The Britain of the mid-19th Century was the greatest civilisation that has ever existed. It had a mighty empire, a mighty navy, it had wiped out the slave trade and it was at the forefront of the Industrian Revolution, the greatest improvement in living standards in history. And now, as I write, it is hanging on by a thread: divided, debt-ridden and weak.
So, where did it all go wrong? Here – in reverse chronological order – is my list of the key dates:
2008. Reaction to the Financial Crisis.
Had the banks just been allowed to go bust and the banking regulation that reduced their numbers abolished we would not be looking at 20 lost years.
1997. Opening the borders.
Allowing the establishment of hostile communities in your country is not a good idea.
1987. Leaving the NHS untouched.
By 1987, the Thatcher government had privatised just about everything. Only the NHS and education were left. And they flunked it. Mind you it would probably have been electoral suicide.
1969. Failure to defeat the IRA.
If you reward terrorism you get more of it.
1965. Race Relations Act.
Keir Starmer is wrong. Britain does not have a “proud tradition of free speech”. But it did have some free speech. This act along with various successors outlawed some forms of speech. Those successors progressively outlawed freedom of association which might have gone a long way to taking the sting out of the Integration Crisis.
1964. Abolition of the Death Penalty.
I appreciate libertarians tended to be divided on this issue. We may have a lot to say about what the law should be but very little about what should happen when it is broken. But if you are going to end a long-standing tradition it had better work. It didn’t.
1963. Robbins Committee.
This led to the subsidisation of higher education and the subsidisation of student living costs. Where you get subsidy you get communism.
c.1948. Ending of the right to defend oneself with a firearm.
I got this from the late Brian Micklethwait but I haven’t been able to confirm it. Brian’s point was that if you couldn’t use guns to defend yourself there was very little point in having one and so it became easy for the state to ban them.
1948. Nationalisation of rail.
Along with coal, steel and many others along the way. Losses, strikes, decline, waste, unemployment.
1947. Town & Country Planning Act.
Pretty much stopped building anywhere where people might want to live. A huge contributor to putting home ownership out of the reach of millions.
1931. Abandoning the Gold Standard.
Inflation and boom and bust became the order of the day.
1920s. Abolition of the Poor Law.
I mean to write about this one day but TL;DR while the Poor Law had many shortcomings it did at least keep people alive while keeping the costs down.
1922. Creation of the BBC.
A monopoly communist propaganda organisation using the most powerful media then in existence which non-communists were forced to pay for. What could go wrong?
1920. Beginning of the War on Drugs.
Other than the crime and changes to the drugs themselves (making them more dangerous than ever), the persistent failure of the War on Drugs gave the state the excuse for ever greater assaults on civil liberties.
1918. Universal Adult Male Franchise.
This meant that people could vote themselves other people’s money. It very quickly led to the replacement of the (not very) Liberal Party by the (not-at-all liberal) Labour Party. Mind you, it should be pointed out that a lot of the damage was done well before.
1910. People’s Budget et al.
In introducing the state pension, a state GP service and unemployment benefit this laid the foundations of the Welfare State that is currently doing such a good job of bankrupting the country.
1910. Payment of MPs.
I put this one in tentatively. I would like to say it meant Members of Parliament no longer had to have made something of themselves but given that a large number of them came from rich families that is not quite true.
1906. Taff Vale Judgement.
This effectively put trade unions above the law leading to endless strikes, uncompetitiveness, industrial decline and unemployment.
1890s. Death Duties.
Bit by bit this destroyed the aristocracy by forcing a fire sale every time the head of the household died. [And that did what exactly, Patrick? Summat! It did summat!]
1875. Trade Union Act.
This allowed picketting or the intimidation of non-striking workers by trade unionists. I have to thank Paul Marks for bringing this one to my attention.
1870. Forster Act.
This established state education along with all that went along with it such as indoctrination, poor quality education and the opportunity costs involved in children not being able to earn money or learn a trade.
