Britain - country and people - Riassunti di Lingua Inglese - O'Driscoll, Sintesi del corso di Lingua Inglese

Scarica Britain - country and people - Riassunti di Lingua Inglese - O'Driscoll e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! BRITAIN 1 COUNTRY AND PEOPLE When Britain comes to international sport, the situation wasn’t one country, one team. For each of the four sports or sporting events there are a different number of national teams. GEOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING Lying off the north-west coast of Europe, there are two large islands. The largest island is called Great Britain, the other large one is called Ireland. POLITICALLY SPEAKING In the British Isles there are two states and one of these governs most of the island of Ireland. This state is called The Republic of Ireland. It i salso called ‘Eire’. The other state has authority over the rest of the British Isles, its official name is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northem Ireland although is known by a shorter name, ‘the United Kingdom’. In everyday speech this is often shortened to ‘the UK’. In other contexts it is referred to as ‘Great Britain’. The normal adjective, when talking about something to do with the UK, is ‘British’. CROWN DEPENDENCIES There are two small parts of British Isles which have special political arrangements. These ‘Crown dependencies’ are the Channel Island and the Isle of Man. Each has complete internal self- government, including its own Parliament and its own tax system. SOME HISTORICAL AND POETIC NAMES Albion is a word used in same poetic contexts to refer to England. It was the original Roman name for Britain. It may come from the Latin word albus, meaning “white”. The white chalk cliffs on the south coast are the first part of England to be seen when crossing the sea from the European mainland. Britannia is the name that the Romans gave to their southern British province. It is also the name given to the female embodiment of Britain. THE FOUR NATIONS People often call Britain “England”. But this isn’t strictly correct. England is only one of the four nations of the British Isles (England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland). Their political unification was a gradual process that was completed in 1800 when Irish Parliament was joined with the Parliament for England, Scotland and Wales in Westminster, so that the whole of the British Isles became a single state. At one time the four nations were distinct from each other in every aspect of life. The people in Ireland, Wales and highland Scotland belonged to the Celtic race, those in England and lowland Scotland were mainly of Germanic origin. The difference was reflected in the languages they spoke. People in the Germanic areas spoke Germanic dialects. The nations also tended to have different economic, social and legal systems. Today these differences have become blurred. Although there is only one government are for the whole of Britain, but some aspects of government are organized separately. OTHER SIGNS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY Names. The prefix “Mac” or “Mc” in surnames is always either Scottish or Irish. The prefix “O” is Irish. A very large number of surnames suggest Welsh origin. The most common surname in both England and Scotland is actually “Smith”. Irishmen are called “Paddy” or “Mick” and Welshmen are known as “Dai” or “Taffy”. Clothes. The kilt, a skirt with tartan pattern worn by men, is a very well-known symbol of Scottishness. Musical instruments. The harp is an emblem of both Wales and Ireland. Characteristics. The Irish are supposed to be great talkers, the Scots have a reputation for being careful with money, and the Welsh are renowned for their singing ability. John Bull. He is a fictional character who is supposed to personify Englishness and certain English virtues. Brinton. It is a word used in official contexts and in formal writing to describe a citizen of the United Kingdom. ‘Ancient Brintons’ is the name given to the race of people who lived in England before and during the Roman occupation. Caledonia, Cambria, Hibernia were the Roman names for Scotland, Wales and Ireland respectively. Erin is a poetic name for Ireland. “The Emerald Isle” is another way of referring to Ireland. THE INVISIBLE SCOT Janet Swinney, a Scotswoman, wrote an article which expresses anger and how the dominance of England over Scotland in the way things are described. First, there is “domination by omission”. A map appeared in the Observer newspaper in 1989 which showed only England and Wales. Second, she points out the common use of England/English to mean Britain/British. A third aspect of domination can be seen in the names given to publications and organizations. In a society of equals, all these names would carry their geographical markers. THE DOMINANCE OF ENGLAND It cannot be denied that the dominant culture of Britain today is specifically English. The system of politics that is used in all four nations today is of English origin, and English is the main language of all four nations. Many aspects of everyday life are organized according to English custom and practice. But the political unification of Britain was not achieved by mutual agreement because England was able to exert her economic and military power over the other three nations. Today English domination can be detected, for example, in the supply of money, that in Britain is controlled by the Bank of England. The word “England” is derived from the term “Anglo” and newspapers and the televition news talk about “Anglo-American relation” to refear to relation between the government of Britain and the USA. NATIONAL LOYALTIES There has been a long history of migration from Scotland, Wales and Ireland to England. Infact, there are milions of people who live in England but who would never describe themselves as English. These people support the country of their parents or grandparents rather than England in sporting contests. They would also play for that country rather than England. There is a complicated division of loyalties among many people in Britain. A black person whose family are from the Caribbean will passionately support the West Indies when they play cricket against England. But the same person is quite happy to support England in a sport such as football, which the West Indies do not play. English people do not regard the Scottish, the Welsh or the Irish as “foreigners”. NORTHERN ENGLAND The Pennine mountains run up the middle of northern England like a spine. On either side, the large deposits of coal and iron ore enable these areas to lead the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. The Manchester area became, in the nineteenth century, the world’s leading producer of cotton goods. On the eastern side, towns such as Bradford and Leeds became the world’s leading producers of wollen goods. Sheffield became a centre for the production of steel goods. Around Newcastle, shipbuilding was the major industry. The decline in heavy industry in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century hit the industrial north of England hard. The towns on either side of the Pennines are flanked by steep slopes on which it is difficult to built and the land is suitable only for sheep farming. Open and uninhabited countryside is never far away from its cities and towns. The wild, windswept moors which are the setting for Emily Bronte’s famous novel Wuthering Heights seem a world away from the smoke and grime of urban life. In the north-western corner of the country is the Lake District. The Romantic poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, lived here and wrote about its beauty. SCOTLAND Scotland has three regions. Just north of the border with England are the southern uplands, an area of small towns whose economy depends on sheep farming. Further north, there is the central plain. Finally, there are the highlands, consisting of mountains and deep valleys and including numerous small islands off the west coast. Tourism is important in the local economy, and so is the production of whisky. The population of Scotland lives in the central plain and in the strip of east coast. Scotland’s two major cities have very different reputations. Glasgow is the third largest city in Britain. It has a strong artistic heritage. A hundred years ago the work of the Glasgow School put the city at the forefront of European design and architecture. In 1990, it was the European City of Culture. Edinburgh has a middle-class image. It is the capital of Scotland and is associated with scholarship, the law and administration. This reputation and its topography has led to its being called “the Athens of the north”. The annual Edinburgh Festival of the arts is internationally famous. WALES As in Scotland, most people in Wales live in one small part of it. Coal has been mined in many parts of Britain and Welsh people would locate its prototype coal mine in South Wales. Despite its industry, no really large cities have grown up in this area. Coal mining has now ceased and the transition to other forms of employment has been slow and painful. Communication between south and north is very difficult because of mountains. The area around Mount Snowdon is very beautiful and is the largest National Park in Britain. NORTHERN IRELAND With the exception of Belfast, which is famous for the manufacture of linen, this region is, like the rest of Ireland, largely agricultural. It has several areas of spectacular natural beauty. One of these is the Giant’s Causeway, so-called because the rock in the area form what look like enormous stepping stones. 7 THE MONARCHY THE APPEARANCE In Britain the Queen has almost absolute power, and it all seems very undemocratic. The American constitution talks about ‘government of the people for the people by the people’. These is no law in Britain which says anything like that. Every autumn Elizabeth II makes a speech. In it, she says what her government intends to do in the coming year. She can choose anybody she likes to run government for her. There are no restrictions on whom she picks as her Prime Minister. It does not have to be somebody who has been elected. The same is true for other ministerial positions. She can just dismiss her ministers. They are all ‘servants of the Crown’. She also appears to have great power over Parliament. Nothing that Parliament has decided can become law until she has agreed to it. There is a principle of English law that the monarch can do nothing that is legally wrong. In other words, Queen Elizabeth is above the law. The house of Windsor. Windsor is the family name of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth is only the fourth monarch with this name. It is because George V, Elizabeth’s grandfather, changed the family name. It was Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but during the First World War it was thought better for the king not to have a Germansounding name. THE ROYAL FAMILY Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother has been the official title of the mother of the present Queen since the death of her husband, King George VI. She was born in 1900 and is the most consistenly popular member of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926 and became Queen in 1952 on the death of her father, George VI. She is one of the longest-reigning monarchs in British history. She is widely respected for the way in which she performs her duties and is generally popular. Prince Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh, married the present Queen in 1947. Princess Margaret is the Queen’s younger sister. Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, was born in 1948. As the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, he is heir to the throne. He sometimes makes speeches which are critical of aspects of modern life. Princess Diana married Prince Charles in 1981. The couple separated in 1992 and later divorced. Princess Diana died as the result of a car accident in 1997. She was a glamorous and popular figure during her lifetime. Princess Anne, the Queen’s daughter, was born in 1950. She separated from her husband after they had one son and one daughter. She married again in 1992. She is widely respected for her charity work. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, was born in 1960 and is the Queen’s second son. He is divorced from is wife, Sarah Ferguson. Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, was born in 1964. He married Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999. Prince Williams and Prince Hanry are the sons of Charles and Diana. William is next in line to the throne after his father. THE REALITY In practice the reality is very different. In fact, the Queen cannot choose anyone she likes to be Prime Minister. She has to choose someone who has the support of the majority of MPs in the House of Commons. This is because the law says that ‘her’ government can only collect taxes with the agreement of the Commons, so if she did not choose such a person, the government would stop functioning. In practice the person she chooses is the leader of the strongest party in the House of Commons. In theory, the Queen could refuse the royal assent to a bill passed by Parliament, and so stop it becoming law, but no monarch has actually done so since the year 1708. Indeed, the royal assent is so automatic that somebody signs the documents for her. In reality the Queen has almost no power at all. When she opens Parliament each year the speech she makes has been written for her. She cannot actually stop the government going ahead with any of its policies. THE ROLE OF THE MONARCH Many political and legal experts mentiones three monarch’s role. First, the monarch is the personal embodiment of the government of the country. Second, it is argued that the monarch could act on a government that was becoming dictatorial. If the government ever managed to pass a bill through Parliament which was obviously terribly bad and very unpopular, the monarch could refuse the royal assent and the bill would not become law. Third, the monarch has a very practical role to play. By being a representing the country, Queen Elizabeth II can perform the ceremonial duties which heads of state often have to spend their time on. Honours. Twice a year, an Honours List is published. The people whose names appear on the list are then summoned to Buckingham Palace where the Queen presents them with a token which entitles them to write KG, or KCB, or CBE, or many other possible combinations of letters, after their names. The letters stand for titles such as ‘Knight of the Order of the Garter’, ‘Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath’, ‘Commander of the British Empire’, and so on. Life peerages are also awarded, which entitle the recipients to a seat in the House of Lords. Traditionally, it was by giving people titles such as these that the monarch ‘honoured’ them in return for their services. These days, the decision about who gets which honour is usually taken by the Prime Minister. People finds a real ‘honour’ to be given a title by the monarch herself. THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT Every tourist brochure for Britain in every country in the world gives great prominence to the monarchy. It is impossible to estimate exactly how much the British royal family and the events and buildings associated with the monarchy help the tourist industry, or exactly how much money they help to bring into the country. But most people working in tourism think it is an awful lot! EDWARD AND MRS SIMPSON For the last two centuries the public have wanted their monarch to have high moral standards. In 1936 Edward VIII, the uncle of the present Queen, was forced to abdicate. This happened because he wanted to marry a woman who had divorced two husbands. The government and the major churches in the country insisted that Edward could not marry her and remain king. He chose to marry her. In spite of the constitutional crisis that he caused, the Duke of Windsor and his wife were popular celebrities in Britain, and the king’s abdication has gone down in popular history as an example of the power of love. No. 10 Downing Street. Here is an example of the traditional fiction that Prime Ministers are not especially important people. Their official residence does not have a special name. Nor, from the outside, does it look special. It is not even e detached house. The cabinet meets here and the cabinet office works here. The Chancellor of the Exchequer lives next door, at No. 11, and the Government Chief Whip at No. 12. After the government loses an election all three ministers have to throw out their rubbish and wait for the furniture vans to turn up. The PM also has an official country residence to the west of London, called ‘Chequers’. The ideal Prime Minister. Here is an extract from Yes, Prime Minister, the political satire. It is a section of the private diary of a senior civil servant. In it he describes his conversation with another top civil servant, in which they discussed who should become the new Prime Minister. We take a fairly dim view of the two candidates. They would have foolish notions about running the country themselves if they became Prime Minister. We agreed that such a candidate must have the following qualities: he must be malleable, flexible, likeable, have no firm opinions, no bright ideas, not be intellectually committed, and be without the strength of purpose to change anything. Above all, he must be someone whom we know can be professionally guided, and who is willing to leave the business of government in the hands of experts. All ministers except the PM are kept busy looking after their government departments. The cabinet office is directly under the PM’s control and works in the same building. As a result, the PM knows more about what is going on that the other ministers do. Because there is not enough time for the cabinet to discuss most matters, a choice has to be made about what will discussed. And it is the PM whi makes that choice. Prime Ministers since 1940 Winston Churchill (1940-45) Clement Attlee (1945-51) Wiston Churchill (1951-55) Anthony Eden (1955-57) Harold Macmillan (1957-63) Alec Douglas Home (1963-64) Harold Wilson (1964-70) Edward Heath (1970-74) Harold Wilson (1974-76) James Callaghan (1976-79) Margaret Thatcher (1979-90) John Major (1990-97) Tony Blair (1997-2007) Gordon Brown (2007-) THE CIVIL SERVICE Not even the most senior administrative jobs change hands when a new government comes to power. The day-to-day running of the government and the implementation of its policy continue in the hands of the same people that were there with the previous government, the top rank of the civil service. Governments come and go, but the civil service remains. The most senior civil servant has the title of ‘Permanent Secretary’. Unlike politicians, civil servants are unknown to the larger public. The British civil service is a career. Its most senior positions are usually filled by people who have been working in it for twenty years or more. These people get a high salary. Civil servants know the secrets of the previous government which the present minister is unaware of. For all these reasons, it is often possible for top civil servants to exercise quite a lot of control over their ministers, and it is sometimes said that it is they, and not their ministers, who really govern the country. In 1994 the association which represents the country’s top civil servants made an official complaint that four government ministers ‘verbally abused’ their civil service advisers and generally treated them ‘with contempt’. This suggests that civil servants expect to have a degree of control. Top civil servants know that their power depends on their staying out of ‘politics’and on their being absolutely loyal to their present minister. Despite reforms, the top rank of the civil service is still largely made up of people from the same narrow section of society, people who have been to public school and then on to Oxford or Cambridge. The criticism is that the civil service does not have enough expertise in matters such as economics and technology, and that it lives too much in its own closed world. The origins of the civil service. The British ‘cult of the talented amateur’ is not normally expressed openly. But when, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the structure of the modern civil service was established, it was a consciously stated principle. According to Lord Macauley, it is better to be a non-specialist than a specialist, to have a good brain rather than thorough knowledge. Whitehall. This is the name of the street in London which runs from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence are both located here. The term ‘Whitehall’ is sometimes used to refer to the government as a whole. CENTRAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT Local government authorities only have powers because the central government has given them powers. The system of local government is very similar to the system of national government. There are elected representatives, called councillors. They meet in a council chamber in the Town Hall or County Hall, where they make policy which is implemented by local government officers. Local councils traditionally manage nearly all public services. Local councils are allowed to collect one kind of tax. This is a tax based on property. This is called ‘rates’ and its amount varied according to the size and location of the property. In the early 1990s it was replaced by the ‘community charge’. It was very unpopular and was quickly replaced by the ‘council tax’, which is based on the estimated value of a property and the number of people living in it. Now councils can charge and collect the taxes on business properties themselves. COUNTIES, BOROUGHS, PARISHES Counties are the oldest divisions of the country in England and Wales. They are still used today for local government purposes. One of these is Middlesex. ‘Shires’ is what the counties were originally called. Boroughs were originally towns that had grown large and important enough to be given their own government, free of control by the county. Parishes were originally villages centred on a local church. They became a unit of local government in the nineteenth century. The name ‘parish’ is still used in the organization of the main Christian churches in England. THE GREATER LONDON COUNCIL The story of the Greater London Council is an example of the struggle for power between central and local government. In the early 1980s Britain had a right-wing Conservative government. At a time when this government was unpopular, the left-wing Labour party in London won the local election and gained control of the GLC. The Labour-controlled GLC then introduced many measures which the national government did not like. The government decided to abolish the GLC. Using its majority in the House of Commons, it was able to do this. LOCAL GOVERNMENT SERVICES Most of the numerous services that a modern government provides are run at local level in Britain. These include public hygiene and environmental health inspection, the collecting of rubbish from outside people’s houses, and the cleaning and tidying of all public places. They also include the provision of public swimming pools and public parks. Public libraries are another well-known service. The popularity of libraries in Britain is indicated by the fact that, in a country without identify cards, a person’s library card is the most common means of identification for someone who does not have a driving licence. Public libraries. In comparison with the people of other western countries, the British public buy relatively few books. This does not necessarily mean that they read less. Many British people seem to prefer libraries to bookshops even when they want to own a book. 9 PARLIAMENT The British Parliament works in a large building called the Palace of Westminster (popularly known as ‘the Houses of Parliament’). This contains offices, committee rooms, restaurants, bars, libraries and even some places of residence. It also contains two larger rooms. One of these is where the House of Lords meets, the other is where the House of Commons meets. The British Parliament is divided into two ‘houses’, and its members belong to one or other of them, although only members of the Commons are normally known as MPs (Members of Parliament). The Commons is by far the more important of the two houses. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS 1-Speaker’s chair 2-government benches 3-opposition benches 4-galleries for visitors 5-press gallery THE ATMOSPHERE OF PARLIAMENT The design and layout of the meeting room of the House of Commons differ from the interior of the parliament buildings in most other countries. These differences can tell us a lot about what is distinctive about the British Parliament. First, there are just two rows of benches facing each other. On the left are the government benches, where the MPs of the governing party sit. On the right are the opposition benches. According to where they sit, MPs are seen to be either ‘for’ the government or against it. This physical division is emphasized by the Speaker’s chair between the two rows of benches. The arrangement of the benches encourages confrontation between government and opposition. There are no ‘crossbenches’ for MPs who belong neither to the governing party nor the main opposition party. In practice, these MPs sit on the opposition benches furthest from the Speaker’s chair. Second, the Commons has no ‘front’, no obvious place from which an MP can address everybody there. MPs simply stand up and speak from wherever they happen to be sitting. Third, there are no desks for the MPs. Fourth, the House is very small. In fact, there isn’t enough room for all the MPs. MPs do not have their ‘own’ place to sit. No names are marked on the benches. MPs just sit down wherever they can find room. All these features result in a fairly informal atmosphere. In medieval times, the Commons met in a church and churches of that time often had rows of benches facing each other. But after the House was badly damaged by bombing in 1941, it was deliberately rebuilt to the old pattern. This was because of a belief in the two-way ‘for and against’ tradition, and also because of a more general desire for continuity. Lords legal and spiritual. There are two other kinds of peer in the House of Lords who do not have seats there by hereditary right, but because of their position. First, there are the twenty-six bishops of the Church of England. Second, there are the Lords of Appeal, the twenty or so most senior judges in the land. Reforming the House of Lords. In 1910 the Liberal government proposed heavy taxes on the rich. The House of Lords rejected the proposal. The government then asked the king for an election and won it. Again, it passed its tax proposals through the Commons, and also a bill limiting the power of the Lords. Again, the Lords rejected both bills, and again the government won another election. It was a constitutional crisis. The king let it be known that if the Lords rejected the same bills again, he would appoint hundreds of new peers who would vote for the bills – enough for the government to have a majority in the Lords. So, in 1911, rather than have the prestige of their House destroyed in this way, the Lords agreed to both bills, including the one that limited their own powers. From that time, a bill which had been agreed in the Commons for three years in a row could become law without the agreement of the Lords. This period of time was further reduced in 1949. The state opening of Parliament. The annual state opening of Parliament is an example of a traditional ceremony which reminds MPs of their special status and of their ‘togetherness’. The Commons always refuse entry of the Queen. This is because Charles I once burst in to the chamber and tried to arrest some MPs. Even since then, the monarch has not been allowed to enter the Commons. Instead, the MPs agree to come through to the House of Lords and listen to the monarch in there. 10 ELECTIONS The electoral system used in Britain doesn’t seem to add up. In the 1997 election, the Labour party received less than half of the votes but won nearly two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons. It won two-and-a-half times as many seats as the Conservative party, even though it received less then one-and-a-half times as many votes. The Liberal Democrat party did very badly out of the system. One in every six people voted for it, but it won only one in fourteen of the seats in the Commons. THE SYSTEM Unlike in any other country in the world, the system of political representation that is used in Britain evolved before the coming of democracy. It also evolved before national issues became more important to people than local ones. In theory, the House of Commons is simply a gathering of people who each represent a particular place in the kingdom. It was not the concern of anybody in government as to how each representative was chosen. Not until the nineteenth century were laws passed about how elections were to be conducted. These days nearly everybody votes for a candidate because he or she belongs to a particular party. The tradition remains that an MP is first and foremost a representative of a particular locality. The country is divided into a number of areas of roughly equal population, known as constituencies. Anybody who wants to be an MP must declare himself or herself as a candidate in one of this constituencies. On polling day, voters go to polling stations and are each given a single piece of paper with the names of the candidates for that constituency on it. Each voter then puts a cross next to the name of one candidate. After the polls have closed, the ballot papers are counted. The candidate with the largest number of crosses next to his or her name is the winner and becomes the MP for the constituency. There is no preferential voting; there is no counting of the proportion of votes for each party; there is no extra allocation of seats in Parliament according to party strengths. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ELECTOTAL SYSTEM 1832 The Great Reform Bill is passed. Very small boroughs, where electors can easily be persuaded who to vote for, are abolished. The franchise (the right to vote) is made uniform throughout the country. About 5% of the adult population now has the right to vote in elections. 1867 The franchise is extended to include most of the male workers in towns. 1872 The secret ballot is introduced. 1884 The franchise is extended to include male rural labourers. 1918 Women over the age of thirty are given the right to vote. 1928 Women are given the franchise on the same basis as men. All adults over twenty-one now have the right to vote. 1969 The minimum voting age is lowered to eighteen, and candidates are now allowed to enter a ‘political description’ of themselves next to their name on the ballot paper. FORMAL ARRANGEMENTS It is the government which decides when to hold an election. The law says that an election has to take place at least every five years. However, the interval between elections is usually a bit shorter than this. A party in power does not normally wait until the last possible moment. When a party has a very small majority in the House of Commons, or no majority at all, the interval can be much shorter. After the date of an election has been fixed, people who want to be candidates in a constituency have to deposit £ 500 with the Returning Officer. They get this money back if they get 5% of the votes or more. It is not necessary to belong to a party to be a candidate. The law allows candidates, if they wish, to include a short ‘political description’ of themselves on the ballot paper. To be eligible to vote, a person must be at eighteen years old and be on the electoral register. This is compiled every year for each constituency separately. Nobody is obliged to vote. Crazy candidates. You don’t have to belong to an important party to be a candidate. You don’t even have to live in the constituency. All you need is £500. There are always some people who are willing to be candidates even when they know they have no chance of winning. Sometimes they are people fighting for a single cause that they feel very strongly about. Sometimes they are people who just like to be candidates for a joke. The most famous of these ‘silly’ candidates was ‘Lord’ David Sutch. The intention of the £500 deposit is to discourage joke candidates such as ‘Lord’ Sutch, but they certainly add colour and amusement to the occasion. THE CAMPAIGN In British there is no tradition of large rallies or parades as there is in the USA. The campaign reflects the contrast between the formal arrangements and the political reality. Local newspapers give coverage to the candidates; the candidates themselves hold meetings; party supporters stick up posters in their windows; local party workers spend their time canvassing. The amount of money that candidates are allowed to spend on their campaigns is strictly limited. Any attempt to influence voters improperly is outlawed. But the reality is that all these activities and regulations do not usually make much difference. Nearly everybody votes for a candidate on the basis of the party which he or she represents. Few people attend candidates’ meetings; most people do not read local newspapers. They do not buy time on television as they do in the USA. Each party holds a daily televised news conference. Canvassing. This is the activity that occupies most of the time of local party workers during an election campaign. Canvassers go from door to door, calling on as many houses as possible and asking people how they intend to vote. They rarely make any attempt to change people’s minds, but if a voter is identified as ‘undecided’, the party candidate might later attempt to pay a visit. The main purpose of canvassing seems to be so that transport can be offered to those who claim to be supporters. Canvassers stand outside polling stations and record whether their supporters have voted. Canvassing is an awful lot of work for very little benefit. It is a kind of election ritual. POLLING DAY General elections always take place on a Thursday. People have to work in the normal way, so polling stations are open from seven in the morning till ten at night to give everybody the opportunity to vote. The only people who get a holiday are schoolchildren whose schools are being used as polling stations. Each voter has to vote at a particular polling station. After being ticked off on the electoral register, the voter is given a ballot paper. Northern Ireland is a rather different story. There, the political tensions of so many years have had a negative effect on democratic procedures. After the polls close, the marked ballot papers are taken to a central place in the constituency and counted. The Returning Officer then makes a public announcement of the votes cast for each candidate and declares the winner to be the MP for the constituency. Party money. There is no legal limit to the amount of money that national parties can spend on election campaigns. Nor is any money given to the parties by the state for their campaigns. There is no law which obliges parties to say where they get their money from. The Conservatives get a lot of their money from large single donations by individuals, sometimes from people outside Britain. The other parties would like to pass a law which forced parties to reveal the sources of large donations and which forbade donations from foreigners. ELECTION NIGHT Both BBC and ITV start their programmes as soon as voting finishes. Certain features of these ‘election specials’, such as the ‘swingometer’ have entered popular folklore. The first excitement of the night is the race to declare. Doing so will guarantee that the cameras will be there to witness the event. By midnight, after only a handful of results have been declared, experts will be making predictions about the composition of the newly elected House of Commons. By two in the morning at least half of the constituencies will have declared their results and the experts on the television will now be able to predict with confidence which party will have a majorityin the House of Commons, and therefore which party leader is going to be the Prime Minister. Some constituencies, however, are not able to declare their results until well into Friday afternoon. This is either because they are very rural or because the race has been so close that one or more ‘recounts’ have been necessary. The great television election show! British people are generally not very enthusiastic about politics. But that does not stop them enjoying a good, political fight. The swingometer. This is a device used by television presenters on election night. It indicates the percentage change of support from one party to another party since the previous election- the ‘swing’. The swingometer was first made popular by Professor Robert McKenzie on the BBC’s coverage of the 1964 election. The senior service. This is a phrase sometimes used to describe the Royal Navy. It was the first of the three armed forces to be established. Greenham Common. This is the Royal Air Force base in Berkshire which became the focus for anti-nuclear campaigners in the 1980s. TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS Since the Second World War, British governments have often referred to the ‘special relationship’ which exists between Britain and the USA. Public feeling about the relationship is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is reassuring to be so diplomatically close to the most powerful nation in the world, and the shared language gives people some sense of brotherhood with Americans. On the other hand, there is mild bitterness about the power of the USA. In any case, the special relationship has inevitably declined in significance since Britain joined the European Community. In the world trade negotiations of the early 1990s, there was nothing special about Britain’s position with regard to the USA - it was just part of the European trading bloc. Is Britain really part of Europe? The government says it is, but look at this report from The Sunday Times of 18 April 1993. Britain bans EC medals. British members of the European Community monitoring mission in former Yugoslavia have been banned from a formal presentation of medals struck by the EC to honour their bravery. The British monitors have been told that they may only receive the medals privately and keep them as momentoes. They must never wear them on their uniforms because of government rules against the acceptance of decorations from ‘foreign powers’. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNION: EUROPE As the empire disappeared, the British government decided to ask for membership of the newly- formed European Communities. From the very start, the British attitude to membership has been ambiguous. On the one hand, it is seen as an economic necessity and a political advantage. On the other hand, acceptance does not mean enthusiasm. The underlying attitude – that Britain is somehow special – has not really changed and there are fears that Britain is gradually giving up its autonomy. Changes in European domestic policy, social policy or sovereignty arrangements tend to be seen in Britain as a threat. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s it has been Britain more than any other member of the European Union which has slowed down progress towards further European unity. This ambiguous attitude can partly be explained by the fact that views about Britain’s position in Europe cut across political party lines. The British sausage. Below is an extract from the script of the BBC satirical comedy Yes, Prime Minister. It is part of a speech made by James Hacker MP, in which he expresses anti-European sentiments. It is fiction but it does capture part of the British attitude to Europe. Notice how sovereignty is not connected with matters of conventional political power, but rather with matters of everyday life and habits. Up yours, Delors. This is the front page headline of the Sun. It gives voice to British dislike of the Brussels bureaucracy. Jacques Delors was president of the European Commission at the time. The expression ‘up yours’ is the spoken equivalent of a rude, two-fingered gesture. The full effect of the phrase is only possible if the French name ‘Delors’ is pronounced in an English way. The European history book. Sir Francis Drake is a well-known English historical character. In 1588 he helped to defeat the Spanish Armada which was trying to invade England. In 1992 an EC history ‘textbook’ for secondary schools, written by a committee of historians, was published. The first version of the book decided that it it was the weather which caused the failure of the Spanish invasion, the second that it was Drake. The book was published at the same time in Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian and Portuguese. But no publisher for either a British or a Spanish edition could be found. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNION: SCOTLAND AND WALES There is another reason for a distrust of greater European cohesion among politicians at Westminster. It may be a matter of giving extra powers to the regions of Britain, especially its different nations. Until recently most Scottish people were happy to be part of the UK. But there has always been some resentment in Scotland about the way that it is treated by the central government in London. In the 1980s and early 1990s this resentment increased because of the continuation in power of the Conservative party, for which only around a quarter of the Scottish electorate had voted. Opinion polls consistently showed that between half and threequarters of the Scottish population wanted either ‘home rule’ within the UK or complete independence. The Scottish have become the most enthusiastic Europeans in the UK. Scotland now has its own parliament which controls its internal affairs and even has the power to vary slightly the levels of income tax imposed by the UK government. This is the policy of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which is well represented in the new parliament. In Wales, the situation is different. The southern part of this nation is thoroughly Anglicized and the country as a whole has been fully incorporated into the English governmental structure. Nationalism in Wales is expressed culturally. Wales has its own assembly with responsibility for many internal affairs. Scotland. This was the front page of the Sun’s Scottish edition on January 1992, when it decided to support the campaign for Scottish independence. The design shows the cross of St Andrew, the national flag of Scotland. Ulster. This is the name often used to describe the part of Ireland which is in the UK. It is the name of one of the four ancient kingdom of Ireland. In fact, the British province does not embrace all of Ulster’s nine counties; three of its counties belong to the republic. The name ‘Northern Ireland’ is not used by some nationalists; they think it gives validity to an entity which they do not recognize. One of the alternative names they use is ‘the six counties’. Extremist groups. The most well-known republican group is the IRA (Irish Republican Army). Seventy years ago this name meant exactly what it says. The IRA was composed of many thousands of people who fought for Irish independence. Members of the modern IRA are also known as ‘the Provisionals’. They are a group that split off from the ‘official’ IRA in the 1960s. They have used a name that once had great appeal to Irish patriotic sentiments. In fact, the IRA has little support in the modern Irish Republic and no connection at all with its government. The most well-known loyalist groups are the UFF, the UVF and the UDA. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE UNION: NORTHERN IRELAND In this section, the word ‘Ulster’ is used to stand for the British province of Northern Ireland. The Catholic viewpoint is known as ‘nationalist’ or ‘republican’; the Protestant viewpoint is known as ‘unionist’ or ‘loyalist’ (loyal to the union with Britain). By the beginning of the twentieth century, when Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom, the vast majority of people in Ireland wanted either home rule or complete independence from Britain. Liberal governments in Britain had accepted this and had attempted at various times to make it a reality. However, the one million Protestants in Ulster were violently opposed to this idea. They did not want to belong to a country dominated by Catholics. In Ulster they were in a 65% majority. After the First World War the British government partitioned the country between the (mainly Catholic) south and the (mainly Protestant) north, giving each part some control of its internal affairs. But this was no longer enough for the south. War followed. The eventual result was that the south became independent of Britain. Ulster, however, remained within the United Kingdom, with its own Parliament and Prime Minister. The Protestants had always had the economic power in the six counties. Internal self-government allowed them to take all the political power as well. In the late 1960s a Catholic civil rights movement began. There was violent Protestant reaction and frequent fighting broke out. In 1969 British troops were sent in to keep order. At first they were welcomed, particularly among the Catholics. But troops often act without regard to democratic rights. The welcome disappeared. Extremist organizations from both communities began committing acts of terrorism, such as shootings and bombings. One of these groups, the Provisional IRA, then started a bombing campaign on the British mainland. In response, the British government reluctantly imposed certain measures not normally acceptable in a modern democracy, such as imprisonment without trial and the outlawing of organizations such as the IRA. The application of these measures caused resentment to grow. There have been many efforts to find a solution to ‘the troubles’. In 1972 the British government decided to rule directly from London. Over the next two decades most of the previous poilitical abuses disappeared, and Catholics now have almost the same political rights as Protestants. The troubles may soon be over. However, despite reforms, inequalities remain. The Catholics identify with the south. Most of them would like the Irish government in Dublin to have at least a share in the government of Ulster. The Ulster Protestants are distinct from any other section of British society. While it is important to them that they belong to the United Kingdom. From their point of view, and also from the point of view of some Catholics, a place for Ulster in a federated Europe is a possible solution. 13 RELIGION the vast majority of people in Britain do not regularly attend religious services. Most people’s everyday language is no longer enriched by their knowledge of the Bible and the English Book of Common Prayer. It is significant that the most well-loved English translation of the Bible, known as the King James Bible, was written in the early seventeenth century and that no later translation has achieved similar status. Most people in Britain cannot strictly be described as religious. However, this does not mean that they have no religious or spiritual beliefs or inclinations. Surveys have suggested that three- quarters of the population believe in God and between a third and a half believe in concepts such as life after death, heaven and hell. A majority approve of the fact that religious instruction at state schools is compulsory. Nobody objects to the fact that the Queen is queen ‘by the grace of God’, or the fact that she was crowned by a religious figure in a church. Episcopalianism. The Anglican Church is the official state religion in England only. There are, however, churches in other countries (such as Scotland, Ireland, the USA and Australia) which have the same origin and are almost identical to it in their general beliefs and practices. Members of these churches sometimes describe themselves as ‘Anglican’. However, the term officially used in Scotland and the USA is ‘Episcopalian’, and this is the term which is often used to denote all of these churches. Keeping the sabbath. In the last two centuries, the influence of the Calvinist tradition has been left in laws relating to Sundays. These laws have recently been relaxed, shop opening hours, gambling and professional sport on Sundays are still all restricted in small ways OTHER CONVENTIONAL CHRISTIAN CHURCHES Anglicanism represents a compromise between Protestantism and Catholicism. Its stated doctrine, which rejects the authority of the Pope and other important aspects of Catholic doctrine, is Protestant. But its style, as shown by its hierarchical structure and its forms of worship, is rather Catholic. When Protestantism first took root in Britain, there were many people who rejected not only Catholic doctrine but also ‘Romish’ style. These people did not join the newly-established Anglican Church. They regarded both the authority as obstacles to true worship. Instead, they placed great importance on finding the truth for oneself in the words of the Bible and on living an austere life of hard work and self-sacrifice. This is the origin of the Puritan/Calvinist tradition in Britain. The first church within this tradition was the Presbyterian Church. In Scotland this form of Protestantism was strong. The Church of Scotland has a separate organization from the Anglican Church. It has no bishop. Its head, or ‘Moderator’, is elected by its general assembly. It is the biggest religion in Scotland, where it is often known simply as ‘the kirk’ (the Scots word for ‘church’). There are also many Presbyterians in England and a large number in Northern Ireland. In England, those Protestants who did not accept the authority of the Anglican Church were first known as ‘dissenters’ and later as ‘nonconformists’. These days they are simply called ‘members of the free churches’. However, they regard simplicity and individual prayer as more important than elaborate ritual and public ceremony. After Presbyterians, the largest traditional nonconformist group in Britain is the Methodist Society. Methodists follow the teachings of John Wesley, an eighteenth century preacher who started his career as an Anglican clergyman. He had little doctrinal disagreement with the established church. However, he and his followers considered that it did not care enough about the needs of ordinary people and that its hierarchy was not serious enough about the Christian message. Two other nonconformist groups with a long hostory are the Baptists and the Quakers. The former are comparatively strict both in their interpretation of the Bible and in their dislike of worldly pleasures. The latter, also known as the Society of Friends, are a very small group whose notable characteristics are their complete lack of clergy and their pacifism. They refuse to fight in any war, though they will do ambulance and hospital work. Ecumenicalism. This term is used to describe the trend in the last half of the twentieth century towards greater