Sixth Form: History

Boris Johnson's Abuse of Churchill

By Felix Klos Posted 1st June 2016, 16:38 In using Churchill to justify his Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson 'paints a barbarically simplified and ill-informed picture of what Churchill stood for'.

Winston Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall, May 8th, 1945.Britain stands on the brink of history as it prepares for its ‘in/out’ referendum on membership of the European Union, which takes place on June 23rd. The stakes could not be higher. After more than 40 years of increasing economic and political co-operation with the states of continental Europe, David Cameron’s referendum holds the real prospect of a division in the West and the isolation of

one of Europe’s greatest national powers. If ‘Brexiteers’ get their way, according to Boris Johnson, June 24th will be known to future generations as Independence Day. When David Cameron succumbed to domestic party political pressure in 2013 and announced his referendum he knew he was playing with fire. For Margaret Thatcher the referendum was ‘a device of dictators and demagogues’; for the celebrated 19th-century historian Lord Acton it is ‘the triumph of democratic force over democratic freedom’; for the current Conservative Cabinet it is a highly flammable political football. It is unlikely Cameron anticipated the incendiary match he is now forced to strike.

Johnson soon became the totemic figurehead of the Leave campaign, a spokesman for an independent United Kingdom, or whatever is left of it after the Europhile Scots try once again to secede. His support brings an irresistible energy to the out campaign and the possibility that a majority of Britons will join him in voting to leave the European Union.

On March 16th, Johnson published his campaign manifesto to leave the European Union in the Daily Telegraph. Every sentence, every word was written towards a conclusion in which Johnson invokes the spirit of Winston Churchill as the ultimate historical justification of his position. ‘Whatever happens,’ he wrote, ‘Britain needs to be supportive of its friends and allies – but on the lines originally proposed by Winston Churchill: interested, associated, but not absorbed; with Europe – but not comprised.’

With his bestselling biography, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, Johnson deliberately appropriated the mantle of the man who saved western civilization from collapse in 1940. Churchill’s John Bull hat replaced with a grey ‘underground’ beanie, the cigar with a ‘Boris bike’, the three-piece Harris Tweed suit with trouser clips. Every aspect of BoJo’s studied get-up is meant to scream at us: he is the indefatigable leader for our time. He is the man to make history. He is the British bulldog.

There is just one problem: how to claim Churchill as support for the ‘out’ campaign beyond the grave? How can Johnson use his hero to force ‘Brexit’ and therewith permanently damage the European project? The only way, evidently, is to paint a barbarically simplified and illinformed picture of what Churchill stood for.

After the Second World War, ousted from No. 10 following the general election of July 1945, Churchill became the greatest pioneer of the European ideal. ‘If I were 10 years younger,’ he told his wife shortly after the war, ‘I might be the first President of the United States of Europe.’ In September 1946 in Zurich Churchill called upon France and Germany to enter into a partnership as the first step in building ‘a kind of United States of Europe.’ The speech went down in history, as Churchill foresaw and intended, as a turning point: a Magna Carta of European unity. By 1950 Churchill had founded the United Europe Movement, a well-funded British pressure group for a European Union; organised the unofficial but foundational Congress of Europe in The Hague; helped create the international European Movement; pressured the European governments west of the Iron Curtain into creating the Council of Europe, Europe’s first political institution; championed and helped pass the European Convention on Human Rights in Strasbourg; secured West Germany’s re-entry into the European family of nations; and even launched the controversial idea of a European army.

The supreme irony of Johnson's Daily Telegraph manifesto, titled ‘One way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU’, is that Winston Churchill published his original programme for what he interchangeably called ‘the European Union’ or ‘United Europe’ in the very same newspaper on December 30th and 31st, 1946. Its title: ‘United Europe: One way to stop a new war.’ In the two-part article, among other things, Churchill presented his expansive view

of Britain’s global role as a partner in three great overlapping ‘circles’: the English-speaking world (the ‘special relationship’ with America), the British Empire and Commonwealth and the European Union.

There were, of course, severe difficulties holding Britain back from the realisation of this world view. A debilitated domestic economy, surging independence movements in the colonies and increasing financial and political dependence on the United States were the primary pains of postwar Britain. The country had neither the political clout nor the financial resources to play the role it felt entitled to after the heroics of the war. An acute awareness of these problems only strengthened Churchill in envisaging for his country a position of power at the heart of his three circles.

The important thing was the issue of compatibility. While he probably never intellectually reconciled the full implications for Britain of ever-closer union in Europe, Churchill certainly envisaged for his country to be a full partner in the postwar European ‘project’. He thought a marriage with Europe could complement Britain’s Commonwealth responsibilities and advocated a system that embraced both the European states and the dominions and territories associated with them. ‘For Britain to enter a European Union from which the Empire and Commonwealth would be excluded,’ he told a European Movement rally in 1949, ‘would not only be impossible but would, in the eyes of Europe, enormously reduce the value of our participation.’ The United States, much like today, thought of Britain as a European country and hoped it would lead the way in the gradual unification of the continent to which it belonged. Hence General Marshall’s explicit reference to Churchill’s European campaign as the source of inspiration for Marshall Aid. In his 1946 Telegraph article, Churchill drew a roadmap for European integration that started with the creation of the Council of Europe. First, he argued, the Council of Europe would have to work steadily towards ‘the abolition or at least the diminution of tariff and customs barriers’. Second, it would ‘strive for economic harmony as a stepping-stone to economic unity’. Third, it would have to ‘reach some common form of defence’. And fourth, inseparably woven with all of the above, it would have to establish a common currency.