1845. Banking Act.
This began the extension of the Bank of England’s monopoly to the whole of the country.
Anything I’ve missed?
1997 does it for me!
Having had the best part of 40 years alive before that date, the differences between now and, say, 1990!!
1914 – getting involved in the Great War
Freedom of Association?
Noble concept.
How about FREEDOM FROM association. NOT being forced at government gunpoint to belong to an “association” in order to practice a trade, for instance.
As Goethe put it:
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. “
Suez 1956, but this list is only part of the picture and perhaps not the most significant part. Kant’s point of the Crooked Timber of Humanity applies. The British Empire was a step change in the human way of imperialism and colonialism. It was less about the material world and more about a set of ideas about how peoples and people should live. These ideas created the modern world. Humanity, as a whole is healthier and wealthier than could have imagined prior to the British Empire. The battle between the ideas of the old empires and the ideas of the British Empire still rages.
Peel’s Banking Act of 1844 was not wrong because it “extended the Bank of England’s monopoly” – after all “free trade in banking is free trade in swindling” – “banking” (unlike honest money lending) is based on lending out more money (cash) than you have got, that needs to be repeated for it to sink in – “banking” is based on lending out more money (cash) than you have got – it is not a “fraction” in the sense of, say nine tenths, it is a “fraction” in the sense of, say, ninety tenths, nine times more lending than cash-money you have got.
In the United States in the early 1900s J.P. Morgan was attacked for lending out three “Dollars” for every Dollar in physical gold he really had – and he did do that, but what most people do not know is that this practice was astonishingly restrained by the standards of bankers. “You are lending out three times the amount of “money” than you have got in physical gold – you PRUDE, we blow Credit Bubbles vastly bigger than that” would be the (private) response of most bankers.
The background to the Act was the debate between the “Banking School” (including the person who later founded the Economist magazine) who argued that the Credit Bubbles of bankers were a Good Thing (TM), and the “Currency School” who argued that bank notes should be restricted – both schools of thought were wrong, but the Currency School was only wrong because it did not go far enough, as bank lending above the amount of money (cash) that the bank has is a Bad Thing (not a Good Thing) REGARDLESS of whether it is done by bank notes – or by some other swindle.
There is nothing wrong with lending out money (Real Savings – the actual sacrifice of consumption) for interest (nothing wrong with being a “Shylock” or “Loan Shark” – a “usurier”) – but there is everything wrong with lending out “money” (“broad money” Credit Bubbles) that did not exist before your book keeping tricks.
And “free competition” does not make this right – any more than “free competition” between murder gangs makes murder right.
Anyway…….
Peel’s Banking Act was suspended almost at once – Prime Minister Russell found that the Act limited the powers of the Bank of England (not extended the powers of the Bank of England – limited its powers) thus making bailing out bankers more difficult – so he suspended the Act.
Must bailout bankers – Ireland (the Irish) could die, but bankers must be bailed out.
In case anyone missed what I said (and believe) – yes Mr J.P. Morgan was actually more restrained (not less restrained) than most bankers (most Credit Bubble blowers) – either in the United States or the United Kingdom – and not just in the early 1900s, in Victorian times as well.
And every politician of the time (including the relatively conservative President Taft) was exactly WRONG in their understanding of the crash of 1907 – the problem was not “lack of flexibility” to be fixed by more Credit Money – the problem was the existing “flexibility” created by such things as the Civil War era Banking Acts – which, as the people who passed them, in the desperate situation of the Civil War of the early 1860s, knew well – basically legalized criminal behaviour, because the government believed it needed the criminal behaviour to win the Civil War – and, by the way, the Confederacy were WORSE – they were even more into Credit Bubble blowing. Tragically these Banking Acts were not repealed after the Civil War.
Still back to the United Kingdom.
I think we need to make a distinction between two things – the growth of the government (relative to Civil Society), and the ideological change in the thinking of the establishment elite.
