The History of Britain

From neolithic times to the present day

Richard Dargie

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781398806245
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

From the Stone Age to the 21st century, The History of Britain chronicles the epic story of this small but turbulent kingdom. Divided into major historical periods with useful timelines, this richly illustrated book covers both well-known and obscure events. Find out about the Norman invasions, the execution of Charles I, the uprisings in Dark Age Wales, the birth of tabloid newspapers in Victorian Britain and much more. Fully revised and updated to include the latest political developments, this fascinating book helps to readers to navigate this vast and enthralling history. Topics include:
• Our earliest ancestors
• Boudicca's revolt
• Dark Age culture
• The Viking incursions
• Victorian voting reforms
• The birth of the welfare state
• Brexit and the Scottish independence referendum

The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The Birth of the Welfare State

1902–1912

At the turn of the century, the governing Conservative administration was more interested in imperial than domestic matters. After 1906, however, a radical Liberal government began to seriously tackle the effects of decades of social and economic transformation.

Imperial Jubilee

The 1897 Diamond Jubilee celebrated the high noon of empire. Colonial troops from every continent parading through the streets of London featured on the pages of pictorial supplements in the daily press. The following year, at Omdurman in the Sudan, Lord Kitchener’s maxim guns decimated the forces of the Mahdi, a self-proclaimed Muslim ‘prophet’, and avenged the death of General Gordon at Khartoum. However, the celebrations and victories were quickly forgotten as imperial adventure almost resulted in war with France over the Upper Sudan in 1898 and then degenerated into an expensive and initially humiliating conflict in South Africa. The Conservative government did enact two significant pieces of reform legislation; the Workmen’s Compensation Act that helped those injured at work, and Balfour’s 1902 Education Act, which laid the foundation for a national system of secondary schools. This Act was designed to improve ‘national efficiency’ at a time when Britain’s economic supremacy had been surrendered to the USA and Germany. It passed responsibility for enforcing standards in all publicly financed schools to county and borough councils.

Landslide

Divided over the issue of empire trade and tarred with the Boer War brush, the Conservatives were badly defeated in the 1906 election. The new Commons consisted of 377 Liberals, 53 Labour and other socialists and 83 Irish Nationalists. Many in the new Liberal government, such as Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and John Burns, were of a radical stamp, much influenced by the studies of working class poverty made by Charles Booth and Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree. The Victorian reliance upon private charity and local action had not proved enough to stop millions falling below the poverty line. As Churchill argued in 1906, ‘the State must now earnestly concern itself with the care of the sick, the aged and children’. This was not simple altruism, for British political commentators were well aware that other industrial societies, especially in Europe, were educating and nurturing their human resources with greater efficiency.

Timeline
1902	Balfour’s Education Act
1906	Provision of School Meals Act
1907	School medical services established
1909	First old age pensions paid by the State
1910	House of Lords reject the ‘People’s Budget’
1911	Power of the Lords weakened by Parliament Act.

Foundations of Welfare

The evolution of national systems of education in Britain after 1870 had cast a light upon the effects of poverty on many working class children. Sick and hungry children made poor learners, so school meals and medical inspections were introduced by 1908. Young offenders would now be separated from adult prisoners and reformed in specialist institutions such as the youth prison at Borstal in Kent. A modest old age pension was introduced in January 1909 on a weekly sliding scale from one to five shillings. Measures were taken to increase the help available for injured and unemployed workers, and to assist workers in the ‘sweated’ trades such as tailoring, where the wages of outworkers were traditionally low. The Chancellor Lloyd George also planned a system of national insurance that would provide support in times of personal difficulty, again based on the successful German model. The only problem was, that at a time when the defence budget was also rising, how would this unprecedented programme of social reforms be paid for?

The People’s Budget, 1909

To fund its programme, the Liberal government needed an extra £15 million in revenue. It planned to raise this by levying new taxes aimed at the wealthiest and those who owned land. Death duties on larger estates were also increased. Lloyd George’s 1909 budget set up a political and constitutional clash between the Commons and the Lords, the preserve of the propertied classes. At the height of the crisis, George V agreed to create sufficient Liberal peers to carry a Parliament Bill that would curtail the traditional blocking powers of the Lords. The Liberals won national approval for their programme in a tight general election and the budget was passed. The 1911 Parliament Act fundamentally altered the relationship between the elected Commons and the hereditary Lords. In the same year, the old Chartist demand for payment of MPs, to allow men of all ranks to stand for election, was finally enacted.

