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| Worth fighting for? Tommy Atkins enjoys a tasty Beveridge. |
In 1942, at the height of World War 2, the British coalition government produced a report on social welfare that contained the promise of a better society for everybody contributing to the war effort. The Beveridge Report recognised 5 Giant evils that needed to be dealt with; these evils were: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. The conclusions of this report were widely accepted across the political spectrum and its recommendations for producing the better world that people were supposedly fighting for would strike a chord amongst the general public that would resonate most strongly in the country's general election of 1945.
Only two months after VE Day, the British people overwhelmingly said yes to the Labour Party's promises to implement the recommendations of the Beveridge Report. The war leader Churchill and his Conservative party - that wished mostly to conserve the traditional social order - were dismissed by people who, after all the hardships of battle, quite reasonably thought they deserved a better Britain.
As always, the better Britain could only be built on new ideas. New ideas borne on the rising tide of information.
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| "The book that won the 1945 election for Labour." |
One important packet of information that would help generate these new ideas was the novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. The writer Alan Sillitoe, in his foward for the novel, tells how he was first introduced to the book with the promise that "this was the book that won the ' 45 election for Labour".
As Britain struggled into the second half of the 20th Century, general society was still very much ordered according to traditional mores. The workers worked until they dropped, thought of as little more than beasts of burden by the ruling class who lived lives of ease thanks to this system. This novel explored the society of Edwardian Britain by describing the lives of a group of house painters. In a pivotal scene, one painter attempts to explain to his colleagues how they are being exploited by the system, but his explanation fails as the others are simply unable to recognise the bars of their cage. Lacking an education that would have encouraged their innate communicative skills, these men are unable to process information in order to get new ideas. Thanks, however, to information like The Ragged- Trousered Philanthropists, as World War 2 drew to a close there were new ideas that were poised for victory.
The general social order of the time would not have been unintelligible to Henry the VIII, but what would have baffled the old king was the great shift in communication that allowed ordinary people a voice. More than 400 years after the Pope said no to Henry's divorce, the British tree of knowledge, grown strong on better communication, had produced the voice of the people. And unremarkably, people generally wanted a better Britain, that is to say, a fairer and more just society.
The end of World War 2 also saw the beginning of the end of the British Empire. One of the pillars of the Empire had long been the simple idea that the British were somehow superior and had the god-given right to be lords of the Earth. As the tide of communication rose around the world, the inevitable flood of new ideas caused whole societies to push for the same kind of independence that had once been only the preserve of Kings.
As was the case after World War One, the support that had been given to Britain in the war effort, the fighting for freedom, naturally led Indian people to the idea that their own country should be free from Britain's colonial yoke, that India should have freedom of its own. Churchill argued that the Indian political elite were incapable of good government, but any acknowledgement that Indian people should govern India is notably lacking from the man who made such great efforts for Britain's own self-determination. It is interesting to consider how Churchill could so fervently fight for freedom for Britain while denying it to others.
The imperial idea of racial superiority, which would be a normal idea for someone of Churchill's background, would shrivel in the light of post-war questions and the corresponding new concepts. The Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1976 would have been exceedingly difficult to explain to the historical architects of the British Empire, but these new ideas would inevitably burst the artificial levees put in place by the traditional social order. Information continued to flow more and more freely across the land, and no longer would the old concepts seem so right and just as ordinary people began to expect basic services like health and education and continued to question old ideas that had sat in haughty dumb judgement for centuries.
With the introduction of the National Health Service along with better housing and a more democratic educational system, the great social reforms of the post-war period would push British society through another important revolution in communication.The traditional hierarchy was under threat as never before as the traditionally enslaved Morlocks become healthier and wiser and began to encroach on their mastersterritory' . Naturally, the traditional Eloi began to concoct their own ideas and plans within their gilded halls in order to deal with the new situation.
This push-back by the traditional power-holders in Britain would be marked by the rise of Margaret Thatcher, and her government would be marked by its veneration of Mammon
and its attacks on communication.
Mammon, who had always been lurking ready to scoop up the fruits of the British tree of knowledge, began to take up a throne cut from the tree's branches themselves, as science began to become increasingly the servant of profit. This construction for the new god's seat would necessitate an attack upon the tree that would stunt its growth. The results of which have been playing out in the last thirty years.
Simply put, the modern economic system must, for its own survival, make people less communicative. The rise of Thatcherism and its grotesque heir in Blair's Labour party* would involve a rise in status for PR, that child of Propaganda, and a concurrent take-over by the management class that would result in a steady solidification of the capitalist system of fascism light. The increasing dominance of the single idea of profit before all else would see a steady decline of the accumulated wisdom of the 500 year rising communicative tide.
Bela Lugosi's pyramid would suffer erosion, as the mighty would look on, far from despair. The simple question of "what is it?" Would increasingly be met with bemusement and aggression if anyone dared to exercise that fundamental tool of critical thinking - definition of terms.
Late 20th Century Britain's tree of knowledge would produce other exotic and strange fruit. One would be Ofsted: The Office of Standards in Education. Back in 1640, The Royal of London for improving Natural Knowledge took as its motto: "Take nobody's word for it." Ofsted titles itself the office of standards in education, yet states clearly that it "has no definition of education." Consider that for a minute. No definition of the thing that it is supposed to be measuring. No clear idea of what it's looking for, yet it continues to go around with its mystical measuring tape, measuring education. And we are all supposed to take their word for it.**
The things we do for love, our friends, families, hobbies, those things that are truly important to us, we do not do for money. Those things that make us most human, we do not do for money. So how did this creeping idea that profit comes above all things manage to entwine and strangle large parts of the tree of knowledge on its way to becoming the major rule that we live by?
The answer, at base, is very simple. Communication has been under attack for the last 30-odd years. Bela Lugosi is kept locked in the dungeons of Mammon, and naturally, if people are not asking and checking then describing and explaining become simply the servants of propaganda. The manipulation of information and ideas by the Blair government would have impressed veterans of the Soviet Union. It would also have surely impressed Henry's old enemy Pope Clement VII.
Observing that tide of British history that ran from the Pope's no to the people's yes, we might note the following:
1: Independent thought is a good thing for a country. Independent thought is a result of better communication
2: Science is encouraged by better communication.
3. All improvement in society is connected to better communication.
So, naturally Britain's leaders are spending a great deal of energy encouraging better communication. Aren't they?
Aren't they?
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* The heir Blair bunch?
** On a historical, albeit completely fabricated, note OFSTED*** formed a band at one point. This one was a personal favourite-
*** I personally would find it difficult to measure standards in, for example, Semprini, wouldn't you?
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So what was the first thing we did when we got there, I wonder?
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