History of the United Kingdom
On September 11th, 1997, (on the 700th anniversary of the Scottish victory over the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge), a referendum was held on establishing a devolved Scottish Parliament. This resulted in an overwhelming 'yes' vote both to establishing the parliament and granting it limited tax varying powers. Two weeks later, a referendum in Wales on establishing a Welsh Assembly for was also approved but with a very narrow majority. The first elections were held, and these bodies began to operate, in 1999.
The creation of the devolved Scottish parliament in particular, with powers to legislate over a wide range of issues, is beginning to add to differences between the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. It has also brought to the fore the so-called West Lothian question which is a complaint that devolution for Scotland and Wales but not England has created a situation where all the MPs in the UK parliament can vote on matters affecting England alone but on those same matters Scotland and Wales can make their own decisions.
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2000s
In the 2001 General Election, the Labour Party won a second successive victory.
Despite huge anti-war marches held in London and Glasgow, Blair gave strong support to the United State's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Forty-six thousand British troops, one-third of the total strength of the British Army (land forces), were deployed to assist with the invasion of Iraq and thereafter British armed forces were responsible for security in southern Iraq in the run-up to the Iraqi elections of January 2005.
The Labour Party won the Thursday 5 May 2005 general election and a third consecutive term in office. On Thursday 7 July 2005, a series of four bomb explosions struck London's public transport system during the morning rush-hour. All four incidents were suicide bombings that killed 52 commutors in addition to the 4 bombers.
2007 saw the conclusion of the premiership of Tony Blair, followed by the premiership of Gordon Brown (from 27 June 2007).
2007 also sees an election victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) in the May elections. They formed a minority government with plans to hold a referendum before 2011 to seek a mandate "to negotiate with the Government of the United Kingdom to achieve independence for Scotland."[9] Most opinion polls show minority support for independence though support varies depending on the nature of the question. However, a poll in April 2008 that used the proposed referendum wording found support for independence had reached 41% with just 40% supporting retention of the Union.[10] The response of the unionist parties has been to call for the establishment of a Commission to examine further devolution of powers,[11] a position that has the support of the Prime Minister.[12]
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Social history
Chartism is thought to have originated from the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, which gave the vote to the majority of the (male) middle classes, but not to the 'working class'. Many people made speeches on the 'betrayal' of the working class and the 'sacrificing' of their 'interests' by the 'misconduct' of the government. In 1838, six members of Parliament and six workingmen formed a committee, which then published the People's Charter.
Victorian attitudes and ideals continued into the first years of the 20th century, and what really changed society was the start of World War I. The army was traditionally never a large employer in the nation, and the regular army stood at 247,432 at the start of the war[13]. By 1918, there were about five million people in the army and the fledgling Royal Air Force, newly formed from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) , was about the same size of the pre-war army. The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front.
The social reforms of the last century continued into the 20th with the Labour Party being formed in 1900. Labour did not achieve major success until the 1922 general election. David Lloyd George said after the First World War that "the nation was now in a molten state", and his Housing Act 1919 would lead to affordable council housing which allowed people to move out of Victorian inner-city slums. The slums, though, remained for several more years, with trams being electrified long before many houses. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women householders the vote, but it would not be until 1928 that equal suffrage was achieved.
A short lived post-war boom soon led to a depression that would be felt worldwide. Particularly hardest hit were the north of England and Wales, where unemployment reached 70% in some areas. The General Strike was called during 1926 in support of the miners and their falling wages, but little improved, the downturn continued and the Strike is often seen as the start of the slow decline of the British coal industry. In 1936, 200 unemployed men walked from Jarrow to London in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor, but the Jarrow March, or the 'Jarrow Crusade' as it was known, had little impact and it would not be until the coming war that industrial prospects improved. George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time.