The government (the state) does not state to grow as a proportion of Civil Society in the United Kingdom till the 1870s (Patrick is quite correct to mention the Forster Education Act – and the terrible Acts of Disraeli should also be mentioned), but the ideological change in the thinking of the establishment comes long before this.
In the 1820s there was a consensus in establishment circles that government in Britain should be strictly limited – both supporters of the government (such as Lord Liverpool – and Canning, Robertson, Castlereagh and so on) and their Whig opponents, tended to agree on this basic point.
But in the 1830s there is a change in thinking – both among future “Tory” politicians such as Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby – the boss of Disraeli) and his “Whig” friend Lord Russell – who the history books say supported “laissez faire” – but if you look at his record, he never met a state intervention he did not like (from bailing out bankers to setting up teacher training colleges).
At first the new (new) establishment used Ireland as their test laboratory for statism (which the history text books call “laissez faire” because they are written by either fools or rogues) – it already had an (armed) national police force (most of England and Wales had no government police – and police forces were not compulsory in England and Wales till 1856), but they added a system of state education – from 1831, and a Poor Law Tax (1838), and a provision that Poor Law Boards in Ireland had to bail each other out – so if an area of Ireland went bust (due to their Poor Law Tax) it would drag down other areas with it, and-so-on. So areas of Ireland that were NOT dependent on the potato were dragged down by areas that were.
About a quarter of the population of the population of Ireland either died or fled the country in the late 1840s – but, undeterred by the results of their experiments, the establishment started to apply their ideas to England, Wales and Scotland.
That’s an awful lot of ruin!
I don’t think that crappy state schooling goes all the way back to 1870 does it? I would have expected that initially it would have been an improvement on what went before. I was born in 1958 so I went to state schools between 1964 and 1975. Even though I went to a comprehensive, I left school literate and able to do mathematics to a decent standard. A couple of years ago my daughter had a gig with an NHS trust for a while, rewriting medical information leaflets into language that ordinary people could understand. She told me that the average reading age for UK adults was seven, that was the reading level that they were aiming at.
Giving women the vote. Was always guaranteed to turn the country into one run on feelz rather than logic eventually. Blair was just the first to really tap into that form of political campaigning. We can see the ultimate destination now – woman have gone collectively batsh*t insane to the Left, men are pretty much where they always have been.
Harry Enfield was right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS37SNYjg8w
There have been many property violating tyrants in the history of this Ireland – William the Bastard, Henry VIII (and his minister Thomas Cromwell – beloved by the left, for example the novelist Hilary Mantel), and so on.
But I would say that the first time that the establishment really fell in love with a tyrant (and are still in love with him) was in the late 1700s – the tyrant being Frederick the Great of Prussia.
From then to today (from the late 1700s to modern times) much of the establishment has praised Frederick for “freeing” or “enlightening” the people – by-using-the-state.
As far as I know only Edmund Burke (in the Annual Register) understood Prussia to be what it was – a terrible tyranny, one of the worst in Europe (most of the population being serfs, the rest of the population crushed by taxation, and every aspect of life being controlled by endless regulations and edicts) – with even its virtues (such as, relative, religious tolerance) really being based on indifference (Frederick did not really care about Christianity) rather than any principled believe that government should be limited.
Perhaps (perhaps) it was only a matter of time before an establishment that thought Frederick the Great was a Good Thing (T.M.) tried to rebuild his Prussia in Britain – but without his efficiency (for the British state is not given to efficiency) thus mixing tyranny with farcical incompetence – the modern situation.
Stonyground – government subsidies for schools in England and Wales started in 1833, but a state school system in England and Wales did not start till 1870, and were not compulsory for all local areas till 1891 (that is when, for example, the Kettering School Board was founded).
As for when Progressive education methods started to dominant – the 1960s were the time. But the system had existed a long time by then – for example even many historically independent Grammar Schools were taken over by the 1944 Education Act – and started to be closed, or turned into Comprehensives, in the 1960s.
