This Little Britain Read online

  THIS LITTLE BRITAIN

  How one small country built

  the modern world

  HARRY BINGHAM

  To my beloved N

  ‘Teach me thy love to know;

  That this new light, which now I see,

  May both the work and workman show:

  Then by a sunne-beam I will climbe to thee.

  See that ye love one another.’

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  LANGUAGE

  Shaw’s Potato

  Declining to Conjugate

  A World of Squantos

  LITERATURE

  Lashings of Pop

  Of Cows and Beef

  Half-chewed Latin

  A Wilderness of Monkeys

  LAW

  The Rustics of England

  ‘No Free Man…’

  A Handful of Feathers

  From the Same Mud

  THE LAWMAKERS

  A Bettir Lawe

  No Remote Impassive Gaze

  Good King Frank

  A Most Strange and Wonderfull Herring

  Clean Hands, Dirty Money

  WARFARE

  Invasion

  The Mighty Monmouth

  How to Be a Superpower

  Lacking Elan

  President Monroe’s Trousers

  SCIENCE

  The First Scientist

  Ex Ungue Leonem

  The Last Scientist

  A Painful Admission

  TECHNOLOGY

  Raising Water by Fire

  The Horse, the Car, the Pogo Stick

  Colossus

  ECONOMY

  Whose Land?

  The Monster with 10,000 Eyes

  Wheat without Doong

  A Wave of Gadgets

  The Food of the People

  EMPIRE

  And Like a Torrent Rush

  The Gates of Mercy

  The Reluctant Father

  Bombay Direct

  Soldiers and Slaves

  LIFESTYLE

  The British Way of Death

  Yobs

  Clouds of Feculence

  Greeks

  Very Fine Linen

  CONCLUSION

  Age and Liberty

  Acknowledgements

  Sources

  Also by Harry Bingham

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  Who are we?

  For we British, that’s an oddly difficult question. Although our national self-assessment usually notes a number of good points (we’re inventive, tolerant, and at least we’re not French), it lists a torrent of bad ones too. Our society is fragmented, degenerate, irresponsible. Our kids are thugs, our workers ill educated, our managers greedy and incompetent. We hate our weather. Our public services are abysmal. Our society is rude and unfriendly. We drink too much and in the wrong way. Our house prices are crazy, our politicians sleazy, our roads jammed, our football team rubbish. When The Times invited readers to put forward new designs for the backs of British coins, one reader wrote in saying, ‘How about a couple of yobs dancing on a car bonnet or a trio of legless ladettes in the gutter?’

  All this denigration may not be good for our self-esteem, but it does at least suggest the existence of some sort of national identity, however humble. But scratch below the surface and that identity quickly starts to unravel. Take the nationality issue, for example. How many countries are there whose name is as confused as ours? Are we best called Great Britain? The British Isles? The United Kingdom? Or none of these? The technically correct title is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland — a composite term which makes reference to a second composite term (Great Britain) and a chunk of land (Northern Ireland) that was until recently claimed by another sovereign state.

  Confused? It gets worse. Take sport. The English mostly cheer the team of any ‘home nation’, including the Republic of Ireland, which isn’t a home nation at all. Meanwhile the Scots cheer the Welsh and vice versa, while both will cheer anyone at all if they’re playing against England. Ryan Giggs, the best Welsh footballer of his generation, once captained the English Schoolboys. One of the leading ‘English’ bowlers is Simon Jones, a Welshman. In rugby, Ireland plays as one team, in football as two, in cricket as one team occasionally masquerading as an English county.

  It’s sometimes said that our identity confusion has been exacerbated by today’s multicultural society. Anyone reading today’s newspapers would almost certainly come away with an impression of a society uneasy with itself, a land where racial and religious tension seethes only inches beneath the surface. But if this is the case — and I doubt it — it’s certainly nothing new. Contemporary multiculturalism may pose challenges, but infinitely fewer than it posed in the past. The Viking version of multiculturalism generally involved a sword in the belly. The sixteenth-century version of a multi-faith society involved bonfires, stakes and heretics.

  In any case, our national confusion goes far wider and deeper than simply national, ethnic or religious issues. Recent reactions to the war in Iraq exposed long-standing divisions about the country’s attitudes to its past. When the British government chose to go to war, was it acting in its old role of imperialist bully? Or in its equally old role of global policeman and bringer of freedom? The national debate displayed both responses, both equally impassioned. The rise of the British Empire is arguably the most salient fact in the history of the modern world. Should we be proud of it or ashamed? Or perhaps the empire has nothing to do with us any more? For all our love of military adventure, are we perhaps just a glorified adjunct of the United States, a kind of East Atlantic Puerto Rico?