European postage stamps, passports and trading facilities would all flow out naturally from ‘main channel’ of the Council.

Notwithstanding his references to economic unity, what strikes the 21st-century reader is that Churchill’s case for Europe was essentially political. Having witnessed two devastating European wars, he believed deeply that small nation protectionism could only give rise to political antagonisms. Only a meaningful sharing of national sovereignty, he argued, could prevent future wars and secure continued prosperity. It was for this reason that Churchill, in one of his most moving contributions to parliamentary debate, declared on behalf of the Conservative Party on June 27th, 1950 that ‘national sovereignty is not inviolable, and that it may be resolutely diminished for the sake of all the men in all the lands finding their way home together’. This is a far cry from Boris Johnson’s vague, negative and shallow appeals to protecting national sovereignty and ‘taking back control’.

To be sure, Churchill did write in a 1930 article for the American Saturday Evening Post, when the British Empire was still flourishing and before there was an immediate and obvious demand for Union which the war indelibly created, that Britain would stand aloof from a federal Europe: ‘interested and associated, but not absorbed’. He also never believed, evidenced by his lack of initiative when returned to No. 10 in 1951, that Britain could become an ‘ordinary’ member of a federal union in the short term. It is highly misleading,

however, for Johnson to take a drop out of the ocean of words that Churchill dedicated to the matter and take them to characterise Churchill’s whole approach to Britain’s role in Europe.

This issue is far more intricate.

In Churchill’s postwar vision for a European Union, Britain played an integral part: ‘I do not agree that the solution to our problem is to create a Europe excluding Britain,’ he wrote in December 1949. ‘British participation is essential to the success of a European Union. It is impossible to say at the moment what form this union will ultimately take, but I am sure that the next immediate step is to develop and strengthen by every means in our power the new Council of Europe.’

In his chapter on Churchill’s Europe, Boris Johnson never even mentions the Council of Europe. He completely misses the key point that for Churchill the only way to achieve complete political and economic union and, perhaps ultimately, federation (this was a longterm, theoretical problem) was to let the Council of Europe grow organically into something much more than the platform of European opinion it was in 1949. Step by step. Little by little. Ever-closer union.

Frustrated with the slow working methods of the Council of Europe, the continental Europeans ultimately rode the wave of Churchill’s campaign and took the initiative in creating the direct institutional predecessors of the European Union. In 1962, when Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Britain felt ready to join the European Economic Community, as the EU was then called, Churchill supported the government’s membership application.

While rightly sceptical of the chances of success and careful to stress that no damage should be done to Commonwealth interests, he wrote in a public letter: ‘I think that the Government are right to apply to join the European Economic Community.’

The unity in Europe, now in the form of the imperfect European Union, is to a great extent the evolved and still organically developing legacy of Winston Churchill. That is the inheritance which Johnson is asking the British people to turn their backs on.

It is an inconvenient history for Johnson and his campaign. And, indeed, one man can make history. That is the Churchill Factor. But to alter history as you see fit is wholly unacceptable. Boris or not.

Felix Klos is the author of Churchill on Europe: The Untold Story of Churchill's European Project (I.B. Tauris: June, 2016)

Britain 1950

By Roland Quinault Published in History Today Volume 51 Issue 4 April 2001 Britain Roland Quinault looks at the state of the islands immediately following the Second World War. Britain in 1950 was different, in many ways, from Britain today. The most obvious difference was in the physical fabric of the country. In 1950 the legacy of the Second World War was still everywhere to be seen. In the major cities, and particularly in London, there were vacant bomb-sites, unrepaired houses, temporary prefabs and gardens turned into allotments. The countryside was peppered with wartime military bases, many now abandoned, others reactivated in response to the Cold War. British society was still strongly influenced by war. Most grandfathers had served in the First World War, most fathers in the Second, and most young men were currently called up for two years of National Service. Boys mimicked the militarism of their elders, using army surplus equipment to fight mock battles with the Germans. The armed services occupied a far more prominent role in British life than they do today.

There were four times as many servicemen in the early 1950s as there are today. A majority of them were conscripts, who were variously elated, bored or appalled by their experiences. Many servicemen served abroad, especially in Germany or the Empire. 750 soldiers were killed and many more injured or captured during the Korean war of 1950-53.

In 1950 Britain spent 6.6 per cent of its GDP on defence: more than any major country except the Soviet Union. The Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were second in size and power only to the forces of the United States, and in 1952 Britain became the world’s third nuclear power when it detonated an atomic bomb off the coast of Australia.

Britain was a militarised country, yet until October 1951 it was governed by a Labour party traditionally opposed to militarism. The massive Labour majority at the 1945 general election was largely removed at the 1950 election, but support for Labour remained strong. The party was helped by a high turnout – 84 per cent in 1950 (compared with under 72 per cent in 1997) and strong support from the trade unions.

Very low unemployment helped ensure that over half of all male workers and nearly a quarter of all women workers were trade unionists. Yet strikes were illegal until 1951 and the Labour government took tough action to prevent any interference with food supplies or exports. At the 1951 general election, the Tories won a small parliamentary majority, despite the fact that Labour got more votes and its highest ever proportion of the total vote. The Conservative revival was helped by the collapse of the Liberal vote, the heating up of the Cold War (which increased government expenditure) and by growing frustration with the continuation of austerity and controls.

