Part 10

The loss of India and Burma under the first Socialist administration and the consequent decline of British power thus constituted a severe psychological shock to the middle class that had ruled Britain during the last century of British administration in India. Later we shall see the difference it made in Britain's international position vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Here we are concerned with the effect upon British society at home.

That society contains thousands of men and women who knew and served the Empire and who bitterly resent its liquidation. Usually inarticulate and no match for the bright young men of the _New Statesmen_, they can be goaded into wrath. Gilbert Harding, a television entertainer who has become a national celebrity, found this out. Mr. Harding referred on television to the "chinless idiots" who made that "evil thing," the British Empire. The reaction was immediate and bitter. Mr. Harding was abused in the editorial and letter columns of the newspapers in phrases as ugly as any he had used. There are, it appeared, many who glory in the Empire and in the Commonwealth that has evolved from the old colonies.

Nationalization, the creation of the Welfare State, the withdrawal from India--these were major events that changed the face and manner of Britain. But the effect of the change in British life was evident, too, in the way men lived. The austerity preached by Sir Stafford Cripps may have been necessary if the nation was to overcome the effects of the war. But continued rationing, the queues outside the shops, the shortages of coal, the persistently high taxation all combined to change the life of the middle class. Slowly they realized that the sacrifices and dangers of the war years were not going to be repaid. There was no brave new world. Instead, there was the old world looking much more shabby than ever before.

"You see," people would say, explaining some new restriction, some new retreat before economic pressure, "we won the war." It was a bitter jest in the long, drab period between 1945 and 1950.

There was plenty of grumbling, some of it bitterly humorous. Lord Wavell, surveying a glittering audience at a royal command performance at Covent Garden Opera House, was told by a friend that the scene reminded him of pre-war days. "The only difference," the great soldier replied, "is that tomorrow we'll be doing our own washing up."

There was, of course, a good deal of snobbery in the middle-class attitude toward the Socialist government and what it was doing. The Conservatives and the dwindling band of Liberals just could not believe that the Socialists were equipped to carry out such vast changes in British life. They noted with sardonic humor the failures in Socialist policy. They found the Labor ministers ineffectual and diffident compared to their own leaders. "We had X and his wife to dinner last week," the wife of an industrialist told me in 1948. "What a pathetic little man! And in such an important post, too. Really, I looked at him sitting there and thought of Winston and Anthony, and Duff, and I felt like crying."

It was during this period that the Labor Party lost the support, temporarily at least, of many of the Conservatives and Liberals who had voted for it in 1945. The reasons for the shift are difficult to ascertain. Certainly many people were affronted by nationalization, especially when it directly affected their interests (though many of them had voted for Labor expecting such changes). The continuation of high taxation, which seemed permanent after the start of rearmament in 1950, alienated others. The ineffectual way in which the Labor government seemed to be handling many of its problems, particularly the coal shortage, affected the political opinions of many. "Damn it, we live on an island made of coal," said one civil servant who had voted for Labor in 1945. "It's monstrous to have a coal crisis. What are they playing at?"

In one field the Labor government won the grudging respect of the Tories: its approach to the problem presented to the West by the aggression of Soviet Russia. Mr. Attlee's dry, precise refutations of Soviet policy might be a weak substitute for Churchill's thundering oratory, but the nation found a paladin in the squat, rolling figure of Ernest Bevin.

Bevin had spent much of his life fighting British communists for the control of the unions. Entering the rarefied atmosphere of international affairs at the top as Foreign Secretary, he brought to his new task the blunt tongue and quick insight he had employed so successfully in the old. Between 1945 and 1950, when the British Labor Party was at the top of its power, Russian Communism was on the march in Europe. It had no tougher opponent than this Englishman.

The Russians recognized him as a prime enemy. In Moscow in 1946 and 1947 the Soviet press denounced and assailed Bevin as hotly as they did any other Western figure. Indeed, the whole Labor government was vilified almost daily. The reason for this savage onslaught on the earnest and industrious Marxists of the British government was obvious. Stalin and his lieutenants had been talking about socialism for decades. Here was a regime that might make it work without throwing hundreds of thousands into labor camps and allowing millions to starve. The anxiety of the rulers of Russia can be compared to that of the proprietors of a black market who learn that an honest shop is going into business across the street.

So this sturdy proletarian, Ernest Bevin, became one of the champions of the West in the cold war and was praised by Conservatives and Liberals. The left wing of his own Labor Party provided most of the criticism. Still cherishing the illusion that the Russians could be induced to drop their hostility to the West through "frank and open exchanges," Bevin's comrades led by Aneurin Bevan attacked his policies and especially his desire to maintain the Anglo-American alliance.

