{"id":29,"date":"2019-05-06T06:09:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T06:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp04.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=29"},"modified":"2022-01-10T07:25:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T07:25:05","slug":"post-empire-britain","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp04\/chapter\/post-empire-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Empire Britain"},"content":{"raw":"
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English Society and Culture between the Wars (1919\u2013 1939)<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

England emerged battered and bruised from World War I, the armistice signed between the allies and Germany on 11 November 1918 at the \u201celeventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month\u201d brought a sense of relief. The nation was engulfed in grief at the enormous human cost of war that had left over 17 million dead and over 20 million wounded. War memorials cropped up even in some of the smallest towns of England. The inter war years was a period of sorrow and hopelessness. Europe tried hard to recover its ravaged economy but the economic depression(1929-30) triggered by the collapse of Wall Street posed a fresh challenge. The economic conditions that prevailed, coupled with the success of the pre-war Bolshevik\u00a0 revolution in Russia helped spread the ideals of socialism across Europe and North America. People began to look at capitalism with more scepticism than at the time of Marx. \u201cTraditional perceptions of home, village and town boundaries were broken; ideas of communication between people altered\u201d (Clapson 20). Britain, like other European countries, experienced unimaginable social change. Traditional Victorian morals and bourgeois culture fell by the wayside even as the Avant Gardists tried to develop a new aesthetic that could adequately represent the confusion and chaos of modernity.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In the midst of all the uncertainty and instability, \u201cThe 1920s and 1930s saw the growth of mass entertainment\u201d (Clapson20). The cinema replaced the old music halls, while pubs became popular centres of evening-time leisure activities. The sudden growth of cinema audiences necessitated an increase in places that screened these films, \u201cculminating in the great 'picture palaces' of the 1920s which rivaled theatres and opera-houses for opulence and splendor\u201d (Smith 17). Though the British and Germans did play a role in spreading the culture of cinema, it was the French followed by the Americans who began to dominate world cinema. The British government, however, responded with a cultural policy introducing \u201cthe Cinematographic Acts\u201d in 1928 \u201cto protect and promote the British film industry\u201d (Clapson 20).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

The radio grew simultaneously as a form of home entertainment. At 6 P.M on November 14th 1922, Arthur Burrows read a news bulletin that included a report of a \u201ctrain robbery, an important political meeting, some sports results and a weather forecast.\u201d With this broadcast, the British Broadcasting Company transformed itself into what we know as the BBC.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Grey Hound racing was \u201cintroduced in its modern form\u201d (20) as a new sport in England in 1926. Dog racing along with other forms of gambling like football pools and Irish hospitals Sweepstakes( Lottery established in Irish free state in 1930 to raise finances for Irish hospitals), continued as alternative forms of entertainment despite government\u2019s efforts to \u201crestrict access to betting and gambling between the wars\u201d (20).<\/p>\r\n

British Political Economy between the Wars\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

