Dates to know

A couple of students have inquired whether they should memorize all the dates provided. The short answer is No.

Some idea of chronology and periodization would be good, but exact dates are not necessary (so you should know that Nationalisation was government policy in the period 1945-1951, but not necessarily just what year the Electricity Act or the Gas Act was passed).

Some key dates are already available here and here.

Other dates it would probably be best to know are:

1936: Coronation of George VI
1937-39: attempts to “appease” Hitler
1939-45: Britain at war with Germany
1947: partition and independence of India and Pakistan
1948: beginnings of mass immigration from the Caribbean
1953: Coronation of Elizabeth II
1956: Suez Crisis
1960: Winds of Change speech; Penguin edition of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”
1962: Polaris missiles
1963: The Beatles’ first album
1967: devaluation of sterling
1968: Rivers of Blood speech
1969: Army sent to Northern Ireland
1973: Britain joins the E.E.C.
1973-74: 3-day week
1976: sterling crisis (IMF loan)
1982: Falklands War
1986: deregulation of London stock exchange
1988: publication of Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses”
1992: Britain leaves the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM)

Legislative acts that it might help to be able to date are:

• Education Act 1944 (universal free secondary education)
• National Insurance Act 1946 (compulsory national social insurance)
• National Health Service Act 1946 (universal health care free at the point of delivery)
• Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946 (first step towards bringing key industries into public ownership)
• British Nationality Act 1948 (right of settlement for citizens of Empire and Commonwealth)
• Obscene Publications Act 1959 (“public interest” clause for literature, art and science)
• Education Act 1962 (student grants)
• Sexual Offences Act 1967 (decriminalizes homosexual activity; recriminalizes street prostitution)
• Commonwealth Immigrant Act 1968 (restricts right of settlement)
• Race Relations Act 1968 (outlaws racial discrimination in employment and services)
• Telecommunications Act 1984 (beginning of privatisation of publicly owned companies)

Reading and revising

Use this blog as your primary resource, in combination with the material on icampus.

The blog entries and the slides on icampus are the course outline. For further detail on any specific topic, make full use of the links provided, and be sure not to neglect the audiovisual material (particularly the Schama and Marr documentaries).

Specimen exam questions are available on icampus.

Any questions can be addressed to me by email, but if the answer is likely to be of interest to others a better place might be on the forum in icampus, or in the comments box on the blog.

Good luck with your revision and with your exams.

Don't neglect to sleep and eat regularly and sufficiently. A plate of roast beef and a good night's sleep is worth an extra day's revision.

British governments 1937-1997

• 1937-1940: Conservative and Unionist government under Neville Chamberlain
  
• 1940-1945: Wartime government of “national unity” under Winston Churchill
• 1945: Conservative “caretaker” government under Winston Churchill
• 1945-1951: Labour governments under Clement Attlee (general elections 1945, 1950)
• 1951-1964: Conservative governments under Winston Churchill, 1951-1955; Anthony Eden, 1955-1957; Harold Macmillan, 1957-1963; Alec Douglas-Home, 1963-1964 (general elections 1951, 1955, 1959)
• 1964-1970: Labour governments under Harold Wilson (general elections 1964, 1966)
• 1970-1974: Conservative government under Edward Heath (general elections 1970)
• 1974-1979: Labour governments under Harold Wilson, 1974-1976; James Callaghan, 1976-1979 (general elections Feb. 1974, Oct. 1974)
• 1979-1997: Conservative governments under Margaret Thatcher, 1979-1990; John Major, 1990-1997 (general elections 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992)

Suez Crisis

When President Nasser of Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, the French and British response was to plot with Israel to got to war against Egypt. American threats to sell their sterling reserves, and Arab threats of oil embargo, forced a hasty and shamefaced British withdrawal, and a rethink about Britain's imperial future.

The newsreel used in class:


Further images and information, from a recent BBC documentary:

Elizabeth II

George VI, at his coronation in 1936, was styled "By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India".