A decade of war and its political and financial legacies had left Britain with a plethora of state regulations and high taxation. Some basic commodities like butter, meat, tea and coal were still rationed and although bread was now freely available, the derationing of sweets and chocolates in 1949 had to be abandoned because demand was too great. The continuance of rationing encouraged people to produce their own food in back gardens and allotments – just as they had in the war – or to get food parcels from relatives abroad. There were also severe shortages of most consumer products, which prompted the continuance of the wartime ‘make-do-and-mend’ culture. The standard rate of income tax was nine shillings in the pound – more than twice the rate today. Consequently most Britons had little surplus money and even less to spend it on. The austerity and bureaucracy of British post-war life was brilliantly satirised in George Orwell’s 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The combination of war damage and a scarcity of manpower and materials created a serious urban housing problem. The Labour government wanted to pull down the slums and move their occupants either to new council flats or out of the cities altogether. The New Towns Act of 1946 led to the expansion of towns around London, like Harlow, to take the capital’s overspill population and to the creation of new industrial centres, like Peterlee in county Durham. But the new towns were still in their infancy in 1950, and local authorities lacked the resources to overcome the housing shortage. Nearly half the population lived in private rented accommodation – often in dingy rooms or bedsits with little privacy, comfort or warmth. Less than a third of all houses were owner occupied – half the proportion in the late twentieth century. The vast majority of buildings were still traditional in character and construction and were built of brick or stone. There were virtually no high rise buildings and concrete was only widely used for military structures. All this changed rapidly in the late 1950s and 1960s.

Britain was the most urbanised and industrialised country in the world and consequently one of the most polluted. The reliance on coal for both residential heating and energy generation resulted in chronic atmospheric pollution which was harmful both to people and to buildings. The London smog of 1952 lasted five days and killed more than 4,000 people from heart and lung diseases. In industrial areas, factories polluted not only the air but also the waterways, while mines and spoil tips scarred the landscape. The degraded industrial environment of the postwar era was illustrated in L.S. Lowry’s paintings of urban Lancashire.

Environmental pollution was the price Britain paid for its industrial success. In 1950 the United Kingdom accounted for a quarter of world trade in manufactures – a higher proportion than before the Second World War and far greater than today. This was facilitated by both the temporary dislocation of Britain’s continental rivals and the government’s policy of prioritising export production for currency reasons. Britain was the foremost world producer of ships and the leading European producer of coal, steel, cars and textiles. Science-based industries like electronics and engineering were growing rapidly, as were oil and chemical refining. Britain led the field in civilian aviation with the first jet liner (the Comet) and other more successful aircraft. Rolls Royce was a worldwide symbol of excellence in aero and motor engines. Even the long ailing textile industry was revived by the introduction of synthetic fibres like nylon. In 1950, Leicester – centre of the hosiery trade – was the most prosperous city, per capita , in Europe.

The Labour government intervened in the running of the economy to an unprecedented extent. It nationalised the coal mines, the railways, the inland waterways, gas and electricity, the airways, the Bank of England and the iron and steel industry. By the early 1950s, state owned industries employed over two million people – most of them in coal or rail. Coal was still the main source of heating and energy and provided most of the fuel and much of the freight for the railways. Coal production was hindered by a shortage of miners and investment, but was twice the level of the mid-1980s and far greater than today.

Although the great majority of British people lived and worked in urban or industrial areas, most of the land mass of Britain was still predominantly rural and agricultural in character. Farming was largely mixed – both arable and pastoral – and avoided intensive cultivation methods. Birds and other kinds of wildlife were far more common than today because there were far more hedgerows and far less use of chemicals. Farmers’ incomes were boosted by the 1947 Agriculture Act which provided subsidies for cereal production and livestock. Tractors had largely replaced horses, but most farmers still employed poorly paid agricultural labourers, many of whom lived in tied cottages. The picturesque character of the countryside – so admired by contemporary guidebooks – often reflected the poverty of its residents.

Many rural homes lacked modern facilities like water sanitation, and electricity, while few had telephones. The isolation of country life encouraged hostility to incomers and mental depression which sometimes resulted in violence. Rural areas were also at risk from bad weather. In 1952 river flooding at Lynmouth led to many deaths and in 1953 a combination of storms and a high tide inundated the coast of Essex and East Anglia leaving hundreds of people dead in the worst peacetime disaster in modern Britain.

The population, which totalled about 50 million in 1950, was overwhelmingly indigenous. The 1951 census showed that only 3 per cent of the population had been born overseas and the great majority of the immigrants were white and European. The largest immigrant group – over half a million – were the Irish, who made a major contribution to both the post-war rebuilding of Britain and the staffing of the National Health Service. Other immigrants had come to Britain as refugees from the Nazis and the Second World War – including over 160,000 Poles and Jews from central Europe. There was also an influx from Italy and Cyprus. The first postwar immigrants from Jamaica had arrived in Britain, on board the Empire Windrush in 1948, but there were still fewer than 140,000 blacks and Asians in Britain in 1951.

They were sometimes derided as ‘wogs’ and – like many white immigrants – suffered discrimination in employment and housing, but were generally tolerated because of the scarcity of labour and their sporting prowess. In 1950, the West Indies cricket team won a Test series in England for the first time and, in so doing, popularised calypso music in Britain.