  Our own government is hardly keen to boast on our behalf. The Home Office recently published a booklet called Life in the United Kingdom, aimed at helping immigrants navigate the path to citizenship. It’s not a bad publication at all. It begins with a twenty-five-page history of the country, from Roman times to the present. The survey is balanced and accurate, if a bit on the bland side. But what it leaves out is peculiar. It does say, ‘British industry came to lead the world in the nineteenth century.’ But that hardly gets the point across. The fact is that at the peak of our industrial power, we dug two-thirds of the world’s coal, refined half its iron, forged five-sevenths of its steel, manufactured two-fifths of its hardware, and wove half its commercial cotton cloth. That’s not simply leading others. That’s being so far ahead of others that we were, in effect, imagining an entire new world into existence, a world that has utterly altered human expectations of health, wealth and technological possibility.

  Likewise, the booklet comments that ‘the railway engine [was] pioneered by George and Robert Stephenson’. Well, yes, so it was, but British inventors have also played key roles in developing the steam engine, the telegraph, aeronautics, the steam turbine, the microscope, the screw-driven iron ship, industrial steel, multiple-print photography, the electric light, the chain-driven bicycle, the electric generator, pneumatic tyres, the telephone, television, radar, the fax machine, the computer, the jet engine, the pocket calculator, and the World Wide Web. Those medical and public health innovations which Britons were most instrumental in developing — vaccination, integrated mains sewerage, antiseptic surgery and antibiotics — have saved far more lives than all other medical innovations put together. Are these facts really not worth a mention?

  And why stop there? The British empire covered a quarter of the earth’s surface, but used an army smaller than that of Switzerland to exert its rule. The world speaks our language. Our scientists have won vast numbers of Nobel Prizes, more than those in any country except the United States. The evolution of such things as habeas cor
pus, trial by jury, due process, the abolition of torture, and the rule of law aren’t purely British in inspiration, but owe more to us than to anyone else. Our parliamentary democracy has been hugely influential in spreading ideals of liberty and representative government around the world. At the Royal Navy’s peak, it owned more than half of the world’s warships and made possible the nineteenth-century globalization of trade and finance.

  These aren’t small things. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the modern world has been more deeply shaped by Britain than by any other country. And we brought some good stuff to the party. Democracy, the limited state, the rule of law, free trade, industrialization, modern agriculture, modern finance, international law — none of these is exclusively British, but they’re all sticky with our fingerprints. To the (very considerable) extent that the world is now shaped by American power and American values … well, we know which country gave her birth. If the modern world is richer, freer, more peaceful, more democratic and healthier than it was, then Britain has played a leading role, often the leading role, in that transformation.

  This book is about just that. What follows is a series of observations about very particular aspects of our culture and history. But underlying these observations is a broader theme, that of British exceptionalism: the ways in which our history is most strikingly different from that of our neighbours. This book takes a particular interest in the many things that we did first, or best, or most, or were the only ones ever to do. It focuses especially on those of our oddities which spread across the world — everything from football to the rule of law.

  This isn’t meant to be a balanced way to view ourselves. A balanced view would take into account the many ways in which we were identical to our neighbours, or borrowed ideas and institutions from them. It would look at the ways in which we were last or worst or feeblest. Yet those viewpoints already have wide expression in our culture. Those ladettes in the gutter or the yobs dancing on the bonnet symbolize all that we already dislike in ourselves. This book is a reminder of the other side, the side that our grumbling too often ignores.

  Along the way, a picture of Britain emerges: one possible answer to the conundrum of Britishness, one way of answering that question, ‘Who are we?’ And if the book skates over much of what is least praiseworthy in our culture, then at least it aims to do justice to our joint creation: a world inconceivably better now than it was four hundred years ago. A world that, compared with that earlier age, is (mostly) prosperous, (mostly) free, (mostly) technically advanced. In short, a world that is (mostly) British.

  Before proceeding farther, a few caveats are in order. Readers wanting to race straight through to the action should do just that.

  The first caveat has to do with the horrendous complexity of the term ‘British’. Britain in its current shape dates from only 1707, and that’s to ignore all the complexities of Britain’s relationship with Ireland, and indeed its relationships with the overseas colonies and dominions. Before the Act of Union, there was a century in which the crowns of Scotland and England were joined, albeit with one or two rude interruptions, yet those two countries and Ireland were all importantly separate from one another. That separateness, indeed, was a crucial complicating factor during the turbulence of that century. Prior to 1603, old-fashioned histories of Britain are generally content to talk about England almost exclusively until a British identity starts to flicker into life in the early-modern era. This approach is a nonsense, of course. If Britain means anything at all prior to 1603, then it designates a geographical area that certainly includes Scotland. The most recent history to take these issues seriously was called simply The Isles, a title that squarely places geography ahead of politics.

