amala,
let us swing back to the 1930s. even though england ruled 1/3 of the world then, there was horrendous poverty in the uk and also in europe.
the east end of london was slums, and the english class system was as rigid as the indian caste system. even now, when we all speak the same language tamil, dont we give ourselves away with our ethnicity?
likewise was england - the london cockney being the lowest with the aristocrats being the top end, with their toff accent and clothes (shaw makes a big parody of this 'middle class' values in pygmalion, which was made into that great movie my fair lady).
the sacrifices performed by the working class during the war, was deemed to deserve a reward. hence came national health, social welfare, a whole slew of publicly funded free universities, subsidized council houses and such. the money for all this came from dismantling the huge royal navy and the military, which was used to tame the empire. the empire where the sun never set, was a huge drain on the exchequer, inspite of paupering countries like india. it costs a lot to have military adventures abroad, as the usa is now finding, and which fact bankrupted the erstwhile ussr and ultimately disintegrated it ie afghanistan.
the british also, for the first time, taxed the rich. at one point, the uk had among the highest income taxes in the world.
one would have thought that all this move to egalitarianism would make the worker happy now that the slums were gone, free education upto university provided, and for the first time in the history of england, upward mobility of the lower classes was possible.
the opposite happened. the british worker became more militant. the work ethic disappeared to the cause of militant trade unionism. the first casualty was the british motor industry, which at one point, had different companies - vauxhall, morris, humber, hillman, rootes, bently, rolls royce, jaguar, morris, austin and probably more. one by one they shut down, due to poor quality, driven more by drunken workers and equally stupid management.
next came the british ship industry, which was #1 in the world, and which soon saw clyde shipyards close one by one. then came aerospace and so on, till now, that there is no british owned motor car, shipping left. rolls royce being the only leftover engine maker.
the newly upwardly mobile middle class soon got disgusted with their erstwhile cousins, who still were union labour and espoused class warfare. one such ex working class girl, named margaret thatcher, single handedly broke the unions, trimmed the welfare state, though not to the extent she would have liked (she got thrown out by her own party) and started the new age of unbridled capitalism in england, while still maintaining the old but benignly neglected social welfare net. the net now being funded by the oil from north sea, and not taxes.
today, the oil is drying. two generations of youth, have grown without jobs, thanks to liberal immigration, where folks from poland, india or sri lanka or somalia, would come, and work for half the wages, double the time and would not complain.
these now own shops and houses all over england. the poles have gone back but not the others. these are a constant reminder to white and black britain, of what could have been, but did not happen. for reasons, no one is honest enough to utter, for being termed anti social, racist or arrogant.
let us see, what tomorrow brings...
