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Chapter Six Thatcher’s Britain Four Nations or One? () Most of this audience, I take it, live in a political unit termed “the United Kingdom.” We all agree that our schoolchildren should learn something about its history. But how are we to characterize this unit? Some historians seem to see it as a single nation. They refer to “the story of our nation.”“In my opinion,” states Norman Stone, “it is essential for school children to know the elements of our national past.” Jonathan Clark tells us that “history is national property and the decisions to be taken on the history curriculum will be intimately connected with our national self-image, sense of heritage and purpose.” But what is this nation to which they refer? It is here that we begin to run into difficulties. Mrs. Thatcher declared that “children should know the great landmarks of British history.” But, is there a British nation? And if there is one today, does it have a history stretching back beyond the early twentieth century? Perhaps we do not have a single national history. Historians have taught us to see the rise of the nation-state as one of the signs of modernity . But suppose that the United Kingdom is not a nation-state like, say, France, but a multinational state like Belgium, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union—in fact like the great majority, perhaps, of so-called “nationstates .” In that case we will be distorting the complexity of our history if we speak of a single “national past” and a single “national image.” The “we” and “our” of all this are rather a mixed bunch. The notion that we have several national pasts has been obscured by the understandable dominance of England, particularly since the Industrial 147 Revolution and the concomitant urbanization and population rise. In terms of current population, England, with . million, is by far the largest segment of the U.K., Wales having . million, Scotland . million, and N. Ireland . million. (In  English preponderance was much less marked.) As a result it became convenient for many in dealing with the history of the United Kingdom to equate it with the history of England. Thus the prime minister stated that “it was absolutely right” for the new national curriculum to concentrate on the kings and queens of England, while almost in the same breath declaring that “children should know the great landmarks of British history.” British history, it would appear, is in essence English history. “We” look back to the Tudors, for example, and forget that Scotland had no Tudor dynasty. Does it matter? After all, the Oxford History School, our leading nursery of historians, got along quite well for a century unrepentantly teaching English history. If, like Stubbs, we concentrate our attention upon political and constitutional history, perhaps the distortion is less marked. The view from Buckingham Palace, Westminster, and the Home Counties easily leads to the assumption that Britain can be safely equated with England and that the histories of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland can be dismissed, more or less, under the heading of the “Celtic Fringe.” Unfortunately, the further one moves away from W.., the more of a straitjacket a merely anglocentric history becomes. The British empire was more than an expansion of England. It was also, even in the colonial period, an expansion of the multinational British Isles. If we accept that we live in a multinational state, we are able to make sense of many phenomena which are otherwise unintelligible. Concentration on political or constitutional history (whose importance I do not wish to downplay) may lead to an emphasis upon the unity of our historical development as exemplified in the Acts of Union of – (Wales),  (Scotland), and  (Ireland). Crown and parliament symbolize the political unity of the United Kingdom. Outside this political framework, however, we immediately encounter diversity. Unlike any other state we have no national team in any sport apart for the fiction of the “British Lions” in rugby, which allows “southern Irish” to count as “British” (or, alternatively, permits Irish citizens to accept an affront to their republicanism for the sake of the oval ball). We have an established church in England but none in Wales, Scotland, or Ireland. We have differences between the common law of England and Wales (and Ireland) and Scots Law. We have a British Army which includes English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish 148 Thatcher’s Britain: Four Nations or One? [18.188.20.56] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 12...

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