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See also
| Personal and legislative unions of the
constituent countries of the United Kingdom |
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| Devolution |
| Sovereignty |
- British military history
- Prehistoric settlement of Great Britain and Ireland
- Economic history of the United Kingdom
- Religion in the United Kingdom
- History of Europe
- List of British monarchs
- List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom
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Footnotes
¹ The term "United Kingdom" was first used in the 1707 Act of Union. However it is generally seen as a descriptive term, indicating that the kingdoms were freely united rather than through conquest. It is not seen as being actual name of the new United Kingdom, which was the "Kingdom of Great Britain". The "United Kingdom" as a name is taken to refer to the kingdom that emerged when the Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland merged on 1 January 1801.
² The name "Great Britain" (then spelt "Great Brittaine") was first used by James VI/I in October 1604, who indicated that henceforth he and his successors would be viewed as Kings of Great Britain, not Kings of England and Scotland. However the name was not applied to the state as a unit; both England and Scotland continued to be governed independently. Its validity as a name of the Crown is also questioned, given that monarchs continued using separate ordinals (e.g., James VI/I, James VII/II) in England and Scotland. To avoid confusion, historians generally avoid using the term "King of Great Britain" until 1707 and instead to match the ordinal usage call the monarchs kings or queens of England and Scotland. Separate ordinals were abandoned when the two states merged with the Act of Union 1707, with subsequent monarchs using ordinals apparently based on English not Scottish history (it might be argued that the monarchs have simply taken the higher ordinal, which to date has always been English). One example is Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, who is referred to as being "the Second" even though there never was an Elizabeth I of Scotland or Great Britain. Thus the term "Great Britain" is generally used from 1707.
³ The number changed several times between 1801 and 1922.
4 The Anglo-Irish Treaty was ratified by (i) The British Parliament (Commons, Lords & Royal Assent) , (ii) Dáil Éireann, and the (iii) the House of Commons of Southern Ireland, a parliament created under the British Government of Ireland Act 1920 which was supposedly the valid parliament of Southern Ireland in British eyes and which had an almost identical membership of the Dáil, but which nevertheless had to assemble separately under the Treaty's provisions to approve the Treaty, the Treaty thus being ratified under both British and Irish constitutional theory.
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References
- ^ CIA - The World Factbook - United Kingdom
- ^ Anthony, Pagden (2003). Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present. Modern Library, 91.
- ^ Niall, Ferguson (2004). Empire. Penguin, 73.
- ^ Anthony, Pagden (1998). The Origins of Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire. Oxford University Press, 92.
- ^ James, Lawrence (2001). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, 119.
- ^ James, Lawrence (2001). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, 152.
- ^ Laws in Ireland for the Suppression of Popery at University of Minnesota Law School
- ^ Alan J. Ward, The Irish Constitutional Tradition p.28.
- ^ Choosing Scotland's Future: A National Conversation: Independence and Responsibility in the Modern World, Annex B Draft Referendum (Scotland) Bill The Scottish Government, Publications
- ^ 41% of Scots back the break-up of the union Sunday Herald, April 13th, 2008
- ^ MSPs back devolution review body BBC News, 6th December 2007
- ^ PM backs Scottish powers review BBC News, 17th February 2008
- ^ The Great War in figures.
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Further reading
- Vernon Bogdanor: The British constitution in the twentieth century, (Oxford : Oxford University Press 2005)
- Norman Davies The Isles: A History (Macmillan, 1999)
- Frank Welsh The Four nations: a history of the United Kingdom (Yale, 2003)
- Jeremy Black A history of the British Isles (Macmillan, 1996)
- Hugh Kearney The British Isles: a history of four nations (Cambridge, 1989)
- The Short Oxford History of the British Isles (series)
- G. Williams Wales and the Act of Union (1992)
- S. Ellis & S. Barber (eds) Conquest and Union: Fashioning a British State, 1485–1725 (1995)
- Linda Colley Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, 1992)
- R.G. Asch (ed) Three Nations: A Common History? England, Scotland, Ireland and British History c.1600–1920 (1993)
- S.J. Connolly (ed) Kingdoms United? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500 (1999)
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External links
- Info Britain.co.uk
- History of the United Kingdom: Primary Documents
- http://www.british-history.ac.uk
- Text of 1800 Act of Union
- Act of Union virtual library
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