Those who cheered loudest, the people of the upper middle class who detested Russia, were the ones who, in the end, suffered most from the cold war. Britain's rearmament, under the impact of the Communist seizure of power in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Blockade, and, finally, the attack on South Korea, was a costly business. It began soon after the great expansion of social services had created the Welfare State. Taxes, already high, rose further.

In thousands of middle-class homes the decline from the old pre-war standards continued. The maidservant gave way to the "daily" who came in once or twice a week to help with the cleaning. The savings for old age were diverted to the rising costs of keeping the boys at school. In a hundred pathetic ways, the middle class strove to maintain its standards under the burden of taxation in a Britain it neither liked nor understood.

But to balance this gradual depression of one class there was the expansion of another. The victory of the Labor Party in 1945 encouraged the working class of the nation to seek a richer, fuller life. It opened vistas of a new existence and greater opportunities. It created confidence.

Traveling to Cardiff in September 1945, I talked with a miner's wife, a huge woman who spoke in the singsong accents of the mining valleys of South Wales. She dandled a plump baby on her knee and talked of what life would be like now. "My Dai's not going down the mine like his dad," she told me. "Now that _we_ have _our_ government, he can be anything he wants, do anything."

British society, despite its fixed barriers between class and class, has always enjoyed considerable mobility. In the past the country gentry and the aristocracy had surrendered power to the merchants and the industrialists. Now the urban working class that had served the merchants and the industrialists believed it had wrested control from its masters. Labor's election victory seemed to prove it.

This breaking down of the old relationship between the classes was a matter of deep concern to many, and their concern went deeper than partisan political feeling. Repeatedly one was told that the worst thing Labor had done was to create class feeling, to encourage class antagonisms in a country that until then had never been affected by them. This was only a half-truth. The class antagonism had been there, all right, but the middle class now was belatedly the victim of the bitterness that a hundred years of slum housing, poor food, and lack of opportunity had created among some but not all of the working class. I write "not all" because there were members of that class who were as disturbed by the growth of class antagonism as any retired colonel in his club. They felt instinctively that the unity of Britain was being sapped by the emergence of a powerful and militant socialist group whose object was change. Most of them had voted for change. But the British are a conservative people. They accept change within the framework of familiar institutions. Extensive reconstruction may go on behind the façade, but the façade must remain untouched.

The hope and confidence born of Labor's victory, however, had a long-term effect upon British society. It encouraged those who had dreamed, like the miner's wife, of a better life for their children. Ambitious mothers aimed higher than a few years of school and a factory job for their sons. Young men who had won commissions during the war decided to remain in the Army or the Navy or the Air Force now that the old barriers were falling and the right accent and the right private income did not matter so much as it once had.

By 1950 the economic and social forces that were to create the Britain of today were in full motion. Paradoxically, the British electorate was moving slightly to the right.

VII. _A Society in Motion_

NEW CLASSES AND NEW HORIZONS

_There are but two families in the world--have-much and have-little._

CERVANTES

_Society is constantly advancing in knowledge. The tail is now where the head was some generations ago. But the head and the tail still keep their distance._

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

Marie Lloyd, the darling of the music halls, sang a song that contained the deathless line: "A little of what you fancy does you good."

In addition to their evangelism, their occasional ruthlessness, the British have a streak of self-indulgence. This trait was encouraged by the peculiar circumstances of the country after the Conservative victory in the general election of 1951.

It was not a smashing victory. The Conservatives came back to power with 326 seats in the House of Commons as opposed to 295 for Labor and 6 for the Liberals. Yet it is doubtful that even with double their majority the Tories would have wished to undo all the work in the fields of nationalization and social welfare accomplished by the Labor administrations of 1945 and 1950. This was not politically feasible and, with Britain still in the toils of economic difficulties, it would have been unwise to convulse the industrial structure. There was no restoration after the revolution. The Socialists obviously had not attained the goals outlined by Professor Laski, but they had started the nation in that direction.

If economic conditions had deteriorated, the new administration of Winston Churchill might have been short-lived. But the world demand for British products, especially such raw materials as rubber and tin from Malaya, strengthened the economy. So did the gradual rise in British production and the economic improvement in Europe which created a larger market for British exports. After some uneasy months the indices of economic health began to move upward. After twelve years of military, political, and economic strain and anxiety the British were ready for a little of what they fancied. Life around them looked good, and they wanted to take advantage of it. There was a steady return of confidence.

