The Pope's no to the People's Yes: The tide of British History. (5)

    Guglielmo Marconi with the wireless equipment used to receive the first trans-Atlantic signal.
    Achieved in Mother Hubbard's gaff, apparently.



  In the first year of the 20th century, communication technology took a giant leap right across the Atlantic as a radio signal was sent and recieved from the Old World to the New. Guglielmo Marconi had moved to London in order to find more interest in his ideas, and with Britain's tree of knowledge still rising at this time, Britannia would encourage Marconi with an eye to ruling the radio waves. More and more information could now be delivered at speeds that would make Mercury envious.
  Also, in 1901, as continents were being swept by the first waves of the new century's tsunami of communication,  H.G. Wells produced a fantasy about The First Men in The Moon * as fiction's scrying device gave people glimpses of things to come. Few at the time would have predicted the Apollo 11 mission only 68 years later; three men rising to the heavens in one of the greatest flourishes of a modern science only a few hundred years old. 
  1901 also witnessed the end of the Victorian age as the longest-serving British monarch passed away and was buried in Windsor near London. She had reigned over an empire that owed its strength both to the application of better communication in science and technology, as well as the inhibition of communication in the general culture. Predictably, no-one suggested that the Empress of India should be buried in India.
  In January of this year, Australia was born, but it would remain within the British pocket for a while yet. The fact that the country's official name became the Commonwealth of Australia may be seen as the usual PR for the powerful, considering the country's history.

  What would come to be referred to as The American Century would see the steady crumbling of Britain's empire, as the New England waiting in the wings, would eventually settle comfortably into its throne. The last of years of the British Empire would see Titans rise and fall, and the  continuing ritual worship of Mars.
 
  In April of 1911, a gigantic ship the biggest ever built, a massive bough of the British tree of knowledge,  carried the wealthy and the poor from the old world to the promise of a better life in the new. It has often been claimed to have been carrying a fair cargo of hubris as well,  ensuring that Nemesis would position her frozen Scylla in wait, possibly having asked her father for the favour.
  Considering that last sentence, and  the enormous amount of information and ideas floating up from the wreck of the Titanic, it is this headline really captures the event and our history's reaction to it-

  As the Titanic floundered, it was two men from The Marconi Company who sent distress signals by wireless. Their role was of such importance that Britain's postmaster general would later state: "Those who have been saved, have been saved by one man....Mr Marconi and his marvelous invention." Better communication saves lives.
  Two years after Titanic's massive corpse fell to rest near the Grand Banks, the fields of France would see the kind of temporary cemeteries that only Mars can provide, as the inhibition of communication in all cultures ensured that all countries could go to war with God on their side.
   The last surviving British soldier to fight in World War One, Harry Patch, described his thoughts like this :-
  "When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

   I can't see the U.K. government attempting any explanation of Harry's questions during its forthcoming commemoration of the First World War. Could it be because a continuing inhibition of communication enables wars to continue?
 
   3 years into the First World War, one of the more far-reaching fruits of the British tree of knowledge would burst and spread its seeds in Russia, as the Russian Revolution took hold. Using the treasures of the Empire available to him in the British Museum, Karl Marx had spent years researching Das Kapital. As always: Information ------> Idea.
   It is interesting to note that the Czarist Russian authorities allowed Das Kapital into the country not only on the grounds that it was a serious work but also because "few people in Russia will read it, and even fewer people will understand it."
    Contempt for ordinary people has always played a huge part in the human story,  but the steady tide of history, its rise of communication has ensured a slow leveling of the playing area. But former unassailable cliffs are still steep slopes and the tide needs to continue its work.

 Across the river Mersey from Birkenhead, where the author of Dulce et Decorum Est spent many years, is Walton Park Cemetery, the last resting place of Robert Tressell.
 1914 saw the publication of Tressel's most famous work. A book that George Orwell reckoned "everyone should read." Many years later, a young Alan Sillitoe would be passed a copy with the endorsement: "The book that won the '45 election for Labour."
   Britain's social landscape was changing, flooded by new information and new ideas.


* When did we start saying: Man on the moon?