Elizabeth II, at her coronation in 1953, was styled "By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith".

This already indicates major changes, all of which took place in the late 1940s: the independence of India and Pakistan; the establishment of the Republic of Ireland; and the replacement of imperial claims with headship of the Commonwealth. The two unchanging elements are being king or queen of Great Britain, and Defender of the Faith.

Nevertheless, the coronation was the occasion for much celebratory propaganda about a "second Elizabethan age", in which Britain would, by courage and ingenuity, (again) carve out a place for itself in a world dominated by much stronger global powers.





Pay close attention to the Queen's words in her first televised Christmas broadcast, the year after Suez.

The Fifties

Most of the notes for class 4 seem to have vanished into cyberspace, leaving only the powerpoint slides (on icampus). Fortunately, this is a period extremely well covered by Andrew Marr (as you will all be aware, but here it is again).

The main events outlined in class were:

• the coronation: a moment of jubilation, the first mass ceremony of the television age (Princess Diana's funeral, at the end of our period, makes a nice complement), and a time for new hopes of British "greatness" emerging from wartime deprivation and postwar austerity.
• British achievements in science and technology (the first jetliner, the first nuclear facility for non-military purposes, an independent atomic bomb, describing the structure of DNA, etc.), giving science-fiction writers the impression that Britain would stand at the forefront of the future
• the attempts to maintain some independent standing in world affairs, and to reassert British power in Malaya and Kenya
• the Suez Crisis, for which follow this link (it's important, so do click), revealing the illusory nature of any hopes for Britain being an independent world force; two of the films used in class are here
• a long period of economic growth and prosperity, despite on-going inefficiencies in British industry
• the "Profumo Affair" (covered in detail by Marr)
  

Eamon de Valera

Eamon de Valera was the single most influential individual on the course of Irish history in the 20th century.

Born in New York, and holding American citizenship, he was the only one of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 to escape execution.

He went on to lead the (unrecognised) Irish Republic of 1918-1921, and to lead Republican forces against the army of the Irish Free State in the Civil War of 1921-1922. Increasingly marginalized from politics after 1922, having taken an oath as a member of Sinn Fein not to take a seat in the assembly until all of Ireland was united and independent, he founded Fianna Fail in 1926 as a way back into the political mainstream, and went on to become head of the Irish government as President of the Executive Council 1932-1937, and (after the Constitution of 1937) Taoiseach 1937-1948, 1951-1954, 1957-1959; and head of state as President 1959-1973. He died in 1973.

He pursued policies of economic self-sufficiency (once telling a journalist that a "higher standard of living" should really be thought of as a "costlier standard of living"), and a moderate form of corporatism with "social partners". Despite his own leadership of Republican forces in the Civil War, he came down heavily on the IRA during the Emergency (1940-1946) and during the Border Campaign (1956-1962), effectively ending that body's influence until it was reinvigorated by the events of 1969.

Below, De Valera speaking on the Easter Rising.

The Uprising of 1916 was an assertion in arms of the right of the Irish People to be free. Freedom has been secured now over more than five-sixths of the national territory. We constantly hope that it will not be long until the whole country is united.

Modern Ireland

The main dates in 20th-century Irish history are:

1916: unsuccessful Easter Rising in Dublin proclaims independent Irish Republic
1918: the Republican party Sinn Fein ("Ourselves Alone") won 73 of 105 Irish seats in the general election, but refused to take seats in the Westminster Parliament and organized their own assembly in Dublin
1919-1921: War of Independence; Ireland given independence as the Irish Free State, still nominally part of the British Empire; Ireland partitioned when the 6 counties of Northern Ireland elected to remain part of the United Kingdom
1921-1922: Civil War between those (led by Michael Collins) willing to accept 26-county independence with nominal British sovereignty, and those (led by Eamon de Valera) who saw anything short of a republic encompassing all of Ireland as a betrayal
1923: Irish Free State joins League of Nations
1926: foundation of Fianna Fail (described by one of its founders, Seán Lemass, as a "slightly constitutional" party), to get around Sinn Fein oath not to take part in politics until ireland reunited
1932: Fianna Fail in power under Eamon de Valera: policies of economic "self-sufficiency" instituted, intended to reduce economic dependence on Britain
1933: foundation of Fine Gael, uniting the strands of nationalism closer to the vision of Michael Collins than of De Valera
1937: Irish Constitution, perhaps the most liberal and democratic new constitution drafted anywhere in Europe in the 1930s (Irish Free State renamed Eire; the "whole island of Ireland" claimed as the national territory; the "special position" of the Catholic Church in Irish life given constitutional recognition)
1938: Royal Navy withdrawn from Irish ports and coastal defences
1940-1946: "the Emergency": Ireland neutral in the Second World War, but governed under a State of Emergency; IRA activists interned for undermining the state's neutrality towards Britain
1949: Republic established (Eire renamed Ireland)
1956: IRA launches "Border Campaign" (carrying out cross-border attacks from the Republic into Northern Ireland)
1957: De Valera orders internment without trial of IRA and Sinn Fein activists at Curragh Camp, Kildare
1958: Seán Lemass replaces De Valera as head of government; launches First Programme for Economic Expansion (moving away from protectionism)
1961-1963: unsuccessful bid for membership of the European Community
1969: beginning of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland
1970: Dublin Arms Trial: rogue elements of the Irish government and armed forces had been supplying guns to Northern Irish Republicans
1972: 30 January "Bloody Sunday" (paratroopers shoot 27 civil rights protesters in Derry, killing 13); 2 February British embassy burned down in Dublin; constitution modified to drop the "special position" clause relating to the Catholic Church
1973: membership of the European Community
Over the next 30 years, Ireland went from being one of the poorest countries in Western Europe to being one of the richest (the "Celtic Tiger" phenomenon), thanks in part to European structural funds and American investment, but also to a clear policy of making Ireland an attractive place for outside investment, and to the lack of post-industrial problems (due to a lack of older industry)
1998: Good Friday Agreement: Ireland agrees to drop a territorial claim to the whole island of Ireland from its constitution, in response for a voice in the affairs of Northern Ireland

Below, the beginning of the RTE documentary "Ireland in the Seventies", part of the "Seven Ages" series on the history of the Irish state.



For those interested:
Part 2 here
Part 3 here
Part 4 here
Part 5 here
Part 6 here

Land of Our Fathers

The Welsh national anthem, "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau", was composed in 1856. It is sung in Welsh, but an English translation will be found below.



Note the Welsh flag, the harp, and the Menai Bridge (linking Anglesey to mainland Wales, completed in 1826)

And here, at the end of a concert:



Note (at 2 mins 31 sec) the Welsh flags and the giant inflatable daffodil. And of course Ms Jenkins herself is draped in a Welsh flag.

This land of my fathers is dear to me
Land of poets and singers, and people of stature
Her brave warriors, fine patriots
Shed their blood for freedom

Chorus:
Land! Land! I am true to my land!
As long as the sea serves as a wall for this pure, dear land
May the language endure for ever.

Old land of the mountains, paradise of the poets,
Every valley, every cliff a beauty guards;
Through love of my country, enchanting voices will be
Her streams and rivers to me.

Chorus

Though the enemy have trampled my country underfoot,
The old language of the Welsh knows no retreat,
The spirit is not hindered by the treacherous hand
Nor silenced the sweet harp of my land.

Chorus

Flower of Scotland

A patriotic song written in the 1960s, when Scottish folk music was going through a revival of international significance. The lyrics refer to the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), where the army of King Edward II of England was defeated. It is now sung before international football and rugby matches.