Britain’s position as the head of a multi-racial Empire and Commonwealth influenced the government’s immigration policy. The 1948 British Nationality Act confirmed unrestricted entry to Commonwealth citizens – a far cry from the more restrictive policy adopted in the later twentieth century. The Empire was still of great political, military and economic importance. Although India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon had recently been granted independence, in Africa, South-East Asia and the West Indies it was still intact, as was much of Britain’s informal empire in the Middle East. Ties

with the Empire were cemented by trade, large-scale emigration from Britain to the ‘white’ dominions and also by the monarchy. Princess Elizabeth was in Kenya when she succeeded to the throne in 1952 and her coronation had a strongly imperial flavour. Dented by the 1936 abdication crisis, the monarchy had recovered its prestige thanks to its patriotic wartime role and the dutiful conduct of the royal family.

The sudden death of George VI in 1952 induced genuine national mourning and large crowds attended his lying-in-state.

Britain, like its empire, was multi-racial and multi-cultural, for differences of nationality, locality, class and gender had prevented the emergence of a homogenised national identity and culture. Both in Scotland and in Wales, vocal minorities demanded greater autonomy from England. In 1950 Scots Nationalists removed ‘the stone of destiny’ – a symbol of Scottish sovereignty – from Westminster Abbey, while a campaign for a Welsh Parliament attracted considerable support. Yet in both Scotland and Wales nationalism had a very limited appeal, partly because it was undermined by centrifugal economic forces and regional tensions.

The English-speaking industrial population of south Wales had little in common with the Welsh-speaking ruralists of the west and north, while the industrial and partly Catholic proletariat of Glasgow felt no kinship with the Edinburgh or Presbyterian elites.

In England, the Second World War had revived a sense of Englishness which was reflected, for example, in Nikolaus Pevsner’s lectures on ‘The Englishness of English Art’ and the series of books on English heritage published by Collins. But many writers feared that traditional English culture was being rapidly undermined. Evelyn Waugh lamented the decline of the aristocratic country house, while John Betjeman mourned the loss of regional individuality in the face of modernisation and mechanisation. Yet there remained strong regional divisions within England, most notably between north and south. Northerners had not only their own way of speaking, but also their own sense of humour, neither of which were often heard on the BBC, which, from its headquarters in London, propagated the standard southern version of received pronunciation.

Class divisions were clearly reflected in how people dressed, as well as how they spoke. Working men wore caps and clothes appropriate for manual labour, while middle-class men were distinguished by their white collars, suits and hats. There was a similar, but less rigid, division between working women who wore scarves on their heads and middle- class women who wore hats. Class divisions were also apparent in the educational system and not just in the divide between state schools (which taught the great majority) and private schools (which catered for a wealthy minority). The 1944 Education Act had created a binary system of secondary education at ‘eleven plus’. Most children went to secondary modern schools which they left, at the age of fifteen, with few or no qualifications. Those who went to grammar schools stayed on a little longer and got qualifications, but few went on to higher education. Only a small proportion of young people went to university and most were middle-class males who had often been privately educated.

In 1950 far fewer women were in paid employment than today. Women were generally not expected to have proper careers, but to seek short-term employment before they married and had children. After the war, many young women gave up

paid work and raised a family at home. They benefited from some labour-saving electrical appliances like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, but still spent much of their time on domestic chores like cooking, washing and cleaning.

Scrubbing and polishing were de rigueur and entailed much physical energy. Open fires were still the standard form of residential heating and required regular attention.

Few homes had a refrigerator, so fresh products were regularly obtained from local shops or market stalls.

Most shops were family businesses and traditional in character. The butcher, for example, wore a straw hat and a striped apron, used a thick wooden chopping block and sprinkled sawdust on the floor. The local shopping parade usually included a butcher, a baker, a grocer, a greengrocer, a confectioner and an ironmonger, so there was little necessity to go further afield for everyday purchases. High street chains, like Sainsbury’s, were increasingly popular because they provided good quality and low prices, but self-service supermarkets in the American style were only just beginning to be introduced.

The health of the nation was much better in 1950 than it had been before. Full employment ensured that people were better fed than in the 1930s, while the young actually benefited from the lack of fat during the war. The creation of the free National Health Service, in 1946, improved the quality of medical care, especially for the elderly, women and the poor, but the cost of the new system soon led to the introduction of charges for dentistry and prescriptions. The improvement in national health also owed much to the introduction of antibiotics which gradually eradicated many diseases, like tuberculosis, which had been major killers. However, the incidence of poliomyelitis increased until 1951 and many children were disabled by it before a vaccine was developed. There was also a rapid increase in cancer, strokes and especially heart disease: the three major killers of Britons in the later twentieth century. The achievement of Britain’s postwar ‘Welfare State’ should not be exaggerated. By 1950 Britain’s combined expenditure on health care and social security was lower than that of war devastated West Germany and it soon slipped behind that of most western European countries.

Public attitudes towards sex and marriage still remained strongly conservative.

Abortions were illegal, so back street practioners flourished. Illegitmacy rates were far lower than today, partly because there was still a social stigma attached to single mothers and their offspring. Consequently unwanted babies were often given away for adoption or sent to institutions, either in Britain or in the Empire. The divorce rate had increased sharply in the 1940s – because of the war and a relaxation of the law – but in 1950 it was still less than a fifth of that today. Divorce was still not acceptable in many circles including royalty, the ‘respectable’ middle classes and those who could not afford such an expensive luxury. Sexual relations were generally much more covert than today and there was virtually no formal sex education either for children or for adults. Nevertheless the attraction of sex was clearly apparent both in advertising (especially for films, books and clothes) and on the streets where prostitutes openly solicited for business until the 1959 Street Offences Act. Those whose sexual behaviour deviated from the heterosexual norm had to adopt a low profile for fear of legal prosecution or social persecution.

