The Second World War hammered Britain, bleeding it economically, killing 355,000 Britons, and subjecting Brits to the terror of being pummeled by thousands of Nazi bombs daily. During the Battle of Britain—the three months in 1940 when Nazis most viciously attacked the island—over 23,000 British civilians died.
“The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free… Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
—Winston Churchill, speech in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940
Britain did not back down: the British Bulldog, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill was known, never seriously entertained the thought of surrender. With newly invented radar, valiant fighters, and Churchill’s resonant voice calming the masses nightly from the radio, the Brits won the Battle of Britain, becoming the only European country to fight back a full-blown Nazi invasion—except, that is, for brave little Malta, the British colony that suffered bombing for five months straight and didn’t give up. (See “Malta,” page 392.)
WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965)
Pasty-faced, homely, and prone to long bouts of sheer gloom, Winston Churchill so altered the fate of Britain—and Europe—that many historians regard him as the single most influential person of the past century. Jowly Churchill, who rarely strayed far from a fine cigar, was a correspondent for London’s Morning Post in South Africa during the Boer War (1899–1902); when he was captured, his dramatic escape made for page-turning journalism and turned his byline into a household name. He used fame to springboard into politics, and during the First World War he became head of the navy, a position he was removed from after ordering the landings at Gallipoli (off Turkey), a mistake that cost 21,000 British lives. He slunk back into Parliament, and in 1925, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer (head of the treasury). Churchill brought back the gold standard—a huge error that had esteemed British economist John Maynard Keynes ridiculing Churchill and calling his policies “feather-brained.” Churchill was right about one thing: the looming threat of Nazis. Through the 1930s, Churchill’s frequent tirades about Hitler only bored his fellow parliamentarians, who thought Churchill obsessed. After Hitler took Poland and Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Churchill’s foresight was rewarded. Chamberlain’s government crumbled, and the king asked Churchill to head a new one. Appointed prime minister on May 10, 1940, Churchill proved to be Hitler’s strongest psychological enemy and the British symbol of strength. The prime minister’s fire was in his words, particularly those broadcast in radio addresses often heard across the world. Against a backdrop of whining air-raid sirens and exploding bombs, Churchill’s voice might as well have boomed from the heavens; so inspirational and calming were the speeches he wrote himself that he came to personify steely defiance against Nazis. While his oratory skills helped steady the Brits, his military alignments helped win the war. Hours after Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, Churchill sailed for America, speaking before Congress on Christmas Eve and pulling the United States into the war, where her forces helped to bring Hitler down.
Though the Allies won the war, Churchill lost his office in 1945. He nevertheless predicted what the Soviet Union was up to, coining the term “Iron Curtain” in a 1946 speech in Missouri. In 1951, he returned to Number 10 Downing Street, but this time he accomplished little, proving to be a greater leader in war than in calm. In 1953, he won a Nobel Prize, not for peace, but in literature for his nonfiction works including A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Britain built herself back up with Marshall Plan funding from the U.S., almost a quarter of which went to the UK. Having worked well together during the war, Brits and Americans continued gathering intelligence—this time under the guise of Echelon, an intelligence operation run jointly by the British GDHQ and the American NSA, the agency recently rapped for tapping Americans’ telephone conversations.21 The two countries are also the big boys of NATO, the formidable coalition of Western powers with a nuclear arsenal (hidden across Europe) that is credited with stopping further Soviet advances into Europe during the Cold War. Through pretty much every military venture the U.S. has stepped into for decades, Britain has been by her side. The relationship is well matched: Brits realized that if they wanted to stay on top of the power heap, they needed to stay partnered with Yanks, and Yanks understood that Brits helped legitimize their actions, making them bilateral at least.
The United States is the biggest arms dealer on the planet, but Britain is number two, selling about $9 billion a year. Along with France, Britain is one of the two EU countries with nuclear weapons.
THE SWINGING SIXTIES
Though Britain had firmly established herself as a literary and drama gold mine several centuries back, she lagged in the music department—unless you count whining bagpipes and somber church organs—until the 1960s. Who knows what triggered it—Bo Diddley and Elvis, or the underground culture of acid and pot—but never in twentieth-century music was there a more happening scene. The Beatles set poetic lyrics to loud guitar, but kept a popular touch. The Kinks added backstreet raspiness and raunch, and the Rolling Stones put it into an explicitly sexual style, complete with Mick Jagger humping the mic. Twiggy introduced minis, and Carnaby Street and Biba were the places to shop, whether for Yardley lip gloss or Mary Quant geometric-print clothes. The scene lasted into the 1970s, when drugs, religion, bad relationships, and burnout seemed to drag everyone down. But during that era Britain stole the show from Paris—and she still hasn’t given it back.
Britain’s Victorian-era status and strength, however, weren’t regained until the 1990s. And the path to getting there included numerous right-wing Tory (Conservative Party) governments, including three terms of Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady who made weapons of her will and her handbag—which she was known to whack on the table during summits, to great effect.
