later the age qualification for women was equalized, adding 5 million. The vote thus became a birthright. Bidding for the votes of the vast new electorate began to be the dominating factor for all political parties. In response the parties not only developed their inherited Victorian party machines, but also embraced the new media, first the mass circulation newspapers and then, in the mid-1920s, broadcasting. A democracy was more difficult to handle, it was a less effective means of government than the monarchical and aristocratic systems which had preceded it. From now on a government could only do what public opinion would tolerate.

The war also had far-reaching economic and financial consequences. It cost Britain Ј9 billion, most of which was raised by borrowing, so that the national debt was fourteen times greater in 1918 than in 1914. In the long run, the chief economic cost of the war was the ruin of the foreign trade; Britain never regained the markets lost to Japan and the United States. The financial center

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А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

of the world was no longer London but New York, and henceforth the dollar not the pound called the tune. Soon even the American navy was to eclipse the British.

The idea that a government should be involved in industry at all, let alone have an economic policy, was still a novelty in the 1920s. After the war everyone believed that all that was needed was the restoration of sound currency by returning to the Gold Standard, properly balanced budgets and a free market would do the rest. In reality it didn’t work and produced further unemployment, which called for more state money in the form of benefits. More and more often the government opted for protectionism defending the home market. This not only meant the end of the long reign of free trade but also that the state was becoming progressively more involved in the running of the economy. The involvement that had begun during the war when government had been forced to take over whole areas of the economy for the first time was to continue.

The years 1918–1921 witnessed the greatest shift in land ownership since the dissolution of monasteries in the 16th century. Land was no longer a basis for political power, nor was it profitable. Faced by 40 % death duties and ever-rising taxes the upper classes got rid of their estates. The everincreasing business and professional classes bought up land. Aristocratic power had gone, only the external facade of aristocracy was maintained.

The greatest political phenomenon between 1918 and 1939 was the swift rise of the Labour Party and the equally catastrophic fall of the Liberals. Until the 1890s working class voters had supported the Liberals, but in 1893 the Independent Labour Party was formed. Its leaders proposed a long list of social reforms including the abolition of overtime, piecework and child labour, the introduction of an eight hour day, benefits for the sick, disabled, old, widowed and orphaned, as well as unemployment benefit. They also demanded a further extension of the franchise, the abolition of indirect taxes, the “taxation, to extinction, of unearned incomes”, and “a graduated income tax”. The most important was Clause 4, which called for the collective ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. The failure of the Liberals to fulfill many of the working class aspirations brought about their eventual decline. The Conservatives, by contrast, representing as they did the middle classes and some working class areas (Liverpool and Birmingham), had succeeded in adapting to the 20th century with remarkable ease. The party has ceased to be the party of the landed gentry and came to be dominated by business and industry. Unlike the Labour Party it had no driving ideology, preferring to present itself simply as efficient government of a kind which defended property rights, stood up for conventional morality and cultivated patriotism to king and country.

The war had ended with a Coalition Government in power, headed by Lloyd George. He and his largely Conservative coalition candidates won a landslide election in 1918. This election introduced twenty-seven years of Conservative dominance in British political life. Though Lloyd George remained in office until 1922, there was to be no other Liberal Prime Minister after him.

The essential spirit of the fifteen years from 1924 to 1939 was one of inertia and drift. Opinions and views were offered but little in terms of vigorous action and positive programmes was encouraged by the three prime ministers of the period: Baldwin (Conservative), MacDonald (Labour) and Chamberlain (Conservative). This timid conservatism that hesitated to offer an ambitious programme of any sort mirrored a nation seeking stability, normalcy and escape.

In 1936 Baldwin faced a constitutional crisis when George V died and the new king Edward VIII known for his pro-German sympathies became determined to marry Mrs Simpson, an American divorcee. Edward was made to abdicate and his younger brother succeeded him as King George VI. George VI and his wife Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon were the parents of the present Queen.

In 1937 Baldwin was succeeded by Chamberlain, whose ill fortune was to hold the premiership during a period when the whole focus was on the events which led up to another war with Germany. On September 1, 1939, the German invasion of Poland began. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. Thus Britain got involved in World War II.

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А. Г. Минченков. «Glimpses of Britain. Учебное пособие»

On May 10, 1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. A Coalition Government was formed with a War Cabinet. The Labour leader, Atlee, was made Deputy Prime Minister. When in June 1940 France fell Britain stood alone in Europe. Never before in its history had there been a similar crisis. Barges began to assemble to carry the German troops across the Channel. But they could only sail if the victory of the skies was won. The battle of the skies, the Battle of Britain was fought through the summer and early autumn of 1940. The German Luftwaffe met its match in the Royal Air Force (RAF, founded about 1918). On 15 September the British fighters repulsed a huge raid in which 60 German planes were shot down. Two days later Hitler postponed the invasion, and in January it was delayed indefinitely. Although the German air raids didn’t stop, the Luftwaffe turning its attention next to Britain’s ports and industrial centers, the Battle of Britain had been won and morale soared.

This was a war unlike any other. Although fewer people were killed than during WWI, the effects of the war were great. For the first rime every person on the island was affected. The psychological, physical, emotional and mental impact cannot be overestimated. For 6 years Britain was to all intents and purposes a totalitarian state, although presenting a veneer of democracy. The Emergency Powers Act of May 1940 gave the government unlimited authority over both people and property. Identity cards were obligatory, labour was directed, work classified into essential and non-essential. Food rationing was introduced and lasted till 1954. Clothes and shoes were also rationed. Luxuries had a 100 % tax on them. Everyone of fighting age was conscripted. The war demanded from everybody hard work and discipline. One of the major consequences of the war was that it leveled out society socially and economically. All classes shared the air raid shelters and suffered the same stringent rationing controls. Servants virtually vanished. All classes shared a unity of spirit and purpose.

Another consequence of WWII was the rapid liquidation of the British Empire. Britain’s retreat from empire was achieved, in most cases, with dignity and with a minimum of conflict, so that after becoming independent the former colonies chose to stay in the Commonwealth. Between 1945 and 1969 Commonwealth membership rose from six to twenty-six sovereign states.

The war also ended the long period of Conservative political dominance. The dismal record of the Conservatives before the war made people reluctant to vote Churchill’s party a mandate for dealing with postwar social and economic problems. The nation was willing to transfer the systematic planning used in the war to serve the goals of reconstruction and social justice in peacetime. Churchill himself would have liked to continue a coalition government, but Labour decided to withdraw from the coalition. As a result Churchill resigned on May 29 1945, but agreed to head a caretaker government until an election could be held. On July 5 the Labour party won a landslide victory: 393 seats to only 189 for the Conservatives. For the first time in its history the party had a clear-cut majority and a mandate for major change. Atlee became Prime Minister.

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