The recreations of the British people in 1950 were generally more simple and more localised than they are today. Many older or poorer people were content to chat with their neighbours, walk the dog or have a pint at the local. Pubs had much more limited opening times than today, especially on Sundays, when shops were also shut and there were no commercial sporting fixtures. Sunday was still essentially Victorian in character – a day for a large family dinner, quiet relaxation and religious worship. Church attendance, though lower than before the war, remained high, particularly with Catholics, the young and the elderly. On Saturday nights unmarried young adults often patronised the local dance hall or cinema, but few went further afield for entertainment. Popular music was pre-‘rock and roll’, but was already dominated by American styles and performers. Popular fashion, however, was less influenced by America and the ‘Teddy boys’ were a distinctively British phenomenon.

Young women welcomed the long full skirts of the ‘New Look’ as a reaction to wartime austerity and loved the new nylon stockings, which were very hard to obtain.

Many children and teenagers belonged to voluntary associations like the Scouts and Guides, the Boys Brigade and church groups. They provided practical skills, a code of morality and inexpensive outings and holidays.

Primary schools had to cope with the post-war ‘baby boom’ – and classes of nearly fifty were common in urban areas. Nevertheless most children quickly acquired a basic proficiency in the ‘three Rs’ with the aid of traditional teaching methods and simple aids like reading cards and ‘Beacon books’. Most schools had been built in the late Victorian period and had changed little since then. Out of school, children played in the streets, rather than in their overcrowded homes. They liked simple games like hopscotch, marbles and conkers, as well as football and cricket. Children also loved boiled sweets, chocolate, liquorice and sherbert – which they washed down with sweet soft drinks like ‘Tizer, the appetizer’. Children’s clothes were distinctively different from those of adults: shorts for boys and short skirts or tunics for girls. On their feet they wore short or long socks with shoes, sandals or canvas plimsolls. Most children walked to school and, like their parents, used public transport for longer journeys.

1950 was a golden age for public transport. On the roads, one out of every three vehicles was a bus or lorry. In the cities, worn out trams were being replaced by electric trolleybuses and petrol buses, which provided cheap and frequent services.

Motor freight was increasing, but house-to-house deliveries of milk and coal and refuse collections by the ‘rag-and-bone man’ were still made by horse-and-cart.

Consequently horse dung and water troughs were still common sights. Car sales were boosted by the end of petrol rationing in 1950, but there was still only one car per sixteen people. Few families could afford a car, so a motorbike with a sidecar was a popular and cheaper alternative. Bicycles were widely used, both for short journeys to work or shop and for long distance recreation. Most people used trains for long journeys. The railway network reached to almost every part of the country for most branch lines were still in operation. Nationalisation of the railways in 1947 had ended internal competition, but the three class fare system was preserved along with exclusive luxury trains on prestige routes. The railways still fascinated children who loved trainspotting, playing with Hornby model train sets and reading the Reverend Awdry’s railway engine stories. The annual family holiday was generally taken by rail – even on rails in the case of camping coaches.

Holidays with pay were now supported by legislation and about half the population spent a holiday by the sea. The early 1950s were the mass-market heyday of the English seaside resort – before the development of the cheap package holiday to the Continent. Most people stayed in small guest houses, or in holidaycamps and caravan parks. Traditional pier attractions like the peep-shows and live shows remained popular, as did seaside fare like shellfish, rock and candyfloss. But the beaches were the great attraction and those of popular resorts like Brighton would be covered, on summer bank holidays, with a closely packed mass of bodies and deck chairs. Sea swimming was also popular, partly because there was considered to be less risk of infection than in the overcrowded swimming pools. The well-off middle classes preferred to holiday abroad and over a million Britons did so in 1950, despite currency restrictions and a recent devaluation of the pound.

The British media in 1950 were still dominated by the press. The national newspapers – all published around Fleet Street – were dominated by autocratic press barons and restrictive print unions. The leading popular paper, the Daily Mirror , had a circulation four times that of the leading quality paper, the Daily Telegraph , but the largest sales were achieved by the popular Sunday papers, like the News of the World , which trawled the divorce courts for salacious stories. Newspapers were a far more important source of news than they are today, because news reports by the BBC were subject to various restrictions. For most people, the BBC meant its domestic radio services, which mixed the pre-war Reithian concept of respectable public service broadcasting with new, more subversive, forms of entertainment.

These included new drama (like Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas), adventure thrillers (such as Dick Barton Special Agent ) and comedy (notably The Goon Show ). The Light Programme featured popular music and the Third Programme classical music, but new records could only be heard on foreign stations like Radio Luxembourg. The BBC had resumed television broadcasts after the war, but the audience was still small because the receivers were expensive and unreliable, while the programmes were made in studios and could not be copied.

