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The Moment of British Nationalism

While Robert Colls drew on the North East's past to demonstrate its continuing uniqueness in the future Christopher Harvie, Professor of British Studies in the Engl ish Department of Tübingen University, Germany offered an historical perspective at the moment when Britishness reached its height and died away. In The Moment of British Nationalism he argued that a strengthened British identity was one result of the Second World War and that the Union was at its strongest from 1939 to 1973.

The British Union was English-dominated but not exclusively metropolitan, because in the century prior to 1939 most real government was on a local basis with Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol and Newcastle largely left to themselves. British politics meant high politics, such as foreign policy and defence. Christohper Harvie pointed out that ironically this somewhat Tory formula has now been adopted by the British left who have moved towards a strong regional devolution while the right has swapped places with the left in favouring a strong centralised system.

During The Second World War Scotland's importance to the allied effort - and thus its importance to the Union - grew. Scotland saw most American supplies arriving via her airfields and lochs, which were also assembly points for Russian convoys. Germany attempted to foment disquiet and disruption by using propaganda broadcasts in the form of Radio Caledonia. Ironically Tom Johnston, the Secretary of State for Scotland during the war, used these broadcasts as a device to persuade Cabinet that Scotland needed more support.

Christopher Harvie argued that after the war a sort of 'radical Britishness' emerged. Major institutions were given the words 'national' or 'British' in their names, instead of Royal: the National Health Service, British European Airways, the British Transport Commission, The National Coal Board. During this period ninety-five per cent of electors voted for the same two parties which controlled politics throughout the mainland.

The Suez crisis of 1956 upset British confidence and prestige, but still the British way looked stable by comparison with Germany, France and Italy with their mixture of war guilt and revolving door ministries.

What underpinned this British homogeneity? The first factor was the war experience, especially among those who now ran Britain. A class of officers and administrators from across the union had penetrated all its institutions of government, and broadly shared a similar experience. The War itself was regarded as a great crusade and the British stand had attracted some strange patriots in its hour of need such as the pro-Soviet Beaverbrook, Brendan Bracken, the son of militant Irish Republicans and Alexander Korda, the former Hungarian revolutionary turned Tory film magnate. All this was backed up by ideology. Through the Hegelian revival in the late-Victorian universities, many young Scots and Welsh were drawn to the state, and this for them meant the British state. This persisted in the inter-war years, notably with John Reith at the BBC, and John Grierson in documentary films, and would lead to many Scots joining the propaganda industry in the 1940s.

The strong bond with the USA was unique in Europe. As well as cultural links best personified by an Anglophile like T.S. Eliot there were academic links and even prominent family relationships - both Churchill and Macmillan had American mothers. This reflected the fact that the economy of the post-war period resembled more the Atlantic economy of the Edwardians, than the inter-war years with its depression and appeasement.

How then did it fall apart? The seeds of eventual destruction were sown when the post-Suez recession broke down much complacency. The 'angry generation' began to kick at the foundations in the late fifties and early sixties. They were representative of a middle class rebellion which was focusing its discontent through bodies like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Issues like the new technologies, particularly in transport and nuclear energy, had a big impact on social change. Political developments also contributed to the process. In the early 1960s, with decolonisation, the Commonwealth ceased to count as a rallying point, particularly when immigration controls came in, while a re-energised social democracy emerged under Prime Minister Harold Wilson to challenge the old 'establishment'.

Perhaps the last great achievement of the union, in fact, was Wilson' s Open University in 1969. A shadow fell on British politics in the mid 1960s as Wilson's social democratic project stumbled, divided between preserving sterling and 'East of Suez', and devaluing and going into Europe. Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party gained popular support and Parliamentary seats. Ulster started to fulminate, and Enoch Powell in his 'rivers of blood' speech made a play for populist English nationalism. In 1965 Churchill's funeral took place amid great British pomp and pageantry, but also a real feeling of the end of an epoch. The BBC used Edward Elgar's 1st symphony to 'theme' it.

Elgar, after a quarter-century of neglect, was going through a revival at the time, in part due to a brilliant documentary by that archetypal 1960s wild man, Ken Russell. The mourning metropolis was only a few months away from 'Swinging London'. In hindsight the question arises: was this the last British ritual or the first product of British heritage?

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