The General Strike of 1926\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The speculative boom created in 1919-20 of Post War British economy collapsed in 1921. Problems in staple industries persisted with high levels of unemployment and poor labour\u00a0management. During the war, coal mining industry had come under government protection; after the war, the mine workers federation \u201cpressed for the industry to be taken into public ownership and reorganized\u201d (Sue 1). The \u201cexport price of coal slumped and the industry was in serious trouble. Government and mine owners \u201csought to restore profitability by imposing wage cuts\u201d. The trade union movements before the war had \u201cbegun to make alliances across industrial sectors to form The Triple Alliance of miners, railway men and transport workers\u201d (1). However, the alliance collapsed when things came to a crunch in 1921 and after 15th April, also known as Black Friday, \u201cthe miners were left to fight alone\u201d (2). After eleven weeks of lockouts, the workers gave in and \u201caccepted wage cuts\u201d. By 1925, \u201cthe industry was in trouble\u201d (2) and the government made matters worse by reverting to the prewar gold standard for currency valuation, making exports expensive. The \u201cSamuel Commission of March 1926 did not (or could not) solve the industry\u2019s problems\u201d(2). On 30th April, \u201cnew notices of wage cuts, longer hours and an end\u00a0 to national agreements\u201d were posted. The trade unions called a \u201clockout\u201d on 3rd May, this time the Triple Alliance stood firm and the \u201cfirst line of transport workers and railway men came out with miners, involving just under two million workers\u201d(2).<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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With the \u201cGreat Depression\u201d in 1929, \u201cunemployment rose from one million to over three million in 1932\u201d(Clapson 21). Although many industrial regions were affected by high unemployment, the North-West of England, central Scotland and South Wales were the worst affected. These were designated as \u201cdistress areas\u201d \u201ctargeted for assistance by the Special Areas Act of 1934\u201d (21). Further, migration from these areas into wealthier regions \u201creflected the social geography of economic change\u201d (21). Tortella suggests that politicians and statesmen tried desperately \u201cto reconstruct the past,\u201d but they repeatedly bumped against \u201ca reality which they could not understand, but which acted as an invisible barrier to their efforts and defeated them\u201d\u00a0(Tortella 146).The only one who was able to comprehend the economic mess was John Maynard Keynes, who studied the situation and took pains to explain to politicians and people the fact that the economy had changed. The \u201ctraditional premises were no longer valid and that it was necessary to invent a new economic theory\u201d (21). He put forth his thesis in the magnum opus of 20th century economic theory titled <\/span>The General Theory of Employment,Interest and money <\/em>in 1936.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nBeginnings of Modernity in Art and Literature\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Charles Baudelaire, a pioneer of modernism, captured its essence thus in The Painter of Modern Life <\/em>(1863): \u201cModernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the being the eternal and the immovable\u201d (Baudelaire 17). From this quote and many similar statements made by artists and writers on modernity, it is amply clear that modernity is an obsession with time. Modernist writers and artists tried to represent the anxiety of fleeting time in almost the same terms of Carpe diem <\/em>as done by the Cavalier poet Herrick in his poem \u201cGather Ye Rosebuds.\u201d Levenson states that in the high modernist English novel of the first postwar decade, \u201ctime became such a dominant concern that it can be taken as a cultural signature\u2026It became rather a fully thematised subject in its own right\u201d (Levenson 197). He goes on to suggest that the \u201cextra-literary historical world of novelty,\u201d such as, \u201cthe experience of rapid modernization in technologies, social relations, religious beliefs, philosophic principles,\u201d all entered \u201cthe literary universe, providing the subject-matter for the novel of time\u201d (198). The technology of war had established \u201cthe terms of mass society\u201d differently. Society was now merely \u201cindividual atoms absorbed within the surge and swarm of groups\u201d (198). Modernity therefore, can be best understood only as a series of disjunctures and discontinuities with the past. It cannot be seen entirely as a twentieth century phenomenon; on the other hand, it should\u00a0be taken as a heightened sense of \u201crupture and transition that had accompanied modernity since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century\u201d (199).<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nModern Fiction\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Novelists who played a leading role in establishing the Modernist literary canon of the 1920\u2019s wereborn \u201cwithin relatively few years of one another\u201d (199) \u2013 Ford Madox Ford (b. 1873), Dorothy Richardson (b. 1873), E.M Forster (b. 1879), James Joyce (b. 1882), Wyndham Lewis (b. 1882), Virginia Woolf (b. 1882) and D.H Lawrence (b. 1885). Levenson suggests that in the case of these modernists \u201ca collective consciousness of maturing as artists accompanies a memory of having been young together in the uncertain prewar period\u201d (200).<\/p>\r\n

Modern Poetry\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Walter Pater, Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot are leading Anglo-American modernists who tried to capture the sense of ennui, anonymity, monotony, and absurdity modern life in their poems in early 20th century. Neil Roberts suggests that modernist poets, to a large extent \u201chave defined the terms in which the criticism of poetry has been conducted\u201d (Roberts 2). He rightly points out that the century should be seen as one in \u201cwhich poetry has been overwhelmingly self-conscious and self-reflexive\u201d (2). Most of the modernist poets took their cue from French symbolist artists and poets, gathered together in movements, \u201cwrote manifestos and largely created the cultural environment in which their work was received\u201d (2). Roberts argues that the influence of poets like Pound and Eliot was \u201cdisproportionate to their number or to the sales of their books\u201d (2). Hence he gives importance to other smaller groups of poets such as \u201cBlack Mountain and Language poets,\u201d (2) who \u201cformed conscious alliances and articulated shared principles\u201d (2). The century saw poets divided between two groups; one of academics who taught in classrooms\u00a0even as they wrote poetry and the other which was dedicated only to the art. Roberts suggests that throughout the twentieth century, poetry \u201chad an immensely important and uncomfortable relationship with the academy\u201d (2). William Carlos Williams, in fact, \u201ccondemned Eliot for handing poetry to the academics\u201d (2). Nevertheless, one can suggest that modernist poets tried their best to represent what Thomas Carlyle\u2019s essay \u201cSigns of the Times\u201d did as early as 1829.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nBritish Culture and Society (1939 \u2013 45)\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