British exports were rising. You could actually go down to the butcher's and buy all the meat you wanted. The Tories really were building all those houses they had promised to build. It was easier now to buy a new car and say good-by to Old Faithful that had served since 1938 or earlier. Taxes were as high as ever, but the government said they would be reduced. And if you had a little money, there was plenty in the shops to spend it on.

During the struggle with austerity after the war the British had been surprisingly sensitive to foreign criticism of their apparent inability to fight their way back to prosperity. Now here was prosperity or a reasonably accurate facsimile of it. Those foreigners had been wrong.

Presiding over their recrudescence of national confidence was the familiar figure of Mr. Churchill. The Prime Minister might lack the acute economic penetration of Sir Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee's social consciousness, but he was a world figure in a way that neither Socialist could claim to be. When in May 1953 the best-known voice in the English-speaking world proposed a conference at the summit with the new masters of the Soviet Union, the British felt that their leader had enforced their country's claim to a share in the leadership of the West.

Neither the economic nor the political developments of 1951-3 altered the raw facts of Britain's existence: the importance of denial at home to expand sales abroad, the rising competition of Germany and Japan in international markets. But these facts, which had been presented to the people with monotonous regularity under the pedagogical leadership of the Socialists, slipped out of sight. There was money to spend and there were things to buy. And reading about the Queen and the preparations for her Coronation was much more interesting than worrying about the dollar balance.

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was one of the most impressive and romantic spectacles of modern times. It is quite possible that this combination of national pride, religious symbolism, and perfectly performed ceremony will never be duplicated. It is also possible that from the standpoint of national psychology the Coronation did the British a good deal of harm by leading some of them into romantic daydreams at a time when it was essential that they should keep their heads and face the ugly realities of their position.

The young Queen pledging herself to serve her people, the evocation of a glorious past, the survivals of ancient custom, the splendid ceremony in London, and the other smaller ceremonies around the country all exalted values that, although real and important in their place, are only a part, and not the most important part, of a society that must fight to retain economic and political power. People should be reminded occasionally of their place in the historical procession and of the existence of values other than those of the market place. But such reminders are useful only when the people return to their normal jobs with a new vigor and enthusiasm. In Britain the festivities of the Coronation year seemed to drag on interminably.

In the case of the Coronation the monarchy might be said to have overfulfilled its function of arousing national patriotism. Whipped on by the national newspapers and the BBC, patriotic fervor went beyond the bounds of reason and led to an overoptimistic estimate of Britain's position in the world. _We can make this the new Elizabethan age!_ chanted the newspapers.

The idea that the subjects of Elizabeth II would emulate their restless, adventurous, enterprising forebears of the reign of Elizabeth I was a pleasing one. But it sounded odd in a nation of whose citizens millions were devoted to security. In 1953, Coronation year, the age of adventure and chivalry bowed resplendent and beautiful before a nation in which the forces that had been working since 1940 were evoking new classes and new ways of life. Neither had physical or mental connections with the heroic past of aristocratic rural England or with the old middle class.

In preceding chapters we have encountered some of the forces that changed British life: the leveling effect of the war, the Socialist victory of 1945, the extension of nationalization of industry and of the social services, the decline in the economic well-being of the old middle class. Now in the mid-fifties, as a result of these forces and two others--full employment and rising wages--a class new to modern British history has emerged.

Over the years between 1940 and 1955 there was very little unemployment in Britain. The percentage of unemployment in 1940 was 6.4. Thereafter, under the special circumstances of the war, the percentage fell until in 1944 it was only 0.6. In the post-war years it rose slightly, but the highest figure was 3 per cent in 1947.

Simultaneously, wages rose. Using October 1938 for the base figure of 100, weekly average earnings in the principal industries rose to 176 in 1943, 229 in 1949, and 323 in 1954.

The new class resulting from these changes and the earlier political ones is composed mainly of the manual workers of British industry, better housed, better paid, and more secure than ever before in their history.

Definition of the new class from either a geographic or an economic point of view is difficult. In the 1930's there was an extensive redistribution of the British working population. Industries, heavy and light, began to spring up in places like Oxford and in the heart of hitherto largely rural counties like Berkshire and Northamptonshire. Tens of thousands of workers left their homes in slum areas or drab working-class neighborhoods and moved to new jobs in new industries. In the six years before the start of World War II more than 2,000,000 new houses were built in Britain. This was important in the resettlement of the industrial population. Equally important was the fact that over 500,000 of them were built and let by local government authorities who in turn were helped by the central government.

