The Power and Influence of the UK - Essay Example

I. Introduction During earlier centuries, particularly in the nineteenth century, the power and influence of the UK had extended out to numerous sections of the globe. Quite a few historical analysts argued about the implications of the closure of the world following centuries of explorations, discoveries and territorial conquests by Western powers. This global prediction, emphasized by the intentions of the domestic power coalition comprised of an industrial capitalists and a profit-making landed gentry, has left an enduring influence to the contemporary world (Hardill et al. 2001). Hence, the UK’s current understanding of its status as a participant and competitor in the global system and its uncertainty over its affiliation with the European Union, owes much to its original role as a dominant power and the global motives it developed. The UK attained the zenith of its economic hegemony in the middle of the nineteenth century. It had surfaced hegemonic from the rivalry with France and the Netherlands during the eighteenth century, making it liberated to seek for its colonial expansion. Its international incursion was brought about by a complex series of settlement, direct governance and indirect organizational and political authority reinforced by economic influence. Primarily, British expatriates settled territories where they relocated and nearly exterminated native populations (ibid). By the latter part of the nineteenth century, the UK was being defied by Germany and the United States. Germany, at the time already unified under the Bismarck regime, was turning out to be a foremost industrial manufacturer. The United States gained advantages from technological progress, such as the conservation of food rations and transportation, hence creating severe difficulties for agricultural producers in Europe. The UK, dissimilar to other continental nations, developed a strategy of free trade. The ferocity of World War I and the pressures it placed on the economy of Britain conclusively exposed its deteriorating economy and the termination of its hegemonic rule. It, too, revealed the rise of the United States, which had joined the hostilities against Germany in 1917 (Elton 1992). The concentrated industrial foundation of the UK such as the coal industry located in South Wales was severely battered in the twenties and the Depression led to the breakdown of numerous economies in 1929. On the one hand, in the 1930s ushered in an episode of protectionism, as well as in the UK. Nevertheless, the UK, with its remote Empire, still preserved the sense of being a hegemonic power (ibid). The UK, while triumphant, was successfully destroyed at the concluding phase of the Second World War, which witnessed the emergence of the United States as the acknowledged economic and military supremacy, and it at the moment initiated launching a global establishment founded on the liberalization of industry and commerce. In 1994, at the Bretton Woods convention, the United States presented an institutional structure based on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It, too, initiated aid to nations in Western Europe carried out by the Marshall Plan to construct Keynesian welfare state (Hardill et al. 2001). The UK, particularly under the Labour Foreign Secretary and the designer of the alliance in the West during the post-war period Ernest Bevin, observed its prospects lying in a singular Anglo-American relationship. Quite a few disputed that this is one of the primary bases for the abandonment of its colonies and military duties (ibid). II. The UK and Globalization In the previous period, the time the UK dominated the international arena, international alliances, though far-reaching, was predisposed to transpire between nation-states. Hirst and Thompson have asserted that the golden age of commerce and trade between nation-states happened at the concluding stages of the nineteenth century. In the contemporary period it has been maintained that the extent of operation has changed such that nation-states are not anymore the only key players and that connections between nation-states have become more profound and strengthened in several fields. The concept of globalization may hence be interpreted as suggesting to the processes, mechanisms and technologies, economic, political and cultural, underlying the present temporal distance constriction or compressing the world (Nairn 2000). The ratification of European Union (EU) legislation in this area is regardless of the surrendering of sovereignty by nation-states, but somewhat teaming up to guarantee that they do not have more trouble-free legislation that their European colleagues. On the contrary, nation-states have made it more trouble-free for their own members to relocate within the EU and preserve economic, cultural and social privileges. They have made it more trouble free for skilful labour to traverse national boundaries through acknowledging requirements and degrees of other nation-states of the EU, more and more at the expense of those belonging to the Commonwealth (Hague 1999). The UK and the EU The UK’s status in the EU has recently become the centre of strong and hostile arguments. In general, majority of oppositions come from English conservatives, with majority of people in the smaller countries sympathetic of the EU. Adversaries of greater alliances with the EU are anxious of a loss of independence and the supremacy of the EU hegemonic nation, Germany. The paradox of this is not mislaid on the Scots, Welsh and multitudes of Northern Irish, because this has previously been their fortune when these nations participated, by no means altogether of their own willpower, that previous and exceptionally successful universal market, the United Kingdom (Hardill et al. 2001). No government of Britain has been completely dedicated to the form of political assimilation that is the objective of the primary actors in the EU, specifically Germany and France. Consecutive administrations have pursued to resettle the initial agreement. The Labour government of Harold Wilson looked for a new bargain from Brussels, primarily the British budgetary inputs, admission to EEC commerce and industry for Commonwealth goods and restructuring of the Common Agricultural Policy, at all times a departure of conflict, since it was directed towards the fairly underdeveloped agriculture of the countries in the continental regions. Wilson pursued to legitimize the resettled bargain with a referendum in 1975, the earliest in the history of the British