Preparation for War

1900–1914

Since the Crimean War in the 1850s, Britain had avoided alliances and conflict in Europe and had busied itself in its colonial affairs. However, as Europe divided into hostile camps, Britain’s imperial isolation no longer seemed to be an option.

The German Bogeyman

The diplomatic and press reaction in Europe to the Boer War revealed that Britain had few friends on the Continent. British public opinion was especially incensed by Germany’s public noises of support for the Boer rebels. Germany had long since replaced France as the main European threat in British eyes. Victory over France and unification in 1870–71 had made Germany the dominant power in Europe, a position cemented by its triple alliance with Austria and Italy in 1882. German military strength alone was no threat to British interests, but the rapid expansion of the German navy after 1898 was a direct challenge to Britannia’s rule over the waves. Nor, by 1900, could German industrial superiority be denied, particularly in the new vital industries such as chemicals. The new cheap daily press stoked popular suspicion of ‘Kaiserist Germany’ and played upon the increasingly widespread feeling that British power had perhaps passed its zenith.

Entente

An agreement with Japan in 1902 helped secure British interests in the Far East and allowed the government to concentrate attention upon European matters. After a successful state visit to Paris by Edward VII in 1904, Balfour’s Conservative government reached agreement with France on issues of mutual interest in North Africa. This ‘entente’ was strengthened at the 1905 international conference at Algeciras in Spain. The British reached an understanding with France’s ally, Russia, two years later. These new relationships with Continental powers fell far short of a diplomatic or military alliance, but British military and naval staffs increasingly shared information with their counterparts in St Petersburg and Paris. Such activity was a clear signal to Berlin that Britain was likely to be in the opposition camp in any future European struggle.

Timeline
1882	Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy
1904	Entente cordiale between Britain and France
1906	Launch of HMS Dreadnought
1911	Eighteen ‘dreadnoughts’ commissioned
1914	4 Aug British declaration of war against Germany.

Army Reform

Between 1763 and 1900, Britain acquired the largest empire in history but, outside India, it held sway with a relatively light hand. However, the small forces that policed the colonies now seemed inadequate when compared to the vast armies of millions under construction in Europe. After 1906, the Liberal Secretary of War Haldane created the rapid deployment Expeditionary Force, a contingent of seven divisions totalling over 90,000 men, with their own autonomous field services. Traditional county yeomanry units and volunteers formed the core of the new Territorial Force that could also be assembled quickly for overseas deployment in reserve support. An Officers’ Training Corps was established to foster military skills in a British population that, brief outbursts of imperial jingoism aside, had never warmed to the army life.

Dreadnought!

The British response to the modern German fleet assembling in its North Sea ports was HMS Dreadnought. Launched in 1906, this new class of battleship was fast, able to outgun its rivals and effectively made other ships of the line, and other navies, obsolete. After hesitating – for fear of provoking tension in Europe – the Liberal government commissioned 18 Dreadnought class ships in 1911. In 1912, the bulk of British ships in European waters were withdrawn from the Mediterranean, ceding the main responsibility there to the French. This strategic decision helped to ensure that a German attack upon France would directly threaten British lines of naval communication with the empire east of Suez.

August 1914

When Continental Europe slipped into war in the summer months of 1914, Britain still had no formal military obligations to France and Russia and many were reluctant to commit to a major European conflict. However, the German plan to advance on Paris through Belgium spurred Britain’s traditional response to any attempted ‘great power’ dominance in the Low Countries. British support for Belgian independence had been enshrined in the Treaty of London of 1839. On 2 August, Sir Edward Grey promised to help defend the Fren...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Prehistoric Britain
• Roman Britain
• Invaders and Settlers
• Medieval Britain
• Early Modern Britain
• Georgian Britain
• Victorian Britain
• The Twentieth Century and Beyond
• Picture Credits
• Copyright