Britain After Empire

Constructing a Post-War Political-Cultural Project

P. Preston

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137023827
• eBook ISBN: 9781137023834
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Through compelling analysis of popular culture, high culture and elite designs in the years following the end of the Second World War, this book explores how Britain and its people have come to terms with the loss of prestige stemming from the decline of the British Empire. The result is a volume that offers new ideas on what it is to be 'British'.

1

After the Empire: Establishment Designs, High Arts and Popular Culture in Britain

In the late summer of 1939 the British elite ruled a state-empire system¹ that embraced territories and peoples spanning the globe, an empire upon which ‘the sun never set’, within which an identity was available to all – ‘British’ – and where, amongst that elite, various problems notwithstanding, the future health of ‘the Empire’ was taken for granted. Yet six years later, in the summer of 1945, it was clear that the system could no longer be sustained; the metropolitan core elite could command neither the economic resources, nor the military capability, nor the politico-intellectual convictions that were necessary to sustain their state-empire and within a few years it was dissolved. In the hitherto peripheral territories a number of new states were formed – in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean – and their place within the wider evolving industrial-capitalist system ordered under the rubric of state formation, nation-building and economic advance, or, in brief, development, where the precise pursuit of this goal was inflected by sometimes violent disputes, both local and international, as to the most effective course of action. All this is reasonably familiar: the empire dissolved, some parts did well, others, not so well. The other part of the tale, events in the hitherto core, are not so well known. It is here that a species of putative common sense reigns: the empire lost, the core continued. It is a poor story, for in the hitherto core areas, that is, in this case, the British Isles, the elite had perforce to rethink their own location within a radically changed environment; one that had seen the dissolution of a state-empire system centred on their hitherto core territory, the subordination of that territory to the requirements of newly established global powers and the mobilization of their domestic population around claims for economic, social and political reform. Cast in terms of extant elite interests and self-understandings, the episode was a catastrophe – a loss of empire.

This text tracks the intermingled intellectual/moral responses of elites to that loss of the state-empire and the identities attached thereto in the years following the end of the Second World War. It looks at how the elite reimagined their place in the world, the ways in which they fashioned this new project; the various components, the means whereby it was put into practice and the ways in which these policies and ideas found expression when deployed amongst the wider population. The elements of this still unfolding process will be sought in elite designs (policies, plans, declarations and the like), high arts (novels, theatre, fine arts, art-house film and so on) and popular culture (radio, film, television, newspapers and magazines and lately the burgeoning realm of digital media).

Overall, the text will argue that the elite’s creative response to the loss of state-empire entailed both denial, as the peripheral territories were reimagined as of relatively little consequence, and confection, such that the hitherto core areas were imaginatively reworked as a long extant nation-state, ‘continuing Britain’. This process saw the construction of a distinctive politico-cultural project: one that was biased towards finance, overly committed to the military-industrial complex, subordinate to the United States and resentful of its inevitably ordinary place within the organizations made in mainland Europe. In these demanding circumstances the elite reconceptualized Britain, presenting it as the legatee of empire, the victor in a virtuous war, number one ally of America and something of a model for other countries-in-general. Having detailed these elite-sponsored tales, this text, in an engaged fashion,² will go on to argue that an appreciation of the scale of the catastrophe which overcame the British elite, and the unsustainable nature of their response, are necessary conditions of a better grasp of the realities of the circumstances of the contemporary polity and its possibilities for the future.

State, nation and public sphere

The text is grounded in European social theory.³ In the realms of politics, modernity, the complex of social practices informed by core commitments to reason, science and intellectual/material progress,⁴ can be unpacked around the interrelated ideas of states, nations and public spheres. Understood in these terms, the shift to the modern world of science-based industrial capitalism was organized institutionally through the parallel construction of liberal markets and bureaucratic-rational states. The two are complimentary: thus liberal markets require order, and states set the rules within which liberal markets function, and liberal markets are productive, and so generate the wealth necessary to fund the machineries of these states.⁵ The construction of bureaucratic-rational states was legitimated amongst the masses of populations in terms of ideas of nation.⁶ States laid claim to territorial sovereignty and exclusive control of resident populations, and the apparatus of control (armies, police, bureaucrats and so on) was legitimated in terms of an idea of common identity amongst the population, an idea of nation.⁷ This intellectual/moral apparatus fostered obedience and loyalty and was promulgated through numerous mechanisms embracing official ideologies and bureaucratic routines, routine social practices and the pervasive diverse realms of culture/media. Thereafter, all these mechanisms worked to aid the construction of an idea of nation. But these same mechanisms were also available to carry other ideas. The crucial social institution took shape in the novel spaces and instruments of emergent urban life, coffee shops, theatre, newspapers, pamphlets and so on, all the paraphernalia which allowed individuals to constitute and belong to a novel collective sphere – the public sphere.⁸ This was an arena within which all contributors were in principle equal and which in total functioned to generate a reflexive, critical appreciation of the nature and direction of the political community in question; a nascent form of democracy.