Constitution (Trentmann 2000). Subsequent to this was the extraordinary exhibition of a Prime Minister referring voters to back up continuous membership, as it was prescribed Party guiding principle to resist it. The outcome was a high percentage of voters who said ‘yes’ to continue membership in the EEC. Ironically, specified the current circumstance, support was greatest in England and Wales and weakest in Northern Ireland and Scotland. However, that status has altered, with majority of Euro advocates in England and fewer in the other nations (ibid). Even though the British masses voted in support of remaining in the EEC, pulling out remained prescribed Labour guiding principle until the appointment of Neil Kinnock in 1983. Undeniably, it is fascinating that the before Europhile Conservatives, the association that escorted the UK into the Common Market, is currently the foremost Euro advocate as the Euro advocacy of the Labour party has, formally at any rate, shifted to a Europhile disposition (Trentmann 2000). Even with a resettled agreement the UK carried on to shell out an uneven allocation of the EEC budget and this turned out to be one of the primary proposals of Mrs. Thatcher’s course of action towards Europe until 1984. Thatcher was as well as against advanced assimilation, particularly additional Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and also further Brussels-guided cultural and social legislation. John Major, her heir, managed to settle an alternative derived from the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty. However, in the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, the recently elected Labour government chose to enter the Social Chapter (Hardill et al. 2001). The UK and Nuclear Weapons Faslane, located in Gareloch, is the home of the UK’s navy of Trident nuclear submarines and considered as one of Europe’s most significant military headquarters, and a site that gives its paramount efforts to remain unremarkable. However, even though it is remote to the naked eye, it cannot elude the working intellect. Along with Coulport which is quite near to Trident’s storage of warheads, Faslane has since drawn much political attention and protest to itself (Chalmers & Walker 2001). The protest appears to have amplified currently, aggravated partly by the nationalist resistances of the Scots to the basing of the nuclear weapons of the UK on the Scottish territory and extremely near to Glasgow, which is the grandest city of Scotland. In the standpoint of the political conservatives, Polaris and Trident have been obliged on Scotland; their existence in the Clyde becomes an utter symbol of English disrespect of Scottish interests (ibid). Until currently, the reality of Faslane’s site in Scotland has not much disturbed the administration in London. Belonging to a unitary state, which is the United Kingdom, Scotland does not posses any right to decide on the site of nuclear weapons, which is quite unlike the case in any other section of the UK. The administration also extracted assurance from Scotland’s prided military institutions and its eagerness to play an important function in the North Atlantic’s defence at the time of the Cold War. The judgment to change Polaris with Trident at Faslane was hence assumed in the latter part of the seventies without any consideration being provided, in spite of the increase in Scottish nationalism and the referendum in 1979 regarding devolution, to political transformations that might awaits Scotland (Chalmers & Walker 2001). Whether the United Kingdom is capable of preserving itself is becoming one of the significant concerns in British politics. Various negotiations to Scottish nationalism have been established throughout the recent decades, concluding in the introduction of a Scottish parliament with decentralized powers in 1999 in Edinburgh (Hardill et al. 2001). Will this modernization weaken, or build up, demands for autonomy? No one knows for sure. Some assert that devolution will safeguard the Union through permitting for diversity in growing federal United Kingdom, and that an embedded disbelief among Scots regarding the advantages of splitting the Union, which has provided Scotland excellently for three centuries, will give at all times verification to independence (ibid). The cohesion of the UK has long been put in too much doubt. From its initial beginnings there are those present, primarily, yet not entirely, in the marginal countries, who did not desire to become members of the British Union, just as there are those present now, majority, yet not entirely, in the powerful nations, who do not desire additional assimilation with the much novice European Union (McCrone 1992). III. Challenge to the UK’s Culture and Identity There are several challenges to identity that have asserted their primacy in recent years. The divided Britain has attracted attention to the rethinking of identity, as has the progress of the European Union. As Marr stressed out, one of the foremost dilemmas of politics is “how to preserve small nationals’ identities within larger structures” (ibid, 1). The spate of immigration of non-white peoples from various cultures, majority of whom settled in few English cities since the post-war has also confirmed to be as much a challenge to identity as an expansion of the UK’s entrenched multiculturalism. Identity, hence, is not without a hitch. For instance, British and English identity are frequently interchanged, basically since, for the majority of English, Great Britain is merely another concept for Greater England. Yet even something as apparently definite as Scottish identity is complicated to define (Trentmann 2000). Myth also contributes considerably in identity and blowing up or creating myths can affect identity. One of the most discussed about, perplexing, and largest of identity dilemmas, which has potentially expansive repercussions for the prospect of the UK, is particularly that of the UK hegemon, England, and the surfacing concern of Englishness (Nairn 2000, 215). Observe the overabundance of literatures tackling Englishness and the predicament most authors have identifying Englishness, or, as Neal Ascherson refers to it, “Anglitude” (ibid, 48). This is a perpetuated problem. One dilemma is that English identity has on no account been severely questioned. Another is the comparative diversity in such a small nation. The question regularly asked is “which England?” (Wright 2000, 96). It is the England of the Home Counties that is frequently cited as being characteristically English and indicative of