O flower of Scotland
When will we see
Your like again
That fought and died for
Your wee bit hill and glen
And stood against him
Proud Edward's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

The hills are bare now
And autumn leaves lie thick and still
O'er land that is lost now
Which those so dearly held
And stood against him
Proud Edward's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

Those days are passed now
And in the past they must remain
But we can still rise now
And be the nation again
That stood against him
Proud Edward's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

Words and music: Roy Williamson. (c) The Corries (Music) Ltd.

National symbols

The United Kingdom has few shared symbols aside from the Union Jack and "God Save the Queen". Each of its constituent nations, however, has a rich collection of national myths and symbols, often apparent in banal, day-to-day contexts, but also celebrated on set-piece occasions.

The basic national symbols are:

• for Wales the red dragon, the leek, the daffodil, the harp
• for Scotland the red lion rampant, the thistle, the bagpipes
• for England the lion (passant in heraldry, but often couchant in popular imagery) and the rose

The flag of Wales shows the red dragon of Wales. The national day of Wales is St David Day's, 1 March. It is not a public holiday. On this day people might wear a leek or a daffodil.

The flag of Scotland shows the saltire, or Cross of St Andrew, in white on a blue background. Scotland's national day is 30 November, the Feast of St Andrew. It became a public holiday in Scotland in 2007. Some people might wear a thistle on this day.

The flag of England shows the red Cross of St George, on a white background. England's national day is St George's Day on 23 April. It is not a public holiday. On this day people might wear a red rose.

In both England and Scotland the formal national anthem is "God Save the Queen", but on occasions where it is desirable to distinguish between the English and the Scots (such as international sporting fixtures) it would be inappropriate for both to be singing the same anthem. At football matches the Scots used to sing "Scotland the Brave" (still the anthem of the Scots team in the Commonwealth Games), but that is now surpassed in popularity by "Flower of Scotland" (sung before Scotland's international rugby and soccer matches). On such occasions, the English sing "Jerusalem"

The Welsh have an official national anthem, Land of Our Fathers. There is also an "unofficial" anthem, Men of Harlech (sung here with harp, daffodil, and male voice choir, at the Prince of Wales's 50th birthday celebrations). Both make reference to fighting "foemen" (meaning the English).

John Major

When Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign as leader of the parliamentary Conservative Party, she was succeeded by John Major, a relatively unknown figure who had entered the Cabinet only three years before as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

In 1992, Major called a general election, which the Conservative Party won with over 14 million votes, the largest number of votes ever cast for a single political party in a British election. After Thatcher's forceful and charismatic leadership, John Major's extremely bland public persona may well have been an asset.

The British electoral system, however, meant that the unprecedentedly large number of votes did not convert into a strong majority in the House of Commons. Thatcher in 1983, and Blair in 1997, had "landslide" victories with a smaller number of votes cast in their favour, the issue not being number of votes, or even the proportion of the national vote, but the number of constituencies in which a party's candidate gets more votes than any of the competing candidates. In 1983 the Conservatives, under Thatcher, won a sound majority in the Commons (397 of the 646 seats) on 42.4% of the national vote; in 1997 Labour, under Blair, won 418 seats on 43.2% of the national vote. In 1992, on a comparably strong 41.9% of the national vote, Major won only 336 seats - a slender majority, especially as a strong minority of Conservative MPs continued to support populist "Eurosceptic" positions, and were willing to go against their party leadership on important votes on European affairs. This put Major's government in a weak position to direct policy.

The pattern of voting in the 1992 general election also showed a country divided: Major's party won a lot of its votes in the South-East of England, where it would have done well anyway. In Scotland, Wales, and most of the North of England the Conservatives did very badly, but were returned to power in Westminster regardless. This could give people the feeling that they were being governed not by the United Kingdom's vote, but by the South of England's vote. In the 1955 general election, the Conservatives had got 50.4% of the vote in England and 50.1% in Scotland. The Conservative share of the Scottish vote had been falling ever since, and in the 1992 election they got 46.7% of the vote in England, and 25.6% in Scotland. This disparity bred discontent with rule from Westminster, and lay behind the decision of the Blair government to "devolve" powers to a Scottish Parliament after 1997.