Jurgen Habermas⁹ makes use of the historical sociology of the development of the public sphere in England, coupled to philosophical reflections on the nature of human language, in order to argue that the development of the modern world produced a distinctive sphere of social life, what he called the public sphere. First, the institutional vehicles for this sphere of life were clubs, societies, coffee houses and other places where people could gather informally and talk freely about the world that they inhabited (information, opinion, gossip, argument and maybe plans for more explicit commentary – pamphlets, novels or journalism). Second, the social function of the public sphere serves the organized political community by providing a sphere of critical commentary separate from those institutional forms created or dominated by the elite. Third, such commentary will be very diverse, but it will be governed by the intrinsic logics of human communication – that is, the inherent tendency towards rational consensus. Habermas argues that collective, free debate tends towards the production of rational consensus and is the essence of a democratic polity. Thus fourth, Habermas links the fundamental character of human communication and the public sphere, and the goal of democracy.¹⁰ It is here that we find the line of reflection (for politicians, policy-makers and commentators) which links state, nation and public sphere: the last noted is crucial to the constitution of the former pair and it also carries the promise of democracy. Subsequent commentators have pursued a series of debates: the nature of the state, the nature of national identities, the promise and performance of the public sphere and the related subordinate question of the responsibility of intellectuals/scholars to engage with these processes so as to foster progress.

Overall, the complex process of the shift to the modern world sees the social construction of states, nations and the realm of the public sphere. The links are intimate: the public sphere offers the promise of progress towards democracy and political agents, policy-makers and commentators have made it an arena of contestation, a battleground for ideas and agenda-setting.

Texts, text-analogues and readings

The rise of the modern world, and along with it the construction of states, nations and the public sphere, forms the general frame within which subsequent social theorists have operated, and to which reflexively they have turned their attention. Unpacking some of its elements generates a broad idea of politics (matters of power and its legitimation) and a distinctive role for collective systematic reflection (arguments in the public sphere). The arguments placed in the public sphere can take many forms, deploying materials from the arts, humanities, social sciences, policy and politics. These interventions can be summed as ‘texts’ and they can be analysed as ‘texts’ or ‘text-analogues’.

Human language considered

The background to the main tradition of work in this area – that is, the interpretation of arguments deployed in the public sphere in order to make sense of our forms of life – lies in interpretive/critical philosophy.¹¹ These materials are rooted in continental philosophy. The key claim is that the social production of meaning is fundamental to humankind. Or, put another way, what is special about humans is that they operate within socially created webs of meaning and these meanings inform social practices, or, informally, we act in the world in the light of the ideas that we have about our world.¹² Or, again, after Hans-Georg Gadamer,¹³ all human knowing is carried in language.

At first meeting these are unexpected claims, yet, contrary to our routine experience of the world where talk seems to be transient and inconsequent, or ‘just words’, it is through language that we constitute and act in our worlds. In the twentieth century, reflections on the nature of language have taken three forms: first, hermeneutics, the characterization of language as embedded in history, thus humankind dwells within meanings/practices carried in traditions; second, linguistics/semiotics, the characterization of language as a formal system for making signs, thus humankind dwells within formal systems of rules; and third, ordinary language philosophy, the characterization of language as a socially constituted body of rules serving practical purposes, thus humankind dwells within forms of life carried by language games.¹⁴

These reflections coincide in the claim that human beings inhabit language-carried webs of meaning. Such meanings inform or find expression in our routine social practices. Stocks of meanings/practices are carried in tradition. Specific actions initiated by individuals draw upon the common social stock of meanings. Yet the stock of meanings is not fixed; new ideas inform new social practices; new social practices produce new ideas whilst other ideas/practices fall into disuse.

Texts and text-analogues

The links between the intellectual traditions noted above which are concerned with elucidating the nature of language and the realms of the public sphere can be found in three technical terms: text, text-analogue and reading; these let us analyse the social world as suffused with meanings; any cultural construction or any social practice.