Nationalism, Propaganda and rise of the Welfare State\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Clapson agrees with George Orwell who argues that the war would have \u201clittle effect on national identity\u201d (Clapson 23) and would remain anchored round the same prewar issues of \u201cclass, regionalism and a host of stereotypes\u201d (23). In the social realm however, it would \u201cstrengthen a demand for a \u2018better life\u2019\u201d (23). George Orwell (real name Eric Blair) served the BBC briefly during the war from 1941- 43 as \u201ca Talks Producer in the Eastern Service crucially influenced the creation of two celebrated books that he subsequently wrote under the pen-name of George Orwell.\u201d He used his experience there to create the deliberately confusing language of news that he called \u201cnewspeak\u201d in the novel Nineteen Eighty Four. <\/em>Critics and biographers believe that the language of \u201cnewspeak\u201d was modeled on \u201cthe BBC\u2019s long tradition of bureaucratic jargon and rules about acceptable on-air language.\u201d Clapson believes that Orwell and other broadcasters of the time were careful not to breach the censorship code implemented by the Ministry of information during the war.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In the first two years of war, the country seemed perched on \u201cthe edge of imminent defeat at the hands of Nazi Germany, and in 1940 a German invasion of Britain\u201d appeared quite likely. The pessimistic Home Morale Emergency Committee of the Ministry of Information\u201cprepared and\u00a0circulated throughout the country a pamphlet entitled \u2018If the Invader Comes\u2019\u201d (Foss 52). However, national confidence increased \u201cafter the end of the Blitz\u201d but it hit a new low when \u201cJapan invaded Singapore\u201d (52) in 1941-42. The tide turned in England\u2019s favour again in 1942 when news came of \u201cHitler's forces being defeated at both El Alamein and Stalingrad\u201d (52). In the same year, \u201ctheBeveridge Report was published\u201d (52) where the author argued \u201cfor social progression which required a coherent government policy: \u2018Social insurance fully developed\u00a0 may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want\u2019\u201d(52). The report led to the establishment of a social security system and National Health Service after the end of the war.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nWomen during the War\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Claims made by feminists that the war was a liberating force for women who were earlier denied opportunities to work alongside men areindeed factual. The socio-economic conditions created by the war, became\u201can incentive in national recruitment campaigns to encourage women to join the Forces or volunteer for civilian war work\u201d (Sheridan 32). War-time feminists,\u201canxious to see women's potential as war workers being properly utilized and, importantly, properly credited\u201d (32), developed an argument which supported such claims. Dorothy Sheridan suggests that for women today, war time images that \u201cappeared in popular magazines like Picture Post,\u201d (32) still hold a popular appeal. Photographs of \u201cLand Girls driving tractors and women driving buses, ambulances and military trucks,\u201d (32) evoke a powerful sentiment of femme power. Wartime representations showed women working alongside men; adding to the skilled labour force supporting the war effort. Such representations gave women the feeling that a different life was out there beyond the confines of the kitchen.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Dorothy Sheridan avers that such a view of war as a liberating influence cannot be fully substantiated since it is rather vague about \u201cwhat the gains actually were,\u201d and \u201cwhether the gains were made on an individual level by the women who were adults during the war or\u00a0 whether they were made on behalf of all women and for subsequent generations\u201d (32). A second view that runs contrary to the one mentioned above suggests that although women were temporarily able to \u201cescape from strictly gender defined roles\u201d (32), \u201cthey were forced back into the home as soon as the war ended\u201d (32). Soon, the idealized picture of a woman as \u201can exclusive housewife and mother\u201d (32) was reasserted and this shift was supported by a \u201cwave of pro-natalist propaganda\u201d that culminated in \u201ctheories of maternal deprivation\u201d (32). Sheridan rightly points out that the first view fails to \u201cdefine exactly how women benefited from the wartime experience\u201d whereas, the second \u201cfails to confront the question\u201d how women, who had experienced the \u201cliberating possibilities\u201d of wartime \u201csuccumbed to the postwar reversal\u201d (32)? Feminists studying the impact of war on women may have to walk the tight-rope to find a balance between these opposing views.<\/p>\r\n