Visual entertainment for the masses was principally provided by films. In 1950 there were nearly 5,000 cinemas in Britain which attracted an audience four times larger than that in the 1970s. The early 1950s was a golden age for British films, with directors like David Lean and Carol Reed and producers like Michael Balcon, whose Ealing comedies brilliantly reflected the social character and physical environment of post-war Britain. The era was also a golden age for children’s comics, both humorous British strips like Beano and Dandy and American comics with action heroes like Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel. Two new distinguished British comics were Eagle , which catered for middle-class boys and the growing taste for Science Fiction and its sister publication, Girl , which provided more traditional fare about boarding schools and ballet dancing. Children’s book literature was also largely traditional in character, with pre-war classics like Winnie-the-Pooh and Billy Bunter retaining their popularity. The most prolific and successful children’s writer of the period was Enid Blyton, whose most popular character, Noddy, first appeared in 1949.

The national mood and character was epitomised by the 1951 Festival of Britain, sponsored by the Labour government as a symbol of Britain’s post-war revival, which celebrated national achievements from science, manufacturing and housing, to the

arts and recreation. Yet, as Dylan Thomas noted, people liked the festival not because it was nationalistic or educational, but because it was ‘magical and parochial’, with whimsical touches like Emmett’s nonsense machines. The Dome of Discovery inspired, fifty years later, the Millennium Dome, which was supported by a Labour government that included Peter Mandelson, whose grandfather, Herbert Morrison, had championed the 1951 festival.

Many people today regard post-war Britain, nostalgically, as the golden age of the Welfare State. Opinion poll evidence does suggest that in 1950 Britons were generally happier perhaps because they had more security and less stress in their personal and professional lives. Nevertheless they were, on average, much less well off than today and many lived in mean and straightened circumstances. Those who were better off were already adopting the material trappings and social trends which characterise British society now. In 1950 Britons generally accepted their lot, but – just like us – they wanted the future to be even better.

For Further Reading: Jeremy Black, Modern British History since 1900 (Macmillan, 2000); Terry Gourvish and Alan O'Day (eds.), Britain since 1945 (Macmillan, 1991); Arthur Marwick, British Society since 1945 (3rd edition, Penguin, 1996); David Gladstone, The Twentieth Century Welfare State (Macmillan, 1999); Ross McKibbin, Classes and cultures: England 1918-51 (Oxford, 1998); Paul Johnson (ed.) Twentieth Century Britain: Economic Social and Cultural Change (Longman, 1994); Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier (eds.), A Tonic To The Nation, The Festival of Britain 1951 (Thames & Hudson, 1976).

Christians and the First Crusade

By Douglas James Published in History Review Issue 53 December 2005 Crusades, Medieval Christianity, Religion Douglas James explains why so many in the Christian West answered Urban II’s call to arms following the Council of Clermont in 1095.

Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, given a late Gothic setting in this illumination from the Livre des Passages d'Outre-mer, of c 1490 (Bibliothèque National) Though Latin Christendom’s response to Pope Urban II’s cry for crusade was nothing akin to Anna Comnena’s hyperbolic assertion that the ‘whole of the West and all of the barbarian races’ converged on her father’s city of Constantinople, it was nothing short of remarkable and certainly unprecedented. Lest we forget the act of ‘crusade’ was a voluntary exercise, that people (sometimes entire peoples) gathered from the geographical fringes of Christendom would suggest that Urban manufactured at Clermont an ideological ‘synthesis’ that culminated in the largest exodus hitherto known to mankind.

The motivations for this mass of humanity to embark on such a journey are manifold.

As Hans Mayer has concluded, both spiritual and social motives coalesced to ‘produce a spark of spontaneous success, as well as to light a fire that would burn for two hundred years’. Whilst the letter appealing for help against the Seljuk Turks sent by the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I Comnenus perhaps encapsulates this spark, contextually, it could be argued that the fire Mayer proposes was an inevitable occurrence. The First Crusade has come to exemplify the religious fervour that enveloped Christendom, the policies of an aggressive Papacy, and the newly spawned concept of Holy War – which was dramatically exploited by the Church in

its offer of the (plenary) Indulgence. The crusades were presented as penitential acts of devotion and powerful inducements for the atonement of all worldly sins. The notion of crusade arguably united a series of interlinked ideals, both those inherent within the people and those spawned through an astute and cogent programme of preaching.

One must not, however, discard the socio-economic factors crucial in coercing larger contingents. John France has attached the definite association of crusading with feudal obligation, while Carl Erdmann forged strong links between the papal reforms, the social necessity of violence and the exploitation of this inherent ‘revivialistic’ imagination of the age of the Papacy. Thus I shall be analysing the suggestion that the allure of Jerusalem relied not only upon the spiritual incentives – the expiation of sin and the expression of piety – but also on the secular benefits that could be accrued.

The Sacred Sphere A crucial factor in determining the response to Urban was the religious fanaticism of the 11th-century laity. Jonathan Riley-Smith accentuates the role of pious idealism – almost hysteric in its ardency – to be fundamental to crusade. Religious enthusiasm had diffused from its heartlands in France, in particular Cluny and Cîteaux, reaching the farthest edges of Christendom; monastic vigour to a similar degree was now being practised in splendour in northern Britain, at Durham, for example. With the dynastic expansion of overtly devout races such as the Normans came the expansion of papal influence across Europe. Christians were keen to demonstrate their faith, and the crusade provided the perfect opportunity to marry the interests of a rejuvenated Papacy to the more mundane aspirations and preoccupations of the lay populi of Christendom.