It was the same with hospitals – there were many free hospitals (some dating back to the Middle Ages) – the government did not formally confiscate them till 1948.
Since then most of them have been closed – there were about half a million hospital beds in 1948, there are (with a much LARGER population) about a 100 thousand hospital beds left – most cottage hospitals (and even some large and once famous hospitals – including some are guarded, in my security guard days, in London) are gone.
This destruction is called “the envy of the world” (also the “first in the world” – even though the 1948 NHS was a copy of the Soviet system created in the 1920s – i.e. decades BEFORE the “first in the world” – yes it was a copy of the Soviet system, NOT “a Welsh mining village” or “the Friendly Society of the Great Western Railway” or all the rest of the nonsense the BBC comes out with) and is the state religion here.
And yet, British women supported the Conservative Party in every election before 1997.
I find this of interest in connection with what Hayek wrote (don’t remember which chapter of The Road to Serfdom), that fascism was socialism for white-collar public-sector employees, as distinct from socialism for the working class (blue-collar private sector employees).
It would be unkind to say that Blair transitioned the Labour Party from a working-class party to a fascist party. But i am not a kind person.
I note that, as Labour has gone far “to the left” of Blair, it has become more fascist and less working-class.
The same could be said of the US “Democratic” Party.
Snorri Godhi.
Excellent point Sir – women can not be “naturally” leftist as they were LESS leftist, than men, in their voting behaviour in Britain for many years.
It is not genetic – it is cultural change, and that cultural change needs to be examined, understood.
And race may well be the same – for example Jamaica did NOT have a high murder rate in the 1950s – yet the population there was just as black then as they are now.
Are we supposed to believe that some genetic mutation took place – there is no evidence for such a thing.
What happened is a cultural change – and assuming it was biology (biological race) distracts attention from what really happened.
Biological race does indeed exist – for example there are different average testosterone levels – which may be linked to both positive things (such as being physically stronger and more fertile) and negative things (such as a higher rate of prostrate cancer), but having more testosterone in your blood does NOT make you go out and murder people – not if you have a culture of self restraint that helps your moral reason control your passions.
Cultural change (imposed top-down cultural manipulation) undermining that self restraint (self control) is a Bad Thing (TM).
And, yes, women may, on average, be more compassionate (more caring) than men – but that is not a Bad Thing when directed to caring for their children, their families and their local community, it is only a Bad Thing when this is twisted (by imposed – top-down, cultural manipulation) into being “compassion” for hostile populations who want to destroy you – and destroy your family and community.
There is nothing “natural” about women holding up signs saying “refugees welcome” in relation to men who want to rape and brutalize them – this did NOT use to happen, it has only emerged in the last few decades – a blink of eye in terms of biological evolution, this is NOT a natural genetic thing. This is imposed, top-down, cultural manipulation.
And people who want to undermine traditional culture (who wish to engage in evil, yes evil, cultural manipulation) are not a new invention – for example Rousseau was such a person (back in the 1700s).
What has happened is that such people have gained control of cultural institutions – including education.
As for government spending – on the upswing, even as a proportion of the economy, from the 1870s onwards (so Patrick is correct about that).
The government led by Margaret Thatcher did not cut government spending (the endless claims about “cuts”, on the BBC and so on, were LIES – the BBC did not start to lie recently, it has been lying for many years).
Military spending has been cut (dramatically) after wars, or even in recent spending – but such things as welfare benefit spending do not tend to get cut.
The last time I can find when a change in policy did lead to fall in benefit spending was the Poor Law Reform Act (England and Wales) of 1834 – this really does seem to have led to a reduction in the burden of the Poor Law Tax in many areas of England and Wales – as the Speenhamland system of wage subsidies (which started to spread in the 1790s) had really got out of hand.
It must be stressed that (contrary to Charles Dickens and a legion of others) twice as many people remained on “out relief” as went to workhouses – but you had to show to the satisfaction of locally elected Poor Law Guardians (elected by the people who paid the Poor Rate – including female taxpayers) that you needed the money (because you were old, or disabled) – there was no more “my wages are low so I get tax money automatically”.