The Postwar Scene: Winds of Cultural Change\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The postwar period is generally seen as a time of historical change; a period that ushered in hope and stability, and a time that saw \u201crising standards of living, rising rates of literacy (fuelled by the guarantee of secondary state education until fifteen)\u201d (Hirschkop 455). Hirschkop quotes Malcolm Bradbury to suggest that it was a time when the provincials rose into \u201cthe ranks of the cultural and intellectual elite\u201d (455). For many historians, the postwar period signifies a time when \u201ccapitalism finally hits its stride\u201d (455). The wars had created an impression that capitalism, with its inherent contradiction of competitive accumulation and expansionism cannot secure steady progress for humanity. Moreover, soviet style socialism was always glaring the\u00a0\u00a0western world in its eye, creating a heightened sense of insecurity. After the war however, it appeared as if the promise of \u201csteady progress towards a more prosperous, more secure, and \u2013 from the mid-nineteenth century onwards \u2013 fairer society,\u201d was now coming true.\u00a0 Europe seemed to be on the threshold of a new phase in history, having faced \u201cbrutal inter capitalist wars\u2026revolutions and murderous counter revolutions\u201d (455) that had destroyed its self-image of a progressive civilization.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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After 1945, Keynesian economic policies\u201cused state expenditure to avoid dramatic economic crises\u201d (455). The welfare state doled out \u201cpanoply of newbenefits\u201d (455) and built public institutions, thereby \u201cstealing socialism\u2019s thunder\u201d (455). Thus, England could successfully keep\u201cthe lid on class conflict\u201d (455). Hirschkop avers that for anyone born too late to have any idea of war or revolution; the social world assumed \u201cpolitics without periodic wars or revolutionary moments; an everyday life structured around domestic consumerism and the relative absence of absolute poverty; an emphasis on individual attainment heavily dependent on educational achievement; and communications that, as Raymond Williams once pointed out, made more drama available on screen each week than previous generations saw in a lifetime\u201d (455-456).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

\u201cThe democratization of progress,\u201d made possible by the advent of mass media; especially the television and recorded music \u201cthat didn\u2019t mind who tuned in\u201d (456), created an illusory sense of class distinctions being erased. Some would even suggest that \u201cthe working class was undergoing \u2018embourgeoisement\u2019\u201d (456). \u201c\u2018classless\u2019 forms of experience - embodied in new consumer objects, new kinds of mass culture, new kinds of places to live, as well as new types of occupation \u2013 seemed to be emerging\u201d (456). The change influenced well known British Cultural Marxists Richard Hoggart and Stuart Williams so much that they \u201cpointed to a \u2018cultural\u00a0classlessness\u2019 on the horizon\u201d (456). Education played a major role in bringing about this change, breaking the old stereotypes of class. A new middle class \u201cof managers, new-style professionals, welfare-state employees\u201d (456), entirely dependent on formal education, emerged to replace the older middle class occupations that were more skill oriented. Hirschkop argues that British society was never so inclined to attach \u201csocial power or prestige\u201d (456) to education; even \u201cthe most powerful in British polity had seen no need to attend university\u201d (456). The new middle class however, made education their social capital by tying it up with prestige and status.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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The postwar period also threw up some significant cultural initiatives such as \u201cthe creation of the Arts Council, the 1951 Festival of Britain, the expansion and transformation of the BBC\u2019s provision, and the inauguration of independent television\u201d (456). The most significant though \u201cmost controversial\u201d (456) among these however, was \u201cthe Education act of 1944 which guaranteed free education until fifteen\u201d (456). The act also \u201cbrought the previously independent religious and grammar schools into the state system\u201d (456).<\/p>\r\n

Promoting Cultures, Building Identities: 1945 \u2013 70\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