In arguing for the ardency of religion as the most prevalent factor, there emerge many individual tenets of Christianity as a faith. It was not perhaps simply a question of the yearning to fulfil a religious duty, but also an expression of Christian love and charity. Riley-Smith proposes that a pure love of Christ and the (biblically apposite) neighbours of the Near East were urgent enough factors to warrant crusade. Love not only encapsulates this aforementioned duty, but also extended to the altruistic demonstration of physical correction: murder. As Ivo of Chartres argued in his Decretia et Panormia of 1094, ‘any man who punished evil [via killing] loved’. Urban granted many an indulgence ‘seeing that they [here, the Bolognese] had committed their personae and property out of love of God’. These theories were to be pursued in the preaching not only of the First Crusade by Peter of Blois, but also in the second and third. In 1145, Pope Eugenius declared that the crusaders has been ‘fired by the ardour of charity’, and St Thomas Aquinas’ polemical treatment of the notion in 1256 would both reinforce this (his words mirror almost exactly those used

by Blois) and suggest that the influence of love was prevalent and strong as early as 1096.

The overture of one chronicle of the crusades, the Gesta Francorum, explains implicitly that ‘atque post ipsum crucem fideliter baiulare uellet, non pegiataretur Sancti Sepulchri uiam celeries arripere’ (‘If any man with all his heart and all his mind really wanted to follow God, he could make no delay in taking the road’). The

tradition of pilgrimage, with which the First Crusade has been widely associated in conjunction with its obvious military function, had long been established. From local shrines of importance that had been sanctified throughout France, to the internationally recognised destinations of St James’ tomb at Compostella, Rome and the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem itself, pilgrimage was regarded as the primary method for the articulation of faith and devotion. Emphasis on the importance of Jerusalem was not confined to sacred texts or shrines; cartographers produced guide maps with the Holy Land at its centre and with disproportionately large settlements surrounding the important shrines. Geo-politically, religious centres became centres for trade, commerce and communication. ‘Jerusalem’ was presented as one of the most important factors in influencing the minds of the people.

Urban was keen to promulgate the sense of dual liberation: liberation of a faith from the infidels’ grip and liberation of a sacred location. Contemporary commentators placed huge emphasis on its defence; protecting this spiritual kingdom’s capital would render any crusader as valiant to his king. James of Vitry, one of the principal recipients of papal encyclicals who peregrinated across Europe hailing the defence of the Cross, stressed this particular display of valour. The Papacy was similarly useful to foster unity among all Christians, argues Jonathan Phillips, such that it both fused the social strata and catalysed a synchronised migration eastward in defence of the Holy Lands – the ultimate pilgrimage. Simply the name provided a ‘glittering and magical splendour’ to all those unable, or unwilling, to differentiate between their religious and social objectives.

As a defence of the faith, Urban and the crusaders harked to the teachings of Augustine of Hippo, who argued that it was fair to kill in a collective capacity, particularly against a heathen enemy. The clerical lawyer Hostiensis was later to proclaim that there were no differences between the religiously disobedient Muslims (who were treated with extreme savagery and little mercy) and the overt heretics or ‘schismatics’ of the day. Christian forbearance, it would seem, simply did not extend to such an obvious common enemy as the Muslims. Evidence in the Charters of Cluny would certainly suggest that there was a ‘great awakening to fight on God’s behalf against the heathen’. Urban also managed to contextualise the Reconquista of the Moor territories of Spain spearheaded by Paschal II. He transferred this ideology in the status quo to the defensive recapture of Jerusalem, in order to curtail the relentless tides of Islam that were flooding both regions. In personal letters to Tarragona, it was revealed that he would offer similar spiritual benefits to those affronting Islam there, as he would to those willing to take up the Cross against the injurious Muslims of Jerusalem. It seems that the vengeance for Christian killings by the Seljuk Turks (later proved to be rather apocryphal allegations created to justify the barbarous actions of the crusaders) was given the guise of spirituality – a Holy War against a domineering religion that was threatening the very integrity of fellow Christians.

Holy War The concept of Holy War had long been in existence, yet, as Michael Villey has reasoned, 1096 provided the first extension of this notion into the wider-reaching concept of crusade. (It must be noted that no Latin word for ‘crusade’ ever came into

usage before the mid-12th century.) Guibert of Nogent, though writing retrospectively in 1108, certainly suggests that a novelty factor of ‘crusade’, in terms of its scale, papal endorsement and means of attaining salvation, was critical. H.E.J. Cowdrey explains that crusade was simply a medium for redirecting the violence of the age toward sacred ends. Whichever definition is sought and decided upon, the relevance it had for the laity who would practise it was that it provided a coterminous tool for the expiation of sin and the venting of natural aggression; Marcus Bull has suggested that medieval communities continually used the prompt of a vendetta to justify their actions. Fear of the unavoidable hells of the afterlife was also constant in the minds of such communities; if the Church did therefore, in its offer of Indulgence, relieve people of the judgement of St Peter, the scale of the response becomes immediately realistic.

Maurice Keen asserts that a crusade would have provided a dual sanctity: the consecration of martial vigour and the channelling of this military vigour into a religious cause (much as the Teutonic knights, themselves renowned for the ‘blessing of the sword’ at Mainz, would do in the Baltic). Such a duality was also fundamental to the doctrines of both the Templars and the Hospitallers upon their foundation in 1119: that ordained and venerated figures should take up arms in the name of Christ. The expression of military tradition is anchored securely in the holy texts, and the Church was keen to be the source of authority that endorsed and galvanised this tradition – capturing the dissipated religious light of Europe and focusing it in a concentrated beam on the Levant.