English identity. However, this discriminatory, white, average-class dimension, falls short to embody the multiplicity in the country. It is England, nevertheless, or at least a number of segments of it, which is the emphasis of the “new post-Windrush multiculturalism” (Cohn 1999, 3), inhabited by those who reside in England, yet not by Englishness. Yet, the earliest race rebellions and the earliest documented intermarriage in Britain took place in Wales (ibid). The Union was specifically disturbing incident for English identity, because, according to Elton (1992), “the English experience the largest and most traumatic change when they turned into the British” (233). Now, with the dissolution of Britain the English must remake themselves as they resurface from their British episode. As Nairn (2000) maintains, “a far deeper uncertainty attaches to post-British England than to any dilemmas currently experienced in Scotland, Wales or Ireland” (215). This is for the reason that in England the state and nation were much more intimately associated than in the other nations of the UK. Hence, while the Scot can feel “British and Scottish and the Welsh British and Welsh” (Hardill et al. 2001, 132), the notion of dual citizenship is exceptionally complicated for numerous English citizens to understand. No one has attempted or triumphed in establishing a plural English identity (ibid). This concern of Englishness and English identity is critical for the prospect of the UK. Several of the representations of English nationalism are pessimistic and linked with football hoodlums, chauvinism, racial intolerance, patriotism and militarism. The representation is rather primitive and is filled with melancholy and regrets. It is also patriarchal, mannish, and white. Since extremist right groups, like the British National Party and the National Front, have suited a number of the symbols of English, also British, nationalism, these is a hesitance among the English to flaunt their sense of identity in the same manner perhaps other groups will (Hardill et al. 2001). Hence, while the English explicitly make assertions to patriotism domestically and overseas, many are hesitant to recognize with English patriotism for worry of being stained with prejudice or Fascism. This is as expressed by the Brimson brothers, “the Scots have the advantage of being able to revel in their Scottishness without being branded racist, and that helps to bring them together in a way that is impossible for the English” (Brimson & Brimson 1996, 20). More currently, there was the perspective of the head of the Conservative Party, William Hague (1999), for whom the British are full-grown, open-minded, entrepreneurial, multicultural, open-handed, lawful and private citizens. British identity, he claimed, was greater than the overall, which are Welsh and Scottish and a one way or another distinctive English consciousness. He descends, however, into the British equals English misconception (ibid). IV. Conclusion Any sufficient discussion of the dynamic nature of western European states in the twentieth century should count narratives of both the growth of their role and the democratization of their constitution. On the other hand, they became progressively more centralized and assumed on new purposes in manners that reinforced them with respect to civil society. The British state put emphasis on decision making itself, supplemented to its spheres of influence, increased taxation, annexed its strength of surveillance, designed new techniques of economic organization, monitored remarkable development in the public sector and approved on a number of obligations for the wellbeing of its citizens (Cohn 1999). On the contrary, nevertheless, several western European states, particularly following 1945, bestowed new political and social privileges to their citizens in ways that established them as increasingly under democratic regulations. The British state was revolutionized through the increasing power of representative institutions, the erection of universal adult voting rights, the initiation of legal security for trade unions, and the representation of social rights within the welfare state (Trentmann, 2000). By definition, Great Britain is a multinational state, multicultural and multiethnic; it is a place of diverse identities. The Acts of Union 1536, 1707 and 1800 established a state with six mother tongues and a broad array of customs and traditions. Nevertheless, while Great Britain was a thriving economic and political Union, the culture, traditions and identities of the component nations flourished. As Brockliss and Eastwood claimed, “Within the new United Kingdom the space for regional, ethnic, national, linguistic and religious identities was constantly contested” (Hardill et al. 2001, 57). However, a dynamic British State was established out of a manifold of economic, ethnic, religious commitments. This is due to the different Acts of Union, from 1536 to 1800 were formulated for political homogeneity rather than an actual unification of diverse cultures (ibid). Therefore, it can be safely assumed that the success of UK’s influence on other nations in the contemporary period does not primarily reside on its international affairs but instead on its internal realities and components. Being an ethnically and racially diverse nation, UK’s influence to the world has been remarkable by means of engendering and representing various nationalities already ingrained in its social system. References Brimson, D. and Brimson, E. (1996) England, My England: The Trouble with the National Team, London: Headline. Chalmers, M. & Walker, W. (2001). Unchartered Waters: The UK, Nuclear Weapons and the Scottish Question. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell. Cohn, N. (1999) Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and Preposterous, London: Verso. Elton, G. (1992) The English, Oxford: Blackwell. Hague, W. (1999) ‘Identity and the British Way’, speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, 24 January. Hardill, I. et al. (2001) Human Geography of the UK: An Introduction, London: Routledge. McCrone, D. (1992) Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation, London: Routledge. Nairn, R. (2000) After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland, London: Granta. Trentmann, F. (2000). Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History. New York : Berghahn Books. Wright, T. (2000) ‘Introduction: England, whose England?’, in S. Chen and T. Wright (eds) The English Question, London: The Fabian Society, pp. 7-17. Read More