As noted, three streams of work underpin the idea of the text. First is hermeneutics, originally concerned with the detailed exegesis of biblical texts. Here the focus of attention is on syntax, semantics and provenance of versions of the bible – the aim is to discover the accurate version in order to uncover its true meanings – so as to access the word of God. The philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey¹⁵ moves the idea of the exegesis of texts into the wider social world, in his case, history, so meanings are embedded in history. This work is subsequently further developed in the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer.¹⁶ Second, associated with Ferdinand de Saussure,¹⁷ linguistics/semiotics, where the focus of attention is the analysis of language as a formal system of arbitrary signs. Meanings are carried in formal sets of rules. The idea of signs allows many cultural constructions to be analysed. Third, ordinary language philosophy, which is concerned with analysing language as a rule-governed practical activity. Here the aim is to show how language has meaning in use; associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein and moved into the social sciences by Peter Winch.¹⁸

Hermeneutics begins with the analysis of biblical texts, but the strategy can be used much more widely as these reflections on language enable the shift from analysing texts to analysing text-analogues – ‘cultural texts’ – the social world can be read as comprising meanings, and discrete meanings can be picked out and analysed as if they were texts – cultural products carrying meaning (arguments deployed) can be analysed as if they were texts. Thus enquiry moves from text: which carries meanings; is constructed; has an audience in view; and is context bound; to text-analogue: which carries meanings; is constructed; is a limited specific exercise in sense-making; has an audience in view; is context bound and can be identified and analysed in self-conscious commentary. In sum, texts carry meanings. And the idea can be applied to any specific cultural artefact: books, films, pamphlets, statues, public rituals, or the layout of entire cities. Human social practices are inscribed with meaning, and these can be read, as texts or text-analogues.

Of course, texts can be just that – publications – words strung together to interpret the world in favour of this or that course of action. Numerous examples can be cited, all devoted, one way or another, to deploying arguments in the public sphere. Thus Milton Friedman has made arguments on behalf of the liberal market bourgeoisie in pursuit of an ideal free market in his scholarship and political writing; organizations such as the British Medical Association or the Confederation of British Industry making arguments on behalf of memberships in pursuit of sectional concerns in policy advocacy and public relations activities. Individuals such as Jeremy Clarkson who uses television and journalism in order to make arguments intended to entertain and make a splash. And in the arts, Gunter Grass has made extensive interventions in public discussion around the theme of German history, society and politics in the wake of the 1930s collapse into National Socialism and its subsequent reconstruction within the frame of the West. These issues have been pursued in a sequence of novels: the Tin Drum, which chronicles the fall of prewar Danzig and the start of the Second World War; My Century, which reviews the politics of the continent; and Crabwise, which opens up the issue of German suffering in the Second World War.¹⁹ And, in a similar way, J.G. Ballard might be taken as an analogous figure writing in English. In the latter years of his life he produced a sequence of novels focused on contemporary life²⁰ whilst publishing three texts that detailed his own.²¹ The novel sequence offers a critique of contemporary urban/suburban life where the familiar is reworked after the style of science fiction writing the distanced/distorted rendering of the familiar carries the moral commentary, pointing to the comfortable amoral character of modern life.

Art-house films can be read as texts. The director is invested with the same concerns and intentions as a creative author and so the result can be analysed in an analogous fashion. By way of examples, Lars von Trier, a Danish director, has made films examining European history in the wake of the end of the Second World War detailing the moral confusions of the period, and in Europa he examines the lives of people living in the ruined continent;²² Ridley Scot, an English director, has made mainstream films and whilst some of these are straightforward Hollywood entertainments, one film was distinctly art-house in tone/style, thus Blade Runner was set in a near future of large corporations and crowded urban areas, part dystopia and part film noir;²³ or Peter Greenaway, another English director, has made a series of art-house films, which are characterized by their formal stylize...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. After the Empire: Establishment Designs, High Arts and Popular Culture in Britain
• 2. Foundation Myths: The War, Wartime and ‘Continuing Britain’
• 3. Grand Designs: Patrician Reformers, Subaltern Demands and the Ideal of Welfare
• 4. Making Enemies: The Cold War
• 5. Voices of Complaint, Voices of Assertion
• 6. Patrician Retreat: Quickening Change in the 1950s and Early 1960s
• 7. Affluence Attained, Affluence Doubted
• 8. Corporate World, Media and Politics
• 9. Amongst the Bullshit Industries
• 10. Familiar Utopias: New Technologies and the Internet
• 11. Continuing Britain: Contemporary Political Culture Unpacked
• Notes
• Bibliography (Readings/Viewings)
• Index