Subsidized housing had come to stay. In the decade since the war more than 2,000,000 new houses have been built. Of these about 1,600,000 are owned by local governments, which let them at low rents made possible by government subsidies.

Another development that benefited the new class was the advent of the New Towns. These are self-contained communities outside the great centers of population, complete with industries, schools, churches, hospitals, and public services. They are intended to draw people from the cities and conurbations, already too large, and establish them in the countryside.

The idea is old. Ebenezer Howard proposed it in 1898 and the proposal was promptly attacked as the spawn of the devil and his socialist friends. It was not until 1903 that Letchworth, the first of the New Towns, was established. But World War II impressed on both Socialist and Tory the wisdom of dispersing the industrial population, and in 1946 the House of Commons approved the New Towns Act. Today there are fourteen New Towns in Britain, eleven of them in England. None is complete, although workers are moving into them by the thousand.

Harlow, which occupies ten square miles of Essex, is the most advanced of the New Towns. Its present population is about 30,000. The target is around 80,000. The cost of this vast resettlement scheme is high. Thus far it has been about £112,000,000, approximately $313,600,000. Estimates indicate that more than double that sum will be needed to complete the New Towns.

The New Towns are by all odds one of the most interesting and imaginative developments in modern Britain. Their social and political consequences are almost incalculable. For the New Towns will continue to grow and to house a new class whose political and economic power will be a dominant factor in British society.

They will not be completed overnight. In most cases the rate of growth depends on the willingness of industry to build in the New Towns. Exceptions are towns like Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee in the North of England which have been built to house miners and their families. On the whole, however, industrial support has been encouraging. With the establishment of a new industry in a New Town more houses are built and schools, churches, shops, and parks constructed.

In the process hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the working-class sections of the Clyde or South Wales or London, trading tiny, old-fashioned flats or houses for well-designed houses. The children are going to schools that are new and not over-crowded. They are playing in fields rather than city streets.

But the New Towns are not the only factor in the emergence of the new class. In addition, there has been a steady increase in the construction of low-rent housing estates by local authorities. Incidentally, the people of the New Towns are sharply critical of ignoramuses who confuse them with the people of the housing estates. The housing estates are most often built on the fringes of big cities; the tall--for Britain--apartment houses rising in Wimbledon, outside London, are an example.

Each housing estate, when completed, siphons off some hundreds or thousands of Britain's slum population. In some cases, notably in east London south of the Thames, new housing estates have been built in the wastes left by German bombing.

As a consequence of these efforts by both Labor and Conservative governments to resettle the working class, Britain's slums are slowly disappearing. Of course many square miles of them remain, and any newspaper can publish photographs showing conditions of appalling filth and squalor. Yet a great deal has been done to destroy the slums. There remain, of course, the miles and miles of old working-class districts, shabby and dull, but these are part of the landscape of any industrial nation and it is probably impossible for any government, British or American or German, to eliminate them entirely.

The people of the New Towns, of the housing estates, and of the working class generally enjoy full employment and higher wages than they have ever dreamed of in their lives. Admittedly, prices have risen steadily since the war. But rents have not. In Norwich, for instance, there were in 1956 eight thousand council houses that rented at seven shillings, or ninety-eight cents, a week. The manual worker in British industry often pays only a nominal rent. The Welfare State has relieved him of the burden of saving for the education of his children or for medical care.

A skilled worker in industry may have a basic wage of £12 ($33.60) or £13 ($36.40) a week. Overtime work may raise the total to an average of £15 ($42.00) for a week's work. A worker at a similar job in a similar industry before the war was extremely fortunate if he made £4 a week.

Under these circumstances the buying spree on which the British people embarked in 1953 was inevitable. The new class had no need to save. The state took care of its welfare, and taxes were taken at the source under PAYE (Pay As You Earn). Workers had been fully employed for more than a decade. Now at last the shops were full, and the hucksters of installment buying, known in Britain as "buying on the Never-Never," were at every door.

One investigation of life in the New Towns revealed a typical weekly budget for necessities. The family spent £5 10 _s._, or about $15.40, for food and household necessities. Rent and local taxes cost £2, or $5.60. Lighting and heating cost 10 _s._, or $1.40, while the same amount went to clothes and repairs. Cigarettes took a pound, or $2.80, and the weekly installment on the television set was 15 _s._, or $2.10.