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It
was a wonderful display; but
something was missing. From 1939
onward, there was no single model of
a British ship. What had happened,
1
asked. My guide, a former officer of
the Yugoslav navy, made an apolo–
getic gesture. British ships, he sug–
gested, might still be best. But there
was the awkward question of price,
and the inevitable doubt ove r
delivery date. His was a poor coun–
try; it had to spend wisely and as
little as possible. And so, from 1945
onward, the names were of ships
built in Osaka and Kobe, Hamburg
and Bremen- not of Newcastle,
Glasgow and Liverpool.
Great Britaln and the Sea
Every shred of Britain's past great–
ness was related to the sea in one
way or another. The wide oceans
were the lungs of a country that
began on the road to world power
when Francis Drake defeated the'
Spanish Armada, and which grew
rich from the rommerce of colo–
nies. Rudyard Kipling's ' 'Reces–
sional" warned against the crum–
bling of an Empire, which he saw
as the fai lure of a vision.
By the 1930s Britain was begin–
ning to turn her back on the oceans
that had given her health, as well as
wealth and power. By the 1970s
silence was spreading in the ship–
yards of those heaven-sent water–
ways-the best in Europe and the
best placed to exploit the trade of
two hemispheres. Teesside today is ·
an ultimate sadness of unemploy–
ment and a despair of would-be res–
cuers with patchwork plans to
bring a little business back. Har–
land and Wolff of Belfast is a husk;
the lower Clyde no more than a
broad backwater. Kipling knew
more about armies than navies, but
he would be quick to recognize the
saddest symptom of a11 of Britain's
decline today.
What Loss o f Empire Has Meant
lt
must be hard for people outside
Britain ·to understand what the loss
of an empire has meant. The United
States, for instance, has adminis–
tered overseas territories. But they
have been a miniscule of the huge,
compact terr itory of the United
States itself. Britain, in her so very
20
recent heyday, administered territo–
ries 140 times the size of the parent
United Kingdom in area, and 13
times greater in population.
Kipling has been accused of
bombast and arrogance. In fact, he
believed implieit ly in a mission for
Britain of potential service to more
than a quarter of the people on
earth.
lt
is hardly surprising that
Britain, having lost that responsi–
bility and all sense of mission, is
adrift and purposeless. The real val–
ue of something in life is often not
recognized until that something has
been lost. So it has been with the
British Empire.
What has taken place in Britain
in the last 30 years has been a
slow,
soft slide downhill.
Because it has been slow, it has
seemed to many to be imperceptible,
and therefore not happening at a11.
Because it has been soft-softened,
that is, by measures designed to alle–
viate stress, but never to supply real
remedies-Britain's gray twilight
has seemed at least bearable. Most
people in Britain, indeed, have up to
the very recent past been apt to react
with anger to any suggestion at all of
national decline.
"Don't knock dear old BritairÍ!"
has been the standard response,
often taken up with shri11 anger by
the most-read and least-influential
organs of the press. This sort of
pseudopatriotism has been danger–
ously counterproductive because it
has made a major contribution to
the lackadaisical popular attitude to
any kind of reform, or even repair.
When there has been a choice of
doing something or doing notbing,
the public has been steered in tbe
direction of negation.
Sorne Disturbing Trends
On a single day, just before year's
end, the London
Times
carried
these stories:
The United Kingdom's unem–
ployment figure was set to reach
3.25 mi11ion early in the New Year,
or roughly 13 percent of the labor–
force. Already, nearly 150,000
school-leaver.s had joined the dole
queue and their number was
expected to rise further. No figure,
of course, could be given for "con–
cealed" unemployment.
The United Kingdom's total eco–
nomic output is scbeduled to go
down
by 2 percent over tbe last
financia! year. Yet wage-claims
have often been as high as 1O to 15
percent. (Fortunately the coal min–
ers, who were standing out for at
least twice that amount, settled for
9.5 percent.) So where should the
money come from to satisfy these
wage-claims? From resources of
wealth that are actually declining?
The real sufferers will be old-age
pensioners- expected to subsist on
a ridiculous .fl,OOO (approx. U.S.
$2,000) ayear, and forced to go cap
in hand to beg a few pounds more
under the derisory tit le of "supple–
mentary benefits." Also to suffer
are the young-for whose upkeep
and education less money will be
available-and the pbysically or
mentally disabled.
Armed robberies, one learned on
the very same day in December,
were reaching record levels ; in
London there were more in the first
nine months of 1981 than in the
whole of 1980. A change in pattern
was proving a problem for the
police. Criminals were switching
their attention to "minor" business
premises that were relatively
unprotected.
But, one was told on anotber
page of the newspaper that prison
sentences were proving an "ineffec–
tive deterrent" for the proliferating
number of small-time burglars who
regarded them as an "occupational
hazard." A steadily increasing
number of criminals go to prison
rather tban pay a fine, and serve
time at the taxpayer's expense.
Many of Britain's prisons were
built in the Victorian era. They are
not yet falling down but, in the typ–
ically British way, are just gently
flaking away. In the same issue of
tbe
Times,
there was an article on
the sorry state of one of Britain's
largest hospitals; the principal suf–
ferers there, in Caterham, were
mentally handicapped children.
Nothing unusual about this case,
for Britain's state-run health ser–
vice is like an aging ship, which
creaks and leaks but just manages
to stay afloat. Just how backward
Britain's health service is was illus–
trated to me during a recent visit to
The
PLAIN TRUTH