co-operation among the various Christian churches in Britain. With political and social divisions far enough behind them, they find that they do indeed have a lot in common. The only actual union that ecumenicalism has yet produced is the unification of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, who, in 1972, became the United Reformed Church. Church of Wales? There is no Welsh equivalent of the Church of England or the Church of Scotland. The Anglican Church was disestablished in Wales. Wales is predominantly nonconformist. OTHER RELIGIONS, CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS Since it is a multicultural country where the pressure to conform is comparatively weak, Britain is home to followers of almost every religion and sect imaginable. The numbers of followers of all the traditional Christian churches have been slowly but steadily declining in the second half of the twentieth century. Other Christian sects and churches have been growing. Because of their energetic enthusiasm and their desire to attract new followers, they are sometimes characterized by the term ‘evangelical’. Most of them are similar to traditional nonconformist groups in that they avoid rigid ritual and place great emphasis on scripture. The fastest-growing type of evangelical Christianity, however, places less emphasis on dogma, sin, or giving people a code of behaviour. Instead, the emphasis is on the spiritual and miraculous; on revelation. The oldest existing church of this type in Britain is called Pentecostal, and this term is sometimes used to denote all such groups. Pentecostalism has had a small working-class following for many years. Another term sometimes used of these groups is ‘charismatic’, reflecting both their enthusiasm and their emphasis on the miraculous. The growth of these groups might indicate that many British people feel a gap in their lives which neither the material benefits of modern life nor the conventional churches can fill. The term ‘New Age’ is used to cover a very wide range of beliefs which can involve elements of Christianity, eastern religions and ancient pagan beliefs all mixed together. Interests and beliefs of this kind are not new in Britain. Theosophy, Druidism, Buddhism, Christian Scientism (which believes in the control of the body through the mind) and many other beliefs have all had their followers in this country for a hundred years or more. Despite their great variety and lack of exclusiveness, two features seem to be common to all New Age beliefs: first, an emphasis on personal development; second, respect for the natural environment. The remaining religious groups with significant numbers of followers in Britain are all associated with racial minorities. The most well-established of these are the Jews. Anti-Semitism exists in Britain, but for a long time it has been weaker than it is in most other parts of Europe. The numbers of followers of the Christian Orthodox, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim religions are all growing, mainly because of high birth rates among families belonging to them. Its continued growth is also for another reason. Relative poverty, racial discrimination and occasional conflicts with the authorities have caused people brought up as Muslims to be politicized. Finally, it is necessary to mention what are called ‘cults’. The beliefs of these groups vary so widely that it is impossible to generalize about them. What they seem to have in common is the style of their belief, involving absolute commitment to and unquestioning obedience of the leader around whom they are centred. Cults have a bad reputation for using mind-control techniques. Their extremist tendencies are often offensive to most people. As quiet as a church mouse. Conventional church services in Britain are typically very quiet, except when hymns are being sung. British people attending church services abroad have often been amazed by the noisiness and liveliness of the congregation. In Britain, respect and reverence have traditionally been expressed by silence and stillness. Many people, however, find the atmosphere at traditional services rather repressive. This could help to explain the trend towards evangelical and charismatic Christian churches. Samye Ling. In February 1993 thirty-five monks emerged from a four-year retreat. The monks never left their sleeping quarters. They spent most of their time meditating in wooden boxes, the same boxes in which they slept. They never once listened to the radio, watched television or read a newspaper. These monks were Tibetan Buddhists and the name of the monastery in which the retreat took place is Samye Ling. Samye Ling is in Eskdalemuir, near Lockerbie, in Scotland. It was set up in 1968 when a group of Tibetan monks arrived in the area. They soon collected a large number of European followers and set them to work building Europe’s largest Buddhist temple. So many Buddhists now live in that area. 14 EDUCATION In Britain full-time education is compulsory up to the middle teenage years; the academic year begins at the end of summer; compulsory education is free of charge, but parents may spend money on educating their children privately if they want to. There are three recognized stages, with children moving from the first stage (primary) to the second stage (secondary) at around the age of eleven or twelve. The third (tertiary) stage is ‘further’ education at university or college. There is quite a lot which distinguishes education in Britain from the way it works in other countries. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The British government attached little importance to education until the end of the nineteenth century. It was one of the last governments in Europe to organize education for everybody. Britain was leading the world in industry and commerce, so, it was felt, education must somehow be taking care of itself. Schools and other educational institutions (such as universities) existed in Britain long before the government began to take an interest in education. In typically British fashion, it sometimes incorporated them into the system and sometimes left them outside it. Most importantly, the government left alone the small group of schools which had been used in the nineteenth century to educate the sons of the upper and upper-middle classes. At these ‘public’ schools, the emphasis was on ‘character-building’ and the development of ‘team spirit’ rather than on academic achievement. This involved the development of distinctive customs and attitudes, the wearing of distinctive clothes and the use of specialized items of vocabulary. They were all ‘boarding schools’, so they had a deep and lasting influence on their pupils. Their aim was to prepare young men to take up positions in the higher ranks of the army, in business, the legal profession, the civil service and politics. When the pupils from these schools finished their education, they formed the ruling élite, retaining the distinctive habits and vocabulary which they had learnt at school. They formed a closed group, to a great extent separate from the rest of society. Entry into this group was difficult for anybody who had had a different education. When education and its possibilities for social advancement came within everybody’s reach, new schools tended to copy the features of the public schools. Of more recent relevance is Britain’s general loss of confidence in itself. This change of mood has probably had a greater influence on education than on any other aspect of public life. The modern educational system has been through a period of constant change but there are certain underlying characteristics that seem to remain fixed. Public means private! Schools funded by the government are called ‘state schools’ and education provided in this way is known as ‘state education’. This distinguishes it from ‘private education’, which comprises ‘independent schools’. Some independent schools are known as ‘public schools’. The possibility of confusion is especially great because in the USA schools organized by the government are called ‘public schools’ and the education provided by the government is called the ‘public school system’. In Britain today, about 8% of children are educated outside the state system. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS Some of the many changes that took place in British education in the second half of the twentieth century simply reflected the wider social process of increased egalitarianism. The élitist institutions which first set the pattern no longer set the trend, and are themselves less élitist. Before 1965 most children in the country had to take an exam at about the age of eleven, at the end of their primary schooling. If they passed this exam, they went to a grammar school where they were taught academic subjects to prepare them for university, the professions, managerial jobs or other highly-skilled jobs; if they failed, they went to a secondary modern school, where the lessons had a more practical and technical bias. Many people argued that it was wrong for a person’s future life to be decided at so young an age. The children who went to ‘secondary moderns’ tended to be seen as ‘failures’. Moreover, it was noticed that the children who passed this exam (known as the ‘eleven plus’) were almost all from middle-class families. The system seemed to reinforce class distinctions. During the 1960s these criticisms came to be accepted by a majority of the public. Over the next decade the division into grammar schools and secondary modern schools was changed. These days, most eleven-year-olds all go on to the same local school. These schools are known as comprehensive schools. The decisionto make this change was in the hands of LEAs, so it did not happen at the same time all over the country. In fact, there are still one or two places where the old system is still in force. However, the comprehensive system has also had its critics. Many people felt that there should be more choice available to parents and dislike the uniformity of education given to teenagers. In addition, there is a feeling that educational standards fell during the 1980s and that the average eleven-year old in Britain is significantly less literate and less numerate than his or her European counterpart. Starting in the late 1980s, two major changes were introduced by the government. The first of these was the setting up of a national curriculum. For the first time in British education there is now a set of learning objectives for each year of compulsory school and all state schools are obliget to work towards these objectives. The national curriculum is being introduced gradually and will not be operating fully in all parts of Britain until the end of the 1990s. The other major change is that schools can now decide to ‘opt out’ of the control of the LEA and put themselves directly under the control of the appropriate government department. This does not mean, however, that there is more central control. One final point about the persistence of decentralization: there are really three national curricula. There is one for England and Wales, another for Scotland and another for Northern Ireland. The organization of subjects and the details of the learning objectives vary slightly from one to the other. There is even a difference between England and Wales. Only in the latter is the Welsh language part of the curriculum. The introduction of the national curriculum is also intended to have an influence on the subject- matter of teaching. A consequence of the traditional British approach to education had been the habit of giving a relatively large amount of attention to the arts and humanities, and relatively little to science and technology. A nation of ignoramuses? Guess which state in European Union came last in knowledge of basic astronomical and evolutionary facts. In Britain people’s basic scientific knowledge is unacceptably low. But the results of the EC survey were not all depressing for British scientists and educationalists. In biology, the British appeared comparatively knowledgeable. The survey also showed that, contrary to what was supposed, scientists are very highly respected. The school year. Schools usually divide their year into three ‘terms’, starting at the beginning of September. In addition, all schools have a ‘half-term’ (= half-term holiday), lasting a few days or a week in the middle of each term. SCHOOL LIFE There is no countrywide system of nursery schools. In some areas primary schools have nursery schools attached to them, but in others there is no provision of this kind. Many children do not begin full-time attendance at school until they are about five and start primary school. All schools work a five-day week, with no half-day, and are closed on Saturdays. The day starts at nine o’clock and finishes between