MARGARET THATCHER (PRIME MINISTER, 1979–1990)
The grocer’s daughter made the leap to Iron Lady during one of the toughest patches of modern British history. The economy was a wreck, unions were striking, and Argentines were trying to snatch back the Falklands. She was tough on all counts, privatizing state-held companies, dispatching police to break up strikes, and sending British troops to regain the Falklands in 1982—sending them there, it was later revealed, with nuclear weapons ready to launch. Nobody ever called Britain’s first female prime minister a weak, flaky dame, especially when she was wielding her purse. She was famously friendly with President Ronald Reagan and signed Britain up for President George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War in 1991. She also made Britain’s biggest arms deal of all times, selling $50 billion worth to the Saudis. Fifteen years after she stepped down, Thatcher still divides Brits. Some say she was the best thing to happen to the UK; the rest say she was the worst.
Britain isn’t a two-party system like the U.S., but the race tends to end with either the Conservatives (on par with U.S. Republicans) or Labor (on par with Democrats) taking the prime minister’s seat. Tony Blair, leading a flashed-up New Labor Party in 1997, beat out the Conservative Party that had ruled for most of the postwar era. In the same way that George W. Bush makes a mockery of traditional Republican values (against big government and nation building, for starters), Blair confuses the issues Labor used to stand for. The Labor leader is a hawk (traditionally a conservative stance) who wants more nuclear energy (ditto) and who pushed a privacy-stripping national ID card. Labor might point out that times have changed—and indeed they have. The Conservative Party is most vocal about the travesty of Iraq and the unprepared state
of troops being sent there—and the Conservatives are emphasizing small-scale renewable resources, solar panels, and wind turbines on houses. You know the world has gone wacky when environmental group Greenpeace gives a green light to Conservatives, the party that beat out Labor in 2006 local elections. Look for the name David Cameron—the youthful head of the Conservative Party looks likely to next lead the Brits.
Hot Spots
London: The land of designer hotels, designer martinis, designer magazines, and designers is more multicultural and hopping than ever—especially now that the place isn’t forced to shutter down before midnight.
Northern Ireland: In the six counties still bound to Britain, flare-ups continue despite the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but tourists are tiptoeing back in again—with good reason. The place is gorgeous, with rugged coasts, castle ruins, and mansions turned into inns. Nevertheless, the extra costs for police and security to keep the peace make it a financial burden for Britain. Almost half the Brits want to cut Northern Ireland loose. (See “Ireland,” page 117.)
SCOTCH WHISKY VS. IRISH WHISKEY
Connoisseurs and nationalists get very upset if you confuse the best-known drink of Scotland with that made in Ireland. The easiest way to distinguish them is by the spelling: if it’s “whisky,” it’s from Scotland, if it’s “whiskey,” it’s not. Scotsmen light up when they talk about their whisky, which draws its unique essence from the magic combo of burnt Scottish peat and pure Scottish water; you’d think it was an elixir, the way they gush. Whisky is typically made from barley (or rye) dried over a peat fire that imparts a smoky taste; it’s often a single malt, meaning it comes from one distillery. Irish whiskey tends to be blended—a cocktail of whiskeys from different distilleries—peat fires aren’t normally used, and it’s usually sweeter. Some of the finest Scotch whiskies, say connoisseurs, are Oban, Talisker, and Lagavulin. One more mistake not to make: never call a Scotsman “Scotch.”
Scotland: With heather-clad moors and abundant fauna, Scotland is the nature reserve to the north, a land where the posh smoking-jacket crowd heads for deer stalking, salmon fishing, and grouse shooting—and where ex-Beatles buy islands. The salt-sprayed land of kilts, bagpipes, and yummy haggis—a sheep’s tummy stuffed with oatmeal and a medley of chopped guts—Scotland and her distinct culture survived centuries of English domination. Gaelic was lost as the dominant tongue, but the thick brogue and feisty spirit live on. Rich with legends and rituals, the country’s most famous event is August’s Edinburgh Festival, where streets and every available venue fills with music and theater. But nothing is more festive than the ceilidh—a social gathering where Scots swirl each other around roaring pinewood fires to traditional shoe-stamping music of fiddle and accordion, with skirts swinging high and whisky glasses clinking. Nationalists still talk of shaking free of England, using money from oil pumped off Scotland’s coast, but calls for an independent Scotland have grown fainter since 1999, when she gained her own parliament and more autonomy.
Wales: Setting of Arthurian legend, Wales served as resource central with coal mines and steel mills—many now closed—and is the quietest and most isolated of the British bunch. But lately you can hear very loud mumbling in this land that has her own language (only 20 percent now speak it), her own church (Nonconformists who sent Anglicans packing), and her own history (they’re still miffed that the English snagged the title “Prince of Wales” for the Crown Prince). Sick of urban crime and spiraling house prices, many Londoners are moving west. “They sell their houses in London for a million pounds,” explains one Welshman, “then come and buy one of ours, making quite a little profit in the move. Then they throw a thousand-pound check ($1,900) to the church, and more to the civic boards, and then they’re sitting on the school governing bodies and all the boards and running your town.” His claim may be exaggerated, but that’s why many Welsh see the movement of Londoners into their turf as another English invasion.