The Poor Law Amendment Act (England and Wales – most of Scotland had no Poor Law Tax till 1845 – France had no such tax till well into the 20th century) of 1834 is the most vilified piece of legislation ever passed – most likely because it worked.
Fans of Milton Friedman’s “Negative Income Tax” please note – the Speenhamland wage subsidy system could not have continued, the Poor Law Tax that funded it was creating poverty rather than reducing it.
Earl Grey, the Prime Minister under whom the Act was passed, was not “lacking in compassion” – for example he freed more slaves than anyone else in history had ever done before his time.
Earl Grey was a great man – sadly only the tea connection seems to be remembered.
I think you forgot Covid when it became apparent that civil rights were entirely optional.
And FWIW I think what really destroyed Britain as a global super power was the two world wars. The first one was totally unnecessary and pointless, and the second one was a direct consequence of the first. Had Britain managed the Empire in such a way as to enfranchise the colonies rather than subjugate them, I think the empire could have survived. I’m not really sure what would have happened, whether good or bad, but the world would certainly be a very different place. Though there is a good chance it would have meant that Britain was just another region of India.
On the decline of UK education, I’m with stonyground on this, my timeline is a year or two earlier but very-much the same. The first 80 years of UK State education were uniformly rigorous and focused on producing a reliable stream of young people who, regardless of their academic achievements, were uniformly literate, numerate and at least exposed to the higher possibilities of education, and given opportunities to head in that direction if their circumstances and abilities permitted. Paul Marks has described in the past how even dirt-poor kids in the East End were expected, and compelled, to perform in school to a standard which would be unattainable today.
I think the rot set in in the 1950s, when a new breed of Labour and ‘liberal’ politicians decided, upon doctrinal grounds, that selecting and separating children by academic ability was ‘wrong’ and harmful, and they set about destroying all traces of the system which they saw as defining some children as ‘better’ or ‘different’ than others. They were quite open about this – I well-recall one Labour politician (I don’t recall which) saying quite freely that he wanted to abolish the Eleven-Plus (a system which streamed children as they entered secondary school) because ‘working-class parents wanted their kids to achieve at the Eleven-Plus in hope that they would get a white-collar job and move into the middle class’. That is, of course, exactly what working-class parents did want for their kids, and they fought mightily to keep it in place, but of course their wishes were not considered meaningful to their better-educated betters – most of whom had themselves been the beneficiaries of the most rigourous streaming and selection, but who were quite happy to pull that ladder up behind them in support of their own convictions. I think this was one of the first examples of the UK Left openly and deliberately discounting the desires and aspirations of the working classes. Since it’s impossible to level up in education – you can only level down – the end result, 50 years later, is a populace which is generally far-more-poorly educated than it was back then.
llater,
llamas
llamas – yes indeed the standard of education that was considered quite normal for poor children in London, or American cities such as New York, in the early 20th century – would be considered too high for the children of the wealthy today.
As for getting rid of a state education system – as far as I know only one person has ever done that, Evelyn Baring when he took over the administration of a bankrupt nation – Egypt. The free state school system had only just been established – and it was clear that there was no way to finance it (other than by endless borrowing – and the government of Egypt was already bankrupt).
Fraser Orr – you are correct Sir, the Covid lockdowns were an outrage.
I remember thinking (on my one walk a day – what we were allowed in this country) “I am less free than someone in Belarus or Nicaragua” and that was true (and both these nations, and all other nations that did NOT lockdown, has a LOWER Covid death rate than we did).
Prime Minister Johnson was a puppet of the officials and “experts” – as he was on so many things.
It also showed that all these modern international “Declarations” and “Conventions” on human rights and fundamental liberties, do NOT protect the basic liberties of ordinary people – not at all.
Whatever is the real purpose of these “Declarations” and “Conventions” it is NOT to protect the basic liberties of ordinary people.