three and four. The lunch break usually lasts about an hour-and-a-quarter. Nearly two-thirds of pupils have lunch provided by the school. Parents pay for this, except for the 15% who are rated poor enough for it to be free. Other children either go home for lunch or take sandwiches. Methods of teaching vary, but there is most commonly a balance between formal lessons with the teacher at the front of the classroom, and activities in which children work in small groups round a table with the teacher supervising. In primary schools, the children are mostly taught by a class teacher who teaches all subjects. At the ages of seven and eleven, children have to take national tests in English, mathematics and science. In secondary schools, pupils have different teachers for different subjects and are given regular homework. The older children get, the more likely they are to be separated into groups according to their perceived abilities, sometimes for particular subjects only, sometimes across all subjects. But some schools teach all subjects to ‘mixed ability’ classes. PUBLIC EXAMS The organization of the exams which schoolchildren take from the age of about fifteen exemplifies both the lack of uniformity in British education and also the traditional ‘hands-off’ approach of British governments. First, these exams are not set by the government, but rather by independent examining boards. Everywhere except Scotland, each school or LEA decides which board’s exams its pupils take. Second, the boards publish a separate syllabus for each subject. Some boards offer a vast range of subjects. In practice, nearly all pupils do exams in English language, maths and a science subject, and most also do an exam in technology and one in a foreign language, usually French. Many students take exams in three or more additional subjects. Third, the exams have nothing to do with school years as such. They are divorced from the school system. The vast majority of people who do these exams are school pupils, but formally it is individual people who enter for these exams, not pupils in a particular year of school. An example of the independence of the examining boards is the decision of one of them in 1992 to include certain popular television programmes on their English literature syllabus. Exams and qualifications GCSE = General Certificate of Secondary Education. Marks are given for each subject separately. The syllabuses and methods of examination of the various examining boards differ. However, there is a uniform system of marks, all being graded from A to G. Grades A, B and C are regarded as ‘good’ grades. SCE = Scottish Certificate of Education. The Scottish equivalent of GCSE. Grades are awarded in numbers ( I = the best). A levels = Advanced Levels. They are taken mostly by people around the age of eighteen who wish to go on to higher education. SCE ‘Highers’ = The Scottish equivalent of A-levels. GNVQ = General National Vocational Qualification. Courses and exams in job-related subjects. They are divided into five levels, the lowest level being equivalent to GCSEs/SCEs and the third level to A-levels/’Highers’. Most commonly, GNVQ courses are studied at Colleges of Further Education, but more and more schools are also offering them. Degree: A qualification from a university. Students studying for a first degree are called undergraduates. When they have been awarded a degree, they are known as graduates. Most people get honours degrees, awardedin different classes. There are Class I (a first) Class II,I (an upper second) Class II,II (a lower second) Class III (a third). A student who is below one of these gets a pass degree. Bachelor’s Degree: The general name for a first degree, most commonly a BA (= Bachelor of Arts) or BSc (= Bachelor of Science). Master’s Degree: The general name for a second degree, most commonly an MA or MSc. At Scottish universities, however, these titles are used for first degrees. Doctorate: The highest academic qualification. This usually carries the title PhD (= Doctor of Philosophy). The growth of higher education. In 1960 there were less than twenty-five universities in the whole of Britain. By 1980 there were more than forty, and by now there are well over a hundred institutions which have university status. The sixth form. The word ‘form’ was the usual word to describe a class of pupils in public schools. It was taken over by some state schools. With the introduction of the national curriculum it has become common to refer to ‘years’. However, ‘form’ has been universally retained in the phrase ‘sixth form’, which refers to those pupils who are studying beyond the age of sixteen. The Open University. This is one development in education in which Britain can claim to have led the world. It allows people who do not have the opportunity to be ordinary ‘students’ to study for a degree. Its courses are taught through television, radio and specially written coursebooks. Its students work with tutors, to whom they send their written work and with whom they then discuss it. In the summer, they have to attend short residential courses of about a week. EDUCATION BEYOND SIXTEEN At the age of sixteen people are free to leave school if they want to. With Britain’s enthusiasm for continuing education, far fewer sixteen-year-olds go straight out and look for a job than used to. Most do not find employment immediately and many take part in training schemes which involve on-the-job training combined with part-time college courses. There has been a great increase in educational opportunities for people at this age or older in the last quarter of the twentieth century. About half of those who stay in full-time education will have to leave their school, either because it does not have a sixth form or because it does not teach the desired subjects, and go to a Sixth-form College, or College of Further Education. An increasing number do vocational training courses for particular jobs and careers. Recent governments have been keen to increase the availability of this type of course and its prestige. In England and Wales there is more specialization than there is in most other countries. Typically, a pupil spends a whole two years studying just three subjects in preparation for taking A-level exams, though this is something else which might change in the near future. The independence of Britain’s educational institutions is most noticeable in universities. They make their own choices of who to accept on their courses. There is no right of entry to university for anybody. Universities normally select students on the basis of A-level results and an interview. Those with better exam grades are more likely to be accepted. Finding a university place is not easy. Universities only take the better students. Because of this, and also because of the relatively high degree of personal supervision of students which the low ratio of students to staff allows, nearly all university students complete their studies. Another reason for the low drop-out rate is that ‘full-time’ really means full-time. A large proportion of students live ‘on campus’, or in rooms nearby. How they are paid. MANUAL Rate quoted per hour/week Known as wages Paid every week Method usually in cash NON-MANUAL Rate quoted per year Known as salary Paid every month Method by cheque or into bank The industrious British. The British may not like work very much. But they seem to spend a lot of time doing it. In Britain, full-time employees work the longest hours in Europe, self-employed people work longer than in most other European countries and more people stay in ‘the job market’ than they do in most other European countries. Moreover, holiday periods in Britain are comparatively short and the country has a comparatively small number of public holidays. WORK ORGANIZATIONS The organization which represents employers in private industry is called the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a voluntary association of the country’s trade unions. There are more than a hundred of these, representing employees in all type of business. Most British unions are connected with particular occupations. Many belong to the Labour party to which their members pay a ‘political levy’. However, the unions themselves are not usually formed along party lines; that is, there is usually only one union for each group of employees rather than a separate one for each political party within that group. Unions have local branches, some of which are called ‘chapels’. At the work site, a union is represented by a shop steward, who negotiates with the on-site management. Union membership has been declining since 1979. Immediately before then, the leader of the TUC (its General Secretary) was one of the most powerful people in the country and was regularly consulted by the Prime Minister and other important government figures. In an effort to halt the decline, the TUC declared in 1994 that it was loosening its contacts with the Labour party and was going to forge closer contacts with other parties. One other work organization needs special mention. This is the National Union of Farmers (NUF). It does not belong to the TUC, being made up mostly of agricultural employers and independent farmers. Labour relations: a glossary. When there is a dispute between employees and management, the matter sometimes goes to arbitration; both sides agree to let an independent investigator settle the dispute for them. Refusing to work in the normal way is generally referred to as industrial action. This can take various forms. One of these is a work-to-rule, in which employees follow the regulations concerning their jobs exactly and refuse to be flexible or co-operative in the normal way. Another is a go slow. Finally, the employees might go on strike. Strikes can be official or unofficial. When there is a strike, some strikers act as pickets. They stand at the entrance to the worksite and try to dissuade any fellow-workers who might not want to strike from going into work. THE STRUCTURE OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY The ‘modernization’ of business and industry happened later in Britain than it did in most other European countries. It was not until the 1960s that large corporations started to dominate and that a ‘management class’, trained at business school, began to emerge. Only in the 1980s did graduate business qualifications become the norm for newly-hired managers. British industry performed poorly during the decades following the Second World War. In contrast, British agriculture was very successful. In this industry, large scale organization had been more common in Britain than in other European countries for quite a long time. The economic system in Britain is a mixture of private and public enterprise. From 1945 until 1980 the general trend was for the state to have more and more control. Various industries became nationalized. A major part of the philosophy of the Conservative government of the 1980s was to let ‘marked forces’ rule and to turn state-owned companies into companies owned by individuals. Between 1980 and 1994 a large number of companies were privatized. The privatization of services which western people now regard as essential has necessitated the creation of various public ‘watchdog’ organizations with regulatory powers over the industries which they monitor. The decline of the unions. In the 1980s the British government passed several laws to restrict the power of the unions. One of these abolished the ‘closed shop’. Another made strikes illegal unless a postal vote of all union members had been conducted. In 1984 there was a long miners’ strike. The National Union of Miners refused to follow the new regulations. Its leader, Arthur Scargill, became a symbol of either all the worst lunacies of unionism or the brave fight of the working classes against the rise of Thatcherism. The widening gap between rich and poor. For every pound that the poorest 20% of the population in Britain had in 1978, most people had two pounds and the richest 20% of the population had three pounds. In 1994 the gap in wealth had grown. The richest people were about 50% richer, and most people were about 25% richer. The poorest people had become slightly poorer. Collecting taxes. The government organization which is responsible for collecting taxes in Britain is called the Inland Revenue. For employees, paying their income tax is not something they have to worry about. It is deducted from their pay cheque or pay packet before they receive it. The system is known as PAYE. The tax added to the price of something you buy is called VAT. THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH In the early 1970s Britain had one of the most equitable distributions of wealth in western Europe. By the early 1990s it had one of the least equitable. Some surveys suggested that, by this time, the gap between