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Volume 4 | Issue 1 - Glorious Britain
Article by Minesh Parekh. Edited and Researched by Rob Russell.
Britain has been brandished “broken” by politicians and the press alike a lot over the past few years, and this depiction typically describes the supposed breakdown of family relationships, a lessening community-spirit, increasing levels of welfare dependency and an apparent crime epidemic, though this list is not exhaustive and can contain whatever societal problem papers like the Daily Mail have most recently used to scare the middle classes. The image of this broken society is usually accompanied by a tagline to the effect of “it’s getting worse”, designed solely to feed popular anxieties about the worsening state of Britain.
The concept of broken Britain indicates that there was a time when Britain was perfectly well and functioning and has since fallen into disrepair, an argument supported by politicians from all sides, expressing their despair about the nation’s deteriorating state of affairs. But when was Britain working, if it has since broken? Looking back it’s hard to find a time that would be preferable for society as a whole, considering that “good old days” consisted of: serfdom, colonisation, widespread sexual and racial prejudice, no voting rights, a society without healthcare, and was generally a time when the majority of the population lived in poverty. The good old days really weren’t that good if you weren’t an upper-class white male.
The average person living today is better off now than they would have been at any point in the past – over the last fifty years the average net household income has grown ‘by about 1.7% per year in inflation-adjusted terms’ – and living standards and lifestyles have vastly improved as a result. This improvement can also be observed through life expectancy rates: in 1901 the average life expectancy for men was 46 and 50 for women, whereas in 2011 women were expected to live past 80 and men 76. These statistics clearly reflect a rise in general living standards of the average person.
Even if we play towards the idea that the country is succumbing to rising levels of crime and gangs of uncontrollable hooded youths, this supposed threat pales in comparison to the Britain of old. Towns and cities are much safer and cleaner and we have a police force and a legal system designed to protect us now – and the idea simply isn’t true anyway: crime statistics are continuing to fall, with 2010 holding the lowest number of murders in 19 years. As for the disaffected youths constantly drinking and smoking, alcohol consumption levels are on the fall, as are smoking rates and the number of drug users. Combined with this the fact that the number of teenage pregnancies has been dramatically declining since the 1970s, it seems that the broken Britain image is being purported by politicians and the press without the much worse Britain of the past being taken into account. The good old days were simply those when social problems were hidden from view.
It would be wrong for me to argue that Britain is perfect as it is, but it’s equally as wrong to ignore the societal advancements and improvements in living standards and welfare that make today’s society so much better than it has been in the past. As for people who argue that Britain is broken now and worse than it once was: our health service is superb, we’re much better off on average than most of our ancestors ever have been, we have much more social freedom; and society has moved on from institutional prejudice. Britain, like any other nation has social problems that it needs to address, and it may not be perfect now, but it’s a lot better than it has ever been.
• The National Health Service was founded in 1949, and offers a range of free health services to UK citizens, and was largely heralded as the beginning of the welfare state.
• The rate of home-ownership in the UK has grown from 10% to 68% of the population, from 1914 to 1999.
• Charles Booth published his work Life and Labour of the People of London in 1889, a study of poverty in the East End of London which found that 35% of people were living in abject poverty.
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