I do not recognise the ending of the right of armed self-defence in 1948. Nothing special happened in that year.
The original Firearms Act of 1920 stated that a “good reason” was needed to own a firearm (not including a shotgun until 1968). Self-defence was not banned, but it was accepted reluctantly, for people like jewellers or bankers. Some judges too I believe.
It was after 1968 that a policy decision was made by the Home Office that no firearm certificates would be issued for self-defence purposes. Note, this was “policy”. Ministers had nothing to do with it, and it was never publicly announced. It just happened, and the police enforced it with enthusiasm. It may well have had something to do with the abolition of the death penalty. Certainly, that is why shotguns, hitherto freely available, were brought under the Firearms Act 1968.
Of course it is still possible to use a legally owned gun for self-defence, if you happen to be carrying it on your farm and are attacked by a poacher, but in reality that would be a very rare occurrence. But if you want a gun specifically for self-defence, then outside of Northern Ireland, you are SOL.
JohnK,
Thanks for clarifying that.
As I have frequently opined, the 1911 National Insurance Act was the beginning of the end. Perverted from its original form — the state purchase of Friendly Society membership for those who could not otherwise afford it — through lobbying by doctors and private insurers, the National Insurance Act first destroyed the Friendly Societies and, eventually, self sufficiency.
Second, it did not mandate that the government actually put the monies raised into an actual fund — thus leading to today’s near-bankrupt Ponzi Scheme.
Third, and most crucially, it put the state in loco parentis in terms of family welfare provision. It removed agency, leading to fecklessness; it destroyed voluntary welfare provision; and, finally, it led the gradual charge towards the state as ultimate payer of any and everything.
It was the single worst and most impactful piece of terrible legislation passed in near-modern English law. The decline in Britain — and Britons — can be traced back to this law.
Can you elaborate on that? AFAIK, home ownership doubled in UK between the late 1940s and 1990s. While that might not be due to the Town and Country Planning Act, I’m not exactly sure how it has specifically stopped that many people from achieving home ownership. Credit bubble economics and mass immigration seem to be much more why home ownership is increasingly inaccessible.
I don’t know why both world wars aren’t listed either. Whether they were just causes or not, fighting both, especially the second, sapped British international power and wealth immensely.
Paul Marks:
Perhaps i did not make myself clear — well, obviously i did not.
My claim is that it was not women’s culture that changed: it was “the left”.
“The left” in Britain, before Blair, catered to the working class, whose wage earners are predominantly male. (Although they do have wives, who share their economic interests.)
“The left” in Britain, after Blair, caters to public-sector employees, who are majority female in at least some sectors, eg teaching and nursing.
— Having said that, it is also true that, at least in the US, there has been a significant mental deterioration observed in women “on the left”. Men “on the left” have also been affected, but by a lesser extent.
As you know, i blame this on a deteriorating diet; worse “on the left” because they trust the medical consensus on diet.
But why women more than men? I admit that i did not think about this before.
John K is correct that the Home Office unilaterally decided that the right to self defence (not just with a firearm) was to be restricted without any kind of legislation being passed. Since then the various laws enacted have in practice eliminated the right of self defence by anything and everything (e.g. the bans on carrying a pen knife without “good reason”).
John K is also correct in that the abolition of the death penalty drove the 1968 Firearms Act.
Roy Jenkins, the Labour home secretary at the time managed to get the death penalty finally abolished in 1966 (except for Treason – Tony Blair got that exception abolished. I wonder why?). Also, coincidentally, in 1966 Harry Roberts and a companion killed three police officers in London with handguns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Roberts_(criminal)
Note that if you dig out the statistics of murder and assault from the first time that the death penalty was abolished, reinstated by the conservatives and then finally abolished, you will note that following the first abolition, murders and assaults rose, they fell when the death penalty was reintroduced and started to climb consistently and relentlessly ever since. I am firmly convinced that due to advances in medical techniques, many people severely assaulted and crippled (mentally and physically) today would have died if the same level of violence was used against them back in the mid 1960’s. In other words, the murder rate today would be much higher that it currently is.