  The complications of Britishness are perhaps most evident in relation to Ireland. That country was colonized by the British, and its citizens were for a long time both Irish and British. Which identity is paramount? It all depends on who you ask. When called an Irishman, the Dublin-born, London-dwelling Duke of Wellington is said to have replied that ‘Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.’ On the other hand, the Ulster-born, Dublin-dwelling Seamus Heaney refused to have his work included in a book of British verse, writing, ‘Be advised, my passport’s green. / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast The Queen’

  In this book, I haven’t attempted to solve this or any other identity problem. Indeed, I’ve simply avoided definitions altogether. If Scottish soldiers in Canada develop the sport of ice hockey, then that, for me, is an example of Britishness in action. If a French-born king of England (but not Wales or Scotland) develops the common law, then that too, for the purposes of this book, counts as an example of Britishness in action. There’s no neat logic in action here, but then if it’s logic you were after, you shouldn’t have bought a book about Britain.

  I’ve a further confession to make, namely that Scotland, Wales and Ireland don’t figure much in my account of exceptionalism in the pre-modern era. There are two reasons for that, one good, one bad. The bad one is simply that this is a short book with a lot to do. By focusing on England, I was able to narrow the amount I needed to read about and write about. It was a labour-saving device, and nothing more. The better reason is that, in those earlier centuries, the most important elements of exceptionalism to arise anywhere in the British Isles had to do with the English language, the English common law and the rise of the English parliament. Since England would become the dominant partner in the subsequent political unions, those English oddities would prove more lastingly influential than comparable oddities elsewhere in the archipelago. In any event, it’s possible to get too hung up about all of this. I live in England, but spent huge chunks of my childhood in Wales. My grandfather was Protestant Ulster, his ancestors Scots and his wife Manx. My wife’s maiden name is Moroney, and her father Catholic Irish. I’m hardly exceptional in being this much of a mixture. If football fans of one home nation want to get all steamed up with those of another, then that’s up to them, but it’s not much different from the liver yelling insults at the pancreas, the heart giving aggro to the gall bladder.

  Finally, one last caveat. This book is rather unfashionable in celebrating British achievement. It suggests that the nation’s part in shaping the modern world exceeds the role played by any other country, not only in terms of the scale of its impact, but in terms of its benefits too. (That’s not to say there weren’t disbenefits also. There were, and very significant ones at that.) Any such celebratory tone can easily seem rather embarrassing, a display of bad taste akin to having a flagpole in your front garden or enjoying the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Personally, though, I’m not sure that questions of taste should determine what history to remember. The naval historian, Nick Rodger, had this to say about his own field of expertise:

  Many modern writers implicitly assume that the functions of the Navy were essentially aggressive, to win territory overseas. It seems for them to follow that sea power is nowadays both uninteresting, except to specialists in imperial history, and morally disreputable, something that the honest historian ought to pretend does not exist.

  A similar comment could be made more broadly about any view of Britain which lays too much emphasis on the positive, on the distinctive and on the world-shaping. This book certainly does lay too much emphasis on these things. I hope I’ve made it crystal clear that it is not intended as an even-handed survey. Yet honest historians ought never to pretend or imagine things away. History, like life, doesn’t make for easy moral conclusions. Any historian wanting to avoid a ‘morally disreputable’ and intellectually shallow patriotism risks biasing the picture in the other direction, overlooking facts that should not be overlooked. If this book has a serious purpose, then it’s this: to thump down on the table a whole collection of such facts. Included in the collection are some obvious but under-emphasized ones, such as British naval predominance, and some less obvious ones too — for example, facts connected with social welfare, homicide, sports or the
health transition.

  What one makes of this collection is another matter altogether: a business for professional historians, not rank amateurs like myself. Having written a book built entirely on the scholarship of others, I’m as keenly aware as it’s possible to be of how much remarkable work is being done by historians today. I’m not just indebted to their work, I’m in awe of it.

  LANGUAGE

  SHAW’S POTATO

  The playwright and would-be spelling reformer George Bernard Shaw famously pointed out that, using only common English spellings, we could write the word fish as ghoti:

  F: gh as in rough

  I: o as in women

  SH: ti as in nation

  Shaw couldn’t have been trying very hard, if this was the best he could come up with. If he’d turned his attention to the other half of Britain’s national dish, he could perfectly well have come up with ghoughbteighpteau for potato:

  P: gh as in hiccough

  O: ough as in though

  T: bt as in debt

  A: eigh as in neighbour

  T: pt as in pterodactyl

  O: eau as in bureau

  Other languages have their eccentric spellings, of course, but English is in a league of its own. French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian all spell more or less as they sound. English just isn’t like that. If you heard individual words from this paragraph and were asked to write them out, how would you know to choose more rather than moor or maw? Know rather than no? Would rather than wood? Write rather than right or rite? Or rather than oar, ore or awe? Their rather than they’re or there? You rather than ewe? Course rather than coarse? But rather than butt? In rather than inn? For rather than four, fore or even (for those acquainted with the archaic term for Scottish gypsies) faw? The answer is that, of course, you couldn’t. But nothing happens without a reason, and the strange spellings of English have their reasons too, lurking deep in the heart of Shaw’s potato.