Moral authority, as mentioned, arrived in the form of the Church itself. And yet Urban’s sermon at Clermont would never alone have been sufficient to prompt such a response. The structure of the Church, as well as its thirst for political authority, allowed for the easy dissemination of Urban’s message across Europe. Urban’s proclamation needed preaching, and thus encyclicals and preachers were sent out, including Peter the Hermit (the notorious leader of the People’s Crusade) and Radulf. (While it is true to say that the majority of the crusaders were French – hence the popularised term ‘Frankish Crusade’ – to view the crusade as an overwhelmingly French exercise would be to ignore the considerable number contributed by Britain, Lombardy and those diverted from Spain.) Many of course have argued the utterly paradoxical messages preached by these critics, particularly in their advocacy of such outright brutality and the lack of ambivalence contained within them. One anonymous commentator has affixed culpability for the slaughters of Dorylaeum in 1097 and Jerusalem in 1099 solely on the ‘floweriness and vagaries’ of such messages. Whilst the amorphousness of the preaching may have indoctrinated an impressionable audience, it must be remembered that these folk then had to commit to the huge undertaking of sacrificing their families, labour and financial income to journey over a thousand miles to a largely unknown destination. It is in assessing this commitment that the offer of an Indulgence and its associated benefits becomes crucial.

The process of crusade turned the armed pilgrimage into an obligatory statement of association to the protection of God and Christendom. While it may be argued that many would have been attracted by the temporary nature of crusade, far more would have been fearful of the spiritual punishments – including excommunication – that lay in waiting. The threat of paper discipline was perhaps important in ensuring that

crusade was completed, but in actually advocating it from the outset, the promise of remission of sin perhaps outweighs the former. Though eminent preacher Peter of Blois insisted that it was merely a pardoning of sin (not, as the Indulgence was often confused, a divinely granted mercy), Geoffrey of Villehardouin affirmed that ‘it was owing to the Indulgence that the hearts of men were so big’. The reward could also be granted for the ‘benefaction of the crusading cause’, as explains Riley-Smith – a monetary offering in place of participation. The Papacy’s authority to offer, and indeed grant, such remission was later vociferously defended by Pope Innocent III in his diatribe Novit of 1204.

The Profane The potential rewards and benefits were not, however, confined to the spiritual sphere. Too few were exposed to the full intensity of the papal evangelism for the First Crusade to be rendered an act of pure devotion. It remains to be argued that Urban himself was skilled enough to unite the parallel influences of the crusaders, but secular aspirations were also effective first in provoking and latterly in facilitating a response; the Reims account of Clermont even makes such goals explicit.

Certainly, one clear link between the spiritual facets of the Indulgence, including the benefit of paper prayer (deemed closer to God) and its social facets would be the offering of the essoin: moratoria on debts and feudal services, as well as certain tax exemptions. The social pride obtained as a result of completing the crusade would have been enormous. As a boost to the thriving concept of chivalry, Urban’s preaching paid homage to the great feudal lords of the past: exploiting for example the encomium Chanson de Roland, an account of the legendary general of Charlemagne’s army at Roncevalles. Many troubadour aristocrats were inspired by the concept, including Aimeric de Belanoi, who proclaimed that ‘the march means hope of/ Joy and deliverance of sin’. The knightly classes were also enthusiastic (on a debatable level) for the acquisition of land, perhaps not owing to a shortage of feudal land but for the maintenance of a family’s position: their frérêche in society.

Certainly, having travelled as far as Armenia, Baldwin of Bouillon simply diverted his attentions and seized the territory of Edessa in 1098, with little or no regard for the plight of his fellow crusaders.

Marcus Bull, meanwhile, has also proposed that many of the nominal leaders of the First Crusade (in particular Raymond of Toulouse) broadcast a combination of ‘apocalyptic and eschatological motives’ to the poor in order to encourage them to participate. There had reputedly been a series of devastating famines prior to the crusade – perhaps yet another divine omen to prise the peasant folk from their farmlands and into the pilgrimage routes. George Duby, contrarily, has proposed that the simple love of adventure and the lust for (Muslim) booty would have proved significant enough following preaching of the inequality of wealth that existed between Near East and West. The northern Italian city states were certainly encouraged by hopes of such commercial reward, for they trailed the coast of the eastern Mediterranean, and indeed maintained supplies, in the hope of occupying newly-conquered ports.

Conclusion

While historians seem perennially divided on the issue of motivation for the First Crusade, it seems fair to conclude that the response to Urban II’s call at Clermont was the result of a carefully orchestrated amalgamation of spiritual fanaticism and social realism. Perhaps the seeds of lay enthusiasm lay buried in the deeplyensconced faith held by all in western Europe toward the end of the 11th century.

The manifestation of this in an armed pilgrimage against Muslim forces, however, was the result of persuasive, almost obsessive, preaching and dogmatic manipulation by an aggressive Papacy, as well as the shorter term catalysing effect of Alexius’ letter of appeal. The Papacy’s dichotomy, that of universal guide and cellular organisation, also allowed it to maintain the crucial link between the faith and action of the people of Europe.

Whether one concludes that either the spiritual or social factors were more pervasive and important to the laity in responding to Urban, neither can be dismissed. Indeed I would propose that it was exactly this combination of factors that was paramount in producing such an unprecedented reaction to Urban’s call in November 1095.