However, Jenkins would not reinstate the death penalty as that would be admitting abolishing it was a mistake. So something must be done. Let’s write the 1968 Firearms Act to restrict and license shotguns (which, as John K points out, were under no restrictions until that point in time) although Roberts had used illegally held handguns which had been licensed and restricted since 1920. Makes sense, no?
For anyone wanting to research this (including the right to self defence) two books are relevant, both called Guns and Violence.
The first is a historic look at firearms and their use and availability in the UK from their invention by Joyce Lee Malcolm. This one is particularly good about the self defence aspect and the Bill of Rights conferring the right to keep and bear arms (sound familiar?) to Englishmen (and women).
The other is Guns and Violence The Debate Before Lord Cullen and was compiled by R. A. I. Munday and J. A. Stevenson and presented as evidence following the Dunblane incident. This dissects the myths, lies and “disinformation” (to use a modern term) put out by the Home Orifice (no, not a spelling mistake) to direct the enquiry to suit their agenda (i.e. total Civilian disarmament).
They have basically succeeded. When adult Englishmen cannot carry a penknife (that was carried and virtually universally owned by schoolboys in the 1950’s to 1970’s) and is now effectively forbidden then draw your own conclusions. The refusal to address the behaviour of criminals is the herd of elephants and gorillas in the room.
Fraser – “And FWIW I think what really destroyed Britain as a global super power was the two world wars.”
This is correct. And add that our baby cousins in the US decided to impoverish the British by the payback of war loans. It was calculated and precise. It was deliberate and not without sensible purpose from a strictly US point of view. But it lost Europe to the long march. And now we all reap the whirlwind.
When you have won, pause and look forward – not back.
Commenters have raised some excellent points. My responses:
Education
Maybe the socialists were in favour of high standards at one point. Maybe they believed that it would a) improve the lot of the working class and b) make them more socialist as they learnt more about the world.
Even so, my understanding is that state education did little to improve education. In the 1820s the government levied punitive taxes on newspapers. They wouldn’t have done so if people couldn’t have read.
The worst thing that the Forster Act did was make things uniform. Class-based teaching maybe the best but in the absence of competition we will never know.
World Wars
At some point I intend to write an post about the depression in Britain in the 1920s – yes, the Twenties. TL;DR it wasn’t the Kaiser, it was the pre-War Liberal government.
Also, did the world wars ruin Germany, France or Italy? I don’t think so. So we’re looking for what was different about Britain. To the National Insurance Act we can add the post-War Labour government.
Home ownership
Right now, as has been the case for 40 years, the Town & Country Planning Act strangles the supply of new housing in the South East of England while demand heads ever higher leading to higher prices. So why didn’t it before? Perhaps because there was still industry in the North. Also immigration.
On the home ownership question. Before 1914, AIUI, most people rented. Then rent control was introduced making letting property not worth the effort. And home ownership was encouraged through the tax system. And the Conservative Party had a policy of attempting to create a “property-owning democracy”. So, it’s no surprise home ownership increased.
Nobody stays on top forever. nor do countries. Britain was on top, now America is, and tomorrow?
Snorri – I was AGREEING with you, not disagreeing with. You were attacking the idea that genetics was determining things – and I AGREED with you.
JohnK – your account of the attack on the right to keep and bear arms is accurate, it was a gradual thing over many Acts of Parliament and changes in interpretations.
Martin – I would not have supported the 1940s Planning Act and a glance at the horrible developments in British towns and cities since then shows that it was a horrible failure (if its intent was good – which I doubt).
However, it is (as you imply) a myth that it is the cause of the housing crises.
Patick – there are houses and flats going up everywhere (even if official statistics refuse to count them – just go to ordinary towns and you will see them being built), local council planning committees do NOT prevent them, even if London based groups (such at the Institute of Economic Affairs) refuse to see the vast numbers of houses and flats being built all over south east England – eating up farm land and destroying the beauty of this land.