Sellafield: This sprawling nuclear recycling complex emits the most radioactivity in Europe (making even faraway Norwegian crabs radioactive), and the site is more contaminated with radioactive waste than the ground around Chernobyl.22
Loch Ness: You know what they are looking for: the dragon-serpent known as Nessie. The question is why so many people have become so obsessed with the creature that they’ve moved to the Scottish loch and devoted their lives to looking for her, when there are so many more worthwhile pursuits—such as trying to communicate with extraterrestrials. (See “Sweden,” page 250.)
Hotshots
Tony Blair: Prime Minister, 1997–present. Heading the New Labor Party, slick Tony is an Oxford-trained barrister whose courtroom abilities translate well in Parliament, where he wows with his speeches. Self-assured and cocky, he ruled the roost during some of Britain’s happiest hours—but he also made her an international terrorist target. He began to be known as “Tony Bliar” after he exaggerated Iraq’s WMD capabilities in his famous “forty-five minutes” speech, and hid info about the 7/7 attack, and he continues sliding down popularity charts as death counts in Iraq soar. All sides are screaming for him to step down, including his colleague Gordon Brown, to whom he fibbed as well (see below). The Bible never strays far from his bed; he believes that all the world’s questions are answered in its pages—though he apparently skips over the ones that say “the end.”
Blair’s apparent fondness for Bush resulted in his detractors branding him a poodle, and he was spoofed in a 2002 George Michael animated video, which showed Bush tossing a bored dog a bone, which Blair continually retrieved.
Gordon Brown: Chancellor of the Exchequer (powerful finance minister), 1997–present. “Beep beep, Tony, outta my way!” he seems to be saying, sometimes subtly and sometimes not. A Scotsman who heads the country’s treasury department and is quick to point out what a fine job he’s done (and largely, he has), Brown has his eyes on Britain’s highest power seat—and it’s not the first time he’s gazed at it. In 1994, Brown dropped plans to put his name in the hat for the Labor leadership, after Blair promised he would leave the prime minister’s post on turning fifty.23 Apparently Blair hasn’t seen a calendar; his half-century birthday was in May 2003. With Labor’s popularity plunging, by the time Blair steps down he may have ruined Brown’s shot at the seat. Beep beep, Tony, beep beep.
LADY DIANA (1961–1997)
It was a little too chocolate-box to have been true, cynics said from the start. On July 29, 1981, Prince Charles, aged thirty-two, and Lady Di, a blushing twenty-year-old former kindergarten teacher and daughter of an earl, captured the collective heart of dreamy romantics everywhere with their fairy-tale wedding. Di looked smashing in ivory taffeta and antique lace, her twenty-five-foot train trailing down the aisle of St. Paul’s; Charles looked regally somber, with his decorated chest dripping with shiny medals, while 3,500 invited guests and some 750 million viewers across the world toasted the royal matrimony that finally brought youth and modern style into the castle. The union quickly produced two handsome male heirs—William and Harry—and the occasional peep into a royal world that appeared less than idyllic. Charles was distant and boring, Di was bulimic and lonely, Queen Elizabeth was as cold as a medieval stone castle on a stormy December night. The divorce that gossips had long predicted became reality in 1996. Charles suffered a drop in popularity as a result; Di publicly embraced worthy causes, such as land mine removal, and privately embraced a few men who raised royal eyebrows. Her final beau, Dodi Fayed—son of Harrods owner Mohamed Fayed—died alongside her one night in late August 1997, when the Mercedes S280 they were in spun out of control in a Paris tunnel. The death was blamed on the intoxicated state of driver Henri Paul, who was fleeing paparazzi, but there have been plenty of rumors otherwise. Mohamed Fayed is but one who says the couple was murdered.
That’s Sir to you: Every so often British monarchs look down and recognize the immense talent in the kingdom. A few who have knelt before Her Royal Highness to be knighted: Sir Roger Moore, Sir E
lton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Mick Jagger, and Dame Judi Dench. There have been a few questionable calls, among them Romania’s late dictator (Sir) Nicolae Ceauşescu.
Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926): Reigning monarch since 1952 and winner of the royal big hat award, she throws the occasional rocking jubilee, but keeps very mum about the assorted scandals that have hit since the marriage between Di and Charles went down the tube.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh: Formerly Prince of Greece and Denmark, Philip tossed away the titles, his Greek citizenship, and his Greek Orthodox religion to marry then-princess Elizabeth II. The flirtatious prince is known for his humor—some call it dry, others dreadful. He told deaf children standing near a drum set, “Deaf? No wonder you’re deaf standing so close to that racket!” He asked a blind woman with a guide dog if she’d heard “Now they have eating dogs for the anorexic.” And pity the poor boy who confessed his dream to be an astronaut. Scoffed the prince, “You’re too fat!”
What Every American Should Know About Europe Page 11