the richest 10% of the population and the poorest 10% was as great as it had been in the late nineteenth century and that large numbers of households were living below the ‘poverty line’, which meant that they did not have enough money for basic things such as food and heating. It is not a country where people are especially keen to flaunt their wealth. Similarly, people are generally not ashamed to be poor. One reason for the increasing disparity of wealth in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s is that rates of income tax changed. FINANCE AND INVESTMENT Wealth and poverty are relative concepts. Britain is still one of the wealthiest places in the world. Lonbon is still one of the centres of the financial world. The Financial Times-Stock Exchange (FT-SE) is one of the main indicators of world stock market prices. The reason for this is not hard to find. The same features that contributed to the country’s decline as a great industrial and political power are exactly the qualities that attract investors. When people want to invest a lot of money, what matters to them is an atmosphere of stability and a feeling of personal trust. These are the qualities to be found in the ‘square mile’ of the old City of London, which has one of the largest concetrations of insurance companies, merchant banks, joint-stock banks and stockbrokers in the world. As regards stability, many of the institutions in what is known as ‘the City’ can point to a long and uninterrupted history. As regards trust, the city has a reputation for habits of secrecy that might be thought of as undesirable in other aspects of public life, but which in financial dealings become an advantage. In this context, ‘secrecy’ means ‘discretion’. Although more than half of the British population has money invested in the city indirectly, most people are unaware of what goes on in the world of ‘high finance’. Not every adult has a bank account. Many still prefer to use their National Savings account at the post office or one of the country’s many building societies. The old lady of Threadneedle Street. This is the nickname of the Bank of England, the institution which controls the supply of money in Britain and which is located in the ‘square mile’. The name suggests both familiarity and age and also conservative habits. The bank has been described as ‘fascinated by its own past’. The high street banks. The so-called ‘big four’ banks, which each have a branch in almost every town in Britain are: the National Westminster Bank; Barclays Bank; Lloyds Bank; Midland Bank. The Bank of Scotland also has a very large number of branches. So does the Trustee Savings Bank. Currency and cash. The currency of Britain is the pound sterling, whose symbol is ‘£’, always written before the amount. Informally, a pound is sometimes called a ‘quid’. There are 100 pence in a pound. The one-pound coin has four different designs: an English one, a Scottish one, a Northern Irish one and a Welsh one. In Scotland, banknotes with a Scottish design are issued. These notes are perfectly legal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but banks and shops are not obliged to accept them and nobody has the right to demand change in Scottish notes. Before 1971 Britain used the ‘LDS’ system. There were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. If you read any novels set in Britain before 1971, you may come across the following: a farthing = a quarter of a penny a ha’ penny (halfpenny) = half of a penny a threepenny bit = threepence a tanner = an informal name for a sixpenny coin a bob = an informal name for a shilling a half crown = two-and-a-half shillings People were not enthusiastic about the change to what they called ‘new money’. When the one-pound coin was introduced in 1983, it was very unpopular. Different approaches, different subjects. Hare are some details of the front pages of some national dailies for one date (25 March 1993). The Sun – I’VE MESSED UP MY LIFE Topic: an interview with the Duchess of York. Total text on page: 155 words The Daily Mirror - £5m FERGIE’S HIJACKED OUR CHARITY Topic: the activities of the Duchess of York. Total text on page: 240 + words The Daily Express – MINISTER URGES SCHOOL CONDOMS Topic: government campaign to reduce teenage pregnancies. Total text on page: 260 + words The Times – SOUTH AFRICA HAD NUCLEAR BOMBS, ADMITS DE KLERK Total text on pages: 1.900 + words The Guardian – SERB SHELLING HALTS UN AIRLIFT Topic: the war in the former Yugoslavia. Total text on page: 1.900 + words The Daily Telegraph – TORY MAASTRICHT REVOLT IS BEATEN OFF Topic: discussion of the Maastricht Treaty in Parliament. Total text on page: 2.100 + words How many do they sell ? The tabloids sell about six times as many copies as the broadsheets. THE TWO TYPES OF NATIONAL NEWSPAPER Each of the national papers can be characterized as belonging to one of two distinct categories. The ‘quality papers’, or ‘broadsheets’, cater for the better educated readers. The ‘popular papers’, or ‘tabloids’, sell to a much larger readership. They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. While the broadsheets devote much space to politics and other ‘serious’ news, the tabloids concentrate on ‘human interest’ stories, which often means sex and scandal. However, the broadsheets do not completely ignore sex and scandal or any other aspect of public life. Both types of paper devote equal amounts of attention to sport. The reason that the quality newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because they are different shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NATIONAL PRESS: POLITICS The way politics is presented in the national newspapers reflects the fact that British political parties are essentially parliamentary organizations. None of the large newspapers is an organ of a political party. Many are often obviously in favour of the policies of this or that party, but none of them would ever use ‘we’ or ‘us’ to refer to a certain party. What counts for the newspaper publishers is business. Their primary concern is to sell as many copies as possible and to attract as much advertising as possible. The British press is controlled by a rather small number of extremely large multinational companies. This fact helps to explain two notable features. One of these is its freedom from interference from government influence. The press is so powerful in this respect that it is sometimes referred to as ‘the fourth estate’. This freedom is ensured because there is a general feeling in the country that ‘freedom of speech’ is a basic constitutional right. Papers and politics. None of the big national newspapers ‘belongs’ to a political party. However, each paper has an idea of what kind of reader it is appealing to and a fairly predictable political outlook. Each can therefore be seen as occupying a certain position on the right-left spectrum. The right seems to be heavily over-represented in the national press. It is partly because the press tends to be owned by Conservative party supporters. In any case, a large number of readers are not very interested in the political coverage of a paper. They buy it for the sport, or the human interest stories, or for some other reason. Sex and scandal. Sex and scandal sell newspapers. When there are plenty of such stories around involving famous people and royalty, sales of tabloids go up. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NATIONAL PRESS: SEX AND SCANDAL The other feature of the national press is its shallowness. Some of the tabloids have almost given up even the pretence of dealing with serious matters. Apart from sport, their pages are full of little except stories about the private lives of famous people. Sometimes their ‘stories’ are not articles at all, they are just excuses to show pictures of almost naked women. The desire to attract more readers at all costs has meant that even the broadsheets in Britain can look rather ‘popular’ when compared to equivalent ‘quality’ papers in some other countries. They are still serious newspapers containing high-quality articles whose presentation of factual information is usually reliable. But even they now give a lot of coverage to news with a ‘human interest’ angle when they have the opportunity. This emphasis on revealing the details of people’s private lives has led to discussion about the possible need to restrict the freedom of the press. This is because the press has found itself in conflict with another British principle, the right to privacy. Many journalists now appear to spend their time trying to discover the most sensational secrets of well-known personalities. Complaints regarding invasions of privacy are dealf with by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). This organization is made up of newspaper editors and journalists. The press is supposed to regulate itself. It follows a Code of Practice which sets limits on the extent to which newspapers should publish details of people’s private lives. Many people are not happy and various governments have tried to formulate laws on the matter. However, against the right to privacy the press has successfully been able to oppose the concept of the public’s ‘right to know’. Most people don’t use newspapers for ‘serious’ news. For this, they turn to another source – broadcasting. The rest of the press. If you go into any well-stocked newsagent’s in Britain, you will not only find newspapers. You will also see rows and rows of magazines catering for almost every imaginable taste and specializing in almost every imaginable pastime. Among these publications there are a few weeklies dealing with news and current affairs. The Economist is of the same type as Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel and L’Express. It is fairly obviously right-wing in its views, it has the reputation of being one of the best weeklies in the world. The New Statesman and Society is the left-wing equivalent of The Economist and is equally serious and well-written. Private Eye is a satirical magazine which makes fun of all parties and politicians, and also makes fun of the mainstream press. It specializes in political scandal and is forever defending itself in legal actions. Although its humour is often very ‘schoolboyish’, it is also well-written and it is said that no politician can resist reading it. the country’s bestselling magazine is the Radio Times, which, as well as listing all the television and radio programmes for the coming week, contains some fifty pages of articles. High ideals and independence. The reference to one man in the inscription on the right, which is found in the entrance to Broadcasting House (headquarters of the BBC), is appropriate. British politicians were slow to appreciate the social significance of ‘the wireless’. Moreover, being British, they did not like the idea of having to debate culture in Parliament. They were only too happy to leave the matter to a suitable organization and its director general, John Reith. Reith saw in radio an opportunity for ‘education’ and initiation into ‘high culture’ for the masses. He included light entertainment in the programming, but only as a way of capturing an audience for the more ‘important’ programmes of classical music and drama, and the discussions of various topics by famous academics and authors. THE BBC The BBC has the reputation for being ‘the mother of information services’. Its reputation for impartiality and objectivity in news reporting is largely justified. Whenever it is accused of bias by one side of the political spectrum, it can always point out that the other side has complained of the same thing at some other time, so the complaints are evenlybalanced. Interestingly, though, this independence is as much the result of habit and common agreement as it is the result of its legal status. It is true that it depends neither on advertising nor on the government for its income. It gets this from the licence fee which everybody who uses a television set has to pay. However, the government decides how much this fee is going to be, appoints the BBC’s board of governors and its director general, has the right to veto any BBC programme before it has been transmitted and even has the right to take away the BBC’s licence to broadcast. In theory, therefore, it would be easy for a government to influence what the BBC does. Nevertheless, partly by historical accident, the BBC began, right from the start, to establish its effective independence and its reputation for impartiality. In 1932 the BBC World Service was set up, with a licence to broadcast first to the empire and then to other parts of the world. During the Second World War it became identified with the principles of democracy and free speech. In this way the BBC’s fame became international. The BBC also runs five national radio stations inside Britain and several local