Scotland

At its union with England, Scotland retained

• its own legal system (based on principles of civil law rather than common law),
• its own educational system (with far higher literacy rates than elsewhere in Britain, and a proud claim to be "the first country in the world with universal education"),
• a separate established church (the Church of Scotland),
• and its own aristocracy and gentry.

All this was accompanied by all the heraldry and symbolism of legal, academic, ecclesiastical and noble life.

Scotland is more sparsely inhabited than England, but contains a number of impressive cities. The largest is Glasgow, a major centre of industry and ship-building in the 19th century, "the second city of the Empire", with all the social problems attendant on industrialization and postwar industrial decline.

Edinburgh, Scotland's capital, is a centre of administration, law, banking, learning and culture.

Aberdeen, anciently important in North Sea shipping and fisheries, and a minor centre of 19th-century industry, became the energy capital of the U.K., and to some extent of Europe, after the discovery of North Sea oil.

Geographically and culturally, the Highlands of Scotland are set apart from the Lowlands. Much of the romantic imagery of glens, lochs, castles, crofts, kilts, bagpipes, etc. derives from the Scottish Highlands.

Four nations in one state

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is, as its name implies, a union of several components: the kingdom of England, the kingdom of Scotland, the principality of Wales, and the province of Northern Ireland. There are different patterns of culture, identity and political allegiance within and between each of these components.

England is the largest, richest and most powerful of the four components, and the institutional core of the United Kingdom (London being the capital of the U.K., as well as by far its largest city).

A united Kingdom of England was created in the tenth century, with Edgar I (959-975) crowned king of all England in 973. It was subsumed into the United Kingdom of Great Britain by the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707.

Wales was united to England by a long process of conquest and partial colonization, culminating in the 1536 "Acte for Lawes & Justice to be ministred in Wales in like fourme as it is in this Realme", which formally incorporated Wales into the same structures of law and government as England.

Scotland was an entirely separate kingdom, which successfully withstood English attempts at conquest in the 14th century. England and Scotland shared a monarch from 1603 onwards, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England, and assumed the courtesy title "King of Britain". Formal unification of England and Scotland under a single crown and parliament, with a curency and customs union and freedom of movement between the two kingdoms, was agreed by the parliaments of Scotland and England, and legislated in the Act of Union with Scotland 1707.

Kings of England claimed lordship over Ireland from 1171 onwards, but English rule in Ireland was seldom effective or widely heeded before Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland in 1535, initiating more intensive efforts to enforce the royal will there. Ireland was fully incorporated into the United Kingdom by the Act of Union with Ireland 1801, but 26 of the 32 counties left the Union in 1921 to form the Irish Free State (which became the Republic of Ireland in 1949). The 6 counties where the majority of the population wished to remain part of the United Kingdom became Northern Ireland.

Toxteth riots

The anti-police rioting of the spring and summer of 1981 led to methods of community policing becoming somewhat gentler, and methods of riot control becoming much more effective. Ultimately it led to the rise of "multicultural" policies to make different ethnic groups feel more accepted in British society - as a cheaper alternative to investment in job creation or urban renewal.

Militant

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Labour Party was divided over the status within it of a radical left wing, created in part by Trotskyist infiltrators (who had adopted a tactic of "entryism" to try to radicalize mainstream party politics). Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader from 1983 to 1992 (and a European Commissioner, 1995-2004), took steps in the mid-1980s to make his party electable by cleansing it of the far-left pressure group "Militant", and instituting a "policy review". These were the early moves towards what Tony Blair rebranded as "New Labour": a Labour Party that was still concerned for social justice, but not interested in state ownership of industry, energy, transport and communications.

The Thatcher Years, 1979-1990

Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister was marked by two things: a determination to bring down inflation by a rigid application of "monetarist" policy (restricting the supply of money), and a small but costly war fought against Argentina for control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.