It is MASS IMMIGRATION that has caused the housing crises – not the planning laws.
I’d throw in the 1910 Valuation Act and the
1925 Finance and Rating Act
which took away the assessment of property values and the taxation of them away from local authorities.
Some of the greatest town halls and public parks come from a time when local authorities, corporations as they were called then, had real power and money and Great Britain and Ireland were still in the world top 3.
Andy Carey.
Higher local taxation will make things worse. And Britain was the top economy in the world long before the 1835 Municipal Corporation Act which led to those big Town Hall buildings – Parkinson’s Law Sir, Parkinson’s Law, a great bit H.Q. building is NOT the sign of a healthy enterprise – rather it is sign of things going wrong.
Big government (whether national or local) is not a good thing – it is a bad thing. And, by the way, local taxes (both on individuals and business enterprises) are far higher (not lower) than they were before 1910.
Local authorities that have responsibility for Adult Social Care and Children’s Services find that more and more money goes into these “Demand Led” services – due to national laws. These are the national laws that need to be changed.
At the Parish Council level (which do not have responsibility for these things) I voted AGAINST an increase in the “Precept” on top of Council Tax, and I would vote against it again.
This is NOT a matter of party politics, an increase of the Precept of over 60% was absurd.
J.S. Mill said that “everyone agrees” that local government should do X,Y,Z – they were first allowed to by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 (which abolished the old Closed Corporations – apart from the City of London which still exists) and it was then made compulsory for councils to do about 40 things (whether the local taxpayers wanted to fund them or not) by Disraeli’s Act of 1875, one of the two dreadful Acts of 1875 – the other being the Trade Union Act which did NOT “legalize unions” (they had been legal since 1824) – it gave the unions powers (reinforced by the even more dreadful Act of 1906) which led to the gradual undermining of British industry.
I am not part of the “everyone” (the “enlightened” people) – and neither, I believe, are most people.
Progress is NOT more and more money to government – national or local.
By the way – “106” agreements never fully cover the long term cost of new housing developments in terms of roads, education, health care (and so on) – in the end the taxpayers always end up poorer.
This is not really a free market – it is Corporate Welfare.
It also applies in the United States – after the “consolidation” of 1898 the first order of business for the new New York City government was to build itself a new HQ building.
Not instead of the Jeffersonian City Hall (which still exists – although the statue of Thomas Jefferson has been removed, because it supposedly offends the non white population who are now in the majority in New York – and most other American cities) – on-top-of the existing buildings.
So the Municipal Building was built – about one million square feet of office space for endless bureaucrats.
It was Joseph Stalin’s favorite building – and he (partly) based the new University of Moscow building on the design.
New York statism goes back a long way – funded by Federal Government backed banker credit-money.
Britain (or at least England) was probably at peak liberty (government smallest relative to Civil Society) about 1869 – the same is true of France.
In the German lands it is a bit earlier – 1860 (before Bismarck starts to increase taxes in Prussia to finance his wars of conquest), ditto the Italian lands (or a bit earlier) – before relatively high tax Piedmont engages in its wars of conquest of relatively lower taxed places – “Italian Unification”.
But in some places in the world it is much later – for example in Honduras it was 1949 (the middle of the 20th century), no income tax, no social security tax, no endless regulations on the labour market – all that came in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Paul you have just supported a military dictator”.
At my age I can say what I like – I do not really care if what I say is misinterpreted, but NO I do NOT support military dictatorship.
So I might as well “double down” – Paraguay under President Stroessner (as recently as the 1980s), no income tax (although there were social security taxes and the labour market was over regulated) and trams and trains still running – so people did not have to buy cars, was not all bad – it had many horrible faults (yes indeed – horrible faults), but it was not all bad.
These days there is a 10% Income Tax (introduced in 2012 by some sex pest priest turned politician) and the trains and trams have largely gone – so it is hard for the poor to get about.