ones. BBC radio. Radio 1 began broadcasting in 1967. Devoted almost entirely to pop music, its birth was a signal that popular youth culture could no longer be ignored by the country’s established institutions. Radio 2 broadcasts mainly light music and chat shows. Radio 3 is devoted to classical music. Radio 4 broadcasts a variety of programmes, from plays and comedy shows to consumer advice programmes and in-depth news coverage. Radio 5 is largely given over to sports coverage and news. Two particular radio programmes should be mentioned. Soap operas are normally associated with television, but The Archers is actually the longest-running soap in the world. It describes itself as ‘an everyday story of country folk’. It has become so famous that everybody in Britain knows about it and tourist attractions have been designed to capitalize on its fame. Another radio ‘institution’ is the live commentary of cricket Test Matches in the summer. TELEVISION: ORGANIZATION In terms of the size of its audience, television has long since taken over from radio as the most significant form of broadcasting in Britain. Its independence from government interference is largely a matter of tacit agreement. Most recent cases have involved Northern Ireland. For a brief period starting in the late 1980s, the government broke with the convention of non-interference and banned the transmission of interviews with members of outlawed organizations on television. The BBC’s response was to make a mockery of this law by showing such interviews on the screen with an actor’s voice dubbed over the moving mouth of the interviewee. There is no advertising on the BBC. Independent Television (ITV) gets its money from the advertisements it screens. It consists of a number of privately owned companies, each of which is responsible for programming in different parts of the country on the single channel given to it. When commercial television began, it was feared that advertisers would have too much control over programming and that the new channel would exhibit all the worst features of tabloid journalism. The Labour party, in opposition at the time of its introduction, was absolutely against it. Over the years these fears have proved to be unfounded. government commission and its report on ‘social insurance and allied services’. In 1948 the National Health Act turned the report’s recommendations into law and the National Health Service was set up. The mass rush for free treatment caused the government health bill to swell enormously. In response to this, the first payment within the NHS was introduced. The language of benefits. Receiving unemployment benefit is known as being ‘on the dole’ and the money itself is often referred to as ‘dole money’. In order to get this money, people have to regularly present their UB40s (the name of the government form on which their lack of employment is recorded) at the local social security office and ‘sign on’ (to prove that they don’t have work). They will then get a cheque which they can cash at a post office. This cheque is often referred to as a ‘giro’. SOCIAL SERVICES AND CHARITIES As well as giving financial help, the government also takes a more active role in looking after people’s welfare. Services are run either directly or indirectly by local government . Professional social workers have the task of identifying and helping members of the community in need. These include the old, the mentally handicapped and children suffering from neglect or from maltreatment. There seems to be a conflict of values in modern Britain. On the one hand, there is the traditional respect for privacy and the importance placed by successive governments on ‘family values’; on the other hand there is the modern expectation that public agencies will intervene in people’s private lives and their legal ability to do so. Before the welfare state was established and the concept of ‘social services’ came into being, the poor and needy in Britain turned to the many charitable organizations for help. These organizations were staffed mostly by unpaid volunteers and relied on voluntary contributions from the public. There are still today a large number which offer help to large sections of the public in various ways. Charities and the social services departments of local authorities sometimes co-operate. Some well-known charities. The Samaritans organization offers free counselling by phone to anybody who is in despair and thinking of committing suicide. The Salvation Army is organized on military lines and grew out of Christian missionary work in the slums of London in the nineteenth century. It offers help to the most desperate and needy. Barnado’s used to provide homes for orphaned children and still helps children in need. M E N C A P is a charity for the mentally handicapped and campaigns on their behalf. Getting medicine on the NHS. When medicine is needed, the doctor writes out a prescription which the patient then takes to a chemist’s. There is a charge for each prescription, which is the same regardless of the real cost of the medicine, although many categories of people are exempt. THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE The NHS is generally regarded as the jewel in the crown of the welfare state. It is very ‘un-British’ in the uniformity and comprehensiveness of its organization. When it was set up it did not accommodate itself to what had already come into existence. Instead of entering into a partnership with the hundreds of existing hospitals run by charities, it simply took most of them over. The system is organized centrally and there is little interaction with the private sector. In another respect the NHS is very typically British. This is in its avoidance of bureaucracy. There are no forms to fill in and no payments to be made which are later refunded. All that anybody has to do to be assured the full benefits of the system is to register with a local NHS doctor. Most doctors in the country are General Practitioners (GPs) and they are at the heart of the system. The exceptions to free medical care are teeth and eyes. Even here, large numbers of people do not have to pay and patients pay less than the real cost of dental treatment because it is subsidized. The potential of medical treatment has increased so dramatically, and the number of old people needing medical care has grown so large, that costs have rocketed. Medical practitioners frequently have to decide which patients should get the limited resources available and which will have to wait, possibly to die as a result. The British government has implemented reforms in an attempt to make the NHS more cost-efficient. One of these is that hospitals have to use external companies for duties such as cooking and cleaning. Another is that hospitals can ‘opt out’ of local authority control and become self-governing ‘trusts’. Similarly, GPs who have more than a certain number of patients on their books can choose to control their own budgets. The NHS is decreasing, infact, there has been a steady rise in the number of people paying for private medical insurance in addition to the state insurance contribution which, by law, all employed people must pay. The country spends less money per person on health care than any other country in the western world. One possible reason for this is that the money which GPs get from the government does not depend on the number of consultations they perform. Instead, it depends on the number of registered patients they have. Private medical care. There are a number of private medical insurance schemes in the country. The biggest is BUPA. Such schemes are becoming popular. This is not because people believe that private treatment is any better than NHS treatment from a purely medical point of view. But it is widely recognized as being more convenient. NHS patients who need a non-urgent operation often have to wait more than a year, and even those who need a relatively urgent operation sometimes have to wait more than a month. Under private schemes, people can choose to have their operation whenever, and as soon as, they want. It is this which is their main attraction. There are also some hospitals and clinics which are completely private. These are sometimes called ‘nursing homes’. Nurses’ uniforms. One of the most instantly recognizable uniforms in Britain is that conventionally worn by female nurses. For years it has been widely criticized as out-of-date and sexist, promoting the image of nurses as brainless, sexy girls. The annual conference of the Royal College of Nursing always passes a resolution calling for the introduction of trousers. Skirts are said to result in back pain as nurses struggle to keep their dignity while lifting heavy patients. The hat is also criticized as impractical. The emergency services. From anywhere in Britain, a person who needs emergency help can call ‘999’ free of charge. The operator connects the caller to the fire service, the ambulance service, or the police. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION Specialist doctors have greater prestige than ordinary GPs, with hospital consultants ranking highest. These specialists are allowed to work part-time for the NHS and spend the rest of their time earning big fees from private patients. At medical school, it is not automatically assumed that a brilliant student will become a specialist. The idea of the family doctor with personal knowledge of the circumstances of his or her patients was established in the days when only rich people could afford to pay for the services of a doctor. The status of nurses in Britain may be traced to their origins in the nineteenth century. The Victorian reformer Florence Nightingale became a national heroine for her organization of nursing and hospital facilities during the Crimean War. Because of her, nurses have an almost saintly image in the minds of the British public, being widely admired for their caring work. The nursing profession has always been rather badly paid and there is a very high turnover of nursing staff. Born at a time of war, it is distinctively military in its uniforms, its clearcut separation of ranks, its insistence on rigid procedural rules and its tendency to place a high value on group loyalty. Alternative medicine. One reason why the British are, per person, prescribed the fewest drugs in Europe is possibly the common feeling that many orthodox medicines are dangerous and should only be taken when absolutely necessary. An increasing number of people regard them as actually bad for you. These people are turning instead to some of the forms of treatment which generally go under the name of ‘alternative medicine’. However, the medical ‘establishment’ has been slow to consider the possible advantages of such treatments and the majority of the population still tends to regard them with suspicion. One of the few alternative treatments to have originatedin Britain are the Bach flower remedies. 22 THE ARTS THE ARTS IN SOCIETY Interest in the arts in Britain used to be largely confined to a small élite. Most British people prefer their sport, their television and videos, and their other free-time activities to anything ‘cultural’. Publicly, the arts are accepted and tolerated but not actively encouraged. Government financial support for the arts is one of the lowest of any western country. One of the principles of Thatcherism was that the arts should be driven by ‘market forces’. In schools, subjects such as art and music, though always available, tend to be pushed to the sidelines. The arts are not normally given a very high level of publicity. Television programmes on ‘cultural ‘ subjects are usually shown late at night. Each summer, many high-quality arts festivals take place around the country, but the vast majority of people do not even know of their existence. London has some of the finest collections of painting and sculpture in the world, but tourist brochures give little space to this aspect of the city. Except for the most famous, artists themselves have comparatively little public recognition. Some British artists have international reputations, and yet most people in Britain don’t even know their names. It is almost as if the British are keen to present themselves as a nation of philistines. And yet, hundreds of thousands of people are enthusiastically involved in one or other of the arts, but with a more-or-less amateur or part-time status. All over the country, thousands of people learn handicrafts in their free time, and sometimes sell their work in local craft shops. Similarly, there are thousands of musicians of every kind, performing around the country for very little money and making their own recordings in very difficult circumstances. Some amateur British choirs, such as the Bach Choir of London and King’s College Chapel Choir in Cambridge, are well- known throughout the world.