The determination to bring down inflation whatever the short-term cost meant the death of much of Britain's traditional industry. The refusal to subsidise industry or to compromise with trade unions was the end of a long postwar consensus. It was clear from the beginning that the social cost in terms of unemployment would be high, but "fixing the fundamentals" of the economy (that is, bringing down inflation) was given priority. This was despite the Conservatives having run an election campaign in 1979 that was critical of high unemployment, with the slogan "Labour isn't working". In 1977 there were 1.3 million unemployed in Britain; by 1981 2.7 million.

In 1981 there was rioting in several major cities: in Brixton (London), Chapeltown (Leeds), Handsworth (Birmingham), Toxteth (Liverpool), and Moss Side (Manchester). In each case there was an element of racial conflict in the rioting, as well as a sense of grievance relating to unemployment and urban decay.

Victory in the Falklands meant that the social and industrial cost of monetarist economics could be overlooked by the electorate. There was also, in the early Eighties, no real political alternative: the Labour Party had fallen under the sway of a Trotskyist-infiltrated left wing, and made itself unelectable. Four senior members of the more moderate wing of the party - including Roy Jenkins - broke away to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In terms of policy the SDP presented an attractive alternative to the two main parties, but it lacked the party machinery and established mass base to win power. The SDP formed an electoral pact with the Liberal Party, and in 1988 the two parties merged under the name Liberal Democrats.

It was in her second term that Margaret Thatcher began to change the British economy in ways that were soon copied in other countries, by a commitment to the privatisation of state-owned companies. Together with the sale of council houses, this created a new "popular capitalism" of home ownership and share ownership. At the same time, the deregulation of financial markets meant that speculation was producing massive new wealth, and London was becoming the most active financial market in the world. A Labour government had begun the exploitation of oil fields in the North Sea in 1975, but it was Thatcher who reaped the benefit of growing revenues and a measure of energy self-sufficiency, subsidising her economic reforms.

It was during her third term that Thatcher began to lose popularity in the country, as her policies to make the rich richer came to seem equally calculated to make the poor poorer (income tax cuts, sales tax increases, the "poll tax"). At the same time, she was becoming increasingly unacceptable to other leading figures within the Conservative Party through her populist anti-Europeanism, wrecking their attempts to gain Britain a "leading role" in the European Union.

Notting Hill

The first major race riots in Britain occurred in August and September 1958, first in Nottingham and then in Notting Hill Gate (West London). In each case the violence was started by young white men looking for trouble deciding to target black men with white girlfriends or wives.



The Notting Hill Carnival, which has been claimed to be the largest annual street festival in Europe, is a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture that began in reaction to the Notting Hill Riots. It too has featured on a special stamp issue as a representative aspect of modern Britishness (see here).

In 1976 there was a second race riot in Notting Hill, this time young black men reacting to heavy-handed policing of the Carnival.

Immigration and multiculturalism

Before the Second World War, mass immigration to Britain had been from within Europe, with the most clearly foreign groups being the Irish, and Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Mass immigration from outside Europe began only in the postwar period, when the immigration of substantial numbers of West Indians (that is, people from the Caribbean), Africans (especially from Nigeria) and South Asians (from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) created pockets of far more visible racial and cultural difference in many British cities.

The British Nationality Act 1948 gave a right of settlement in Britain to any citizens of the British Empire or Commonwealth. The Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 with 492 immigrants, mostly from Jamaica: the beginning of postwar mass immigration. In 1954 around 10,000 immigrants from the West Indies arrived (see this clip, from about 1 min onwards). Such immigration resulted in a much more visibly culturally and ethnically diverse country. It supplied not only labourers for British industry, but also doctors, dentists and nurses: without the immigration of medical professionals, the NHS would not have survived.

As the 1955 report linked to above has it:

Already their coming has caused a national controversy, but one point must always be borne in mind: whatever our feelings, we cannot deny them entry, for all are British citizens, and as such are entitled to the identical rights of any member of the Empire.

The official approach to integration was proclaimed in 1965 by the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, as:

not a flattening process of assimilation but equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance

Britain is now a multiracial society, with something over 85% of the population identifying itself as "White British" on the 2001 census returns. Another 7% identified themselves as "White Irish" or "White Other" (Polish, etc.); the "non-white" 7% of the population, still well over 4 million people, identified (in descending numbers) as: Indian, Pakistani, "Mixed Race", Black Caribbean, Black African, Bangladeshi, Chinese, "Other Black", and "Other Asian".

The laws that created Britain's current ethnic composition and race relations are:

• Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962
• Race Relations Act 1965
• Commonwealth Immigrant Act 1968
• Race Relations Act 1968
• Race Relations Act 1976
• British Nationality Act 1981
• Immigration Act 1988 (EC free movement)
• British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990
• Asylum and Immigration Act 1993

With the exception of the Immigration Act 1988 (which incorporated European Community agreements on the free movement of persons into British law), the trend of this legislation has been to restrict entry to new immigrants (undoing the work of the British Nationality Act 1948), while at the same time outlawing discrimination against existing immigrants. It was in reaction to the proposed equal opportunities legislation of the Race Relations Act 1968 that Enoch Powell gave his "Rivers of Blood" speech.

The Seventies

In many ways, the 1970s were the nadir of postwar British history, with economic collapse, industrial conflict between capital and labour, high oil prices, inflation and unemployment both rising (a combination that the dominant economic models had not foreseen), a reinvigorated I.R.A. resuming the "armed struggle" in Northern Ireland and beginning a bombing campaign in mainland British cities, and British standing in the international community at a very low ebb, thanks in part to the impossibility of meeting international commitments after the devaluation of the Pound Sterling in 1967. There were those in the civil service and the political establishment who saw their job simply as "managing Britain’s decline" as gracefully as possible. In 1964 British workers were more productive than those of any country in the European Community except Germany; by 1977, Italy was the only E.E.C. country less productive than Britain.

In Northern Ireland the shooting of civilian protesters in Derry by the First Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972 (killing 13 people, fatally wounding 1 more, and injuring several others) implicated the British armed forces in the cycle of violence in a new way.

The oil crisis of 1973 was exacerbated for Britain by coal strikes, leading to crippling energy shortages and the institution of a three-day working week. This finished Edward Heath's Conservative government of 1970-1974.

A new youth subculture, punk, reflected the prevailing sense of disillusionment and despair. Before the breakthrough of punk to a mass audience, the same sense of despair was reflected in established genres of popular music, such as the 1976 folk/rock single "Hard Times of Old England".

Fringe political movements - Nationalists, Anarchists, Neo-Fascists, Trotskyists, Irish Republicans - gained higher public profiles and disrupted prevailing social discourses. The National Front was formed in 1967, and in the 1970s managed to muster respectable shares of the vote in a number of carefully selected by-elections and local elections in parts of the industrial Midlands and South London. The "Angry Brigade" was a homegrown left-wing terrorist organisation, far less destructive than those of Italy, Germany or the United States, but still a startling new development for Britain.

In 1968 the right-wing Conservative M.P., Enoch Powell, initiated a public debate about immigration and a multiracial society with his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech, and the 1970s saw growing contention around issues of equal opportunities and integration. As the economy was squeezed, there was a marked tendency to scapegoat immigrants, especially Pakistanis. Skinheads, another youth subculture of the period, were particularly attracted to violence against Asians. Racist violence, and anti-racist activism, gained a new prominence in British life.

A further sterling crisis in 1976 necessitated a loan from the International Monetary Fund, which meant the humiliation of having the I.M.F. dictate government spending cuts. In 1977-1978 the Labour government lost its parliamentary majority and could survive only through a pact with the (tiny) Liberal Party - another worrying development for a country unused to coalition governments. Like the Conservative government that preceded them, the Labour governments of 1974-1979 were brought to an end by their inability to contain industrial disputes.