Public funding for arts increased significantly between 1945 -70. \u201cThe Arts Council, the British Council, the British Film Institute and local authorities all invested increasingly in forms of creative production\u201d (Shiach 528). Shiach argues that the process of investment \u201cgenerated a series of complex questions about the relations between cultures and identities\u201d (528). Artists were now obliged in some way to address \u201can increasingly recalcitrant set of relationships between nation, region and metropolis\u201d (528). Shiach uses the argument of Tom Nairn to support his view that the \u201cdeclining global economic standing of Britian\u201d (529) after the war \u201ccreated spaces of disadvantage and uneven development\u201d (529). This necessitated a new understanding\u00a0of the distinct \u201cinterests of different parts of Britain\u201d (529). Regionalism, ethnicity and race became the new categories of identity that posed a challenge to the monolithic idea of nation. Scottish, Irish and Welsh identities were now yearning for cultural distinction.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nCinema and Television in the 50\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

In 1952, Britain\u2019s most popular film fan magazine Picturegoer <\/em>published a survey that inquired into the relation between television and cinema and predicted the growing popularity of the former compared to the latter. \u201cTelevision\u2019s growing status as a mass medium developed throughout these years, and although this certainly hastened the cinema\u2019s \u2018decline\u2019, the cinema still remained a central part of cultural consciousness and experience for much of the 1950s\u201d (Holmes 10). The Beveridge Committee in 1949 had recommended the \u201ccontinuation of the BBC\u2019s monopoly of broadcasting\u201d (113) however; as the decade progressed there was growing pressure on government to introduce independent broadcasting service. The prosperity of the late 50\u2019s saw \u201ca rise in production and a corresponding demand for advertising outlets\u201d (113). A new Television Act was implemented in 1954 and in 1955 \u201cit was decided that commercial television was to be supervised by the Independent Television Authority (ITA)\u201d (113).<\/p>\r\n

The Resurgent 60\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

The ITV (Independent Television) \u201cintroduced Britain\u2019s longest-running and most successful soap opera, Coronation Street, in 1960\u201d (Clapson 27). Clapson believes that the onset of television as mass medium incidentally occurred during a time of \u201cgreater permissiveness in British social and cultural life\u201d (27). Although censorship of literature and arts was relaxed during the 50\u2019s, it became even more so in the 60\u2019s. For example, the \u2018f\u2019 word was \u201cfirst used on television during this decade\u201d (27). The 60\u2019s decade was also accompanied by \u201cgreat\u00a0humanitarian strides in social policy\u201d(27); \u201chomosexuality was decriminalized, abortion became legally available, access to contraception was made easier, and divorce became more accessible and affordable\u201d (27). Such far reaching social change certainly indicates the waning influence of Victorian values.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nRise of Pop (Popular) Culture\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The term popular culture has specific reference to a form of youth culture that developed around the 1960\u2019s in post-war Europe. Andy Bennett suggests that there is ample evidence to show that there was \u201ca cultural relationship between youth, music and attendant forms of visual style\u201d (Bennett 8) in England, even before the war. However, \u201cthe appearance of music and style- driven youth cultures at a more widespread, and increasingly global, level began to occur only when youth became a distinct consumer group (8). Freed from earlier notions of a shared common culture, popular culture began to circulate as a distinctive marker of class in the socio- economic milieu of postwar industrial capitalism.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

In January 1963, a London record reviewer Keith Fordyce in his weekly contribution to musical trade paper the New Musical Express, \u201ccommented on a new recording by a group that had first appeared on the charts\u201d (Thompson 3). He was commenting on the promotional release of the Beatles solo \u201cPlease Please Me.\u201d It was clear that American pop music was making its presence felt in London too. \u201cA year later, on 9 February 1964, as millions watched the Beatles on CBS\u2019s The Ed Sullivan Show, rock \u2019n\u2019 roll ceased to be an exclusively American art form\u201d (3). Nevertheless, British audiences preferred \u201chomegrown versions to the American originals (5).The British pop music industry actively sought American disks for indigenous artists to imitate\u201d (5).Further, given the fact that American music albums featured African -American\u00a0performers prominently in the sixties, \u201cthe preference of white British audiences for performers who looked like themselves added a racist dimension to consumer patterns(5). Very soon there was huge \u201cinternational demand for British pop music\u201d (5), demand outstripped supply, and groups that earlier performed as dance hall entertainers \u201cwere hustled into the studio and promoted as the next great discovery\u201d (5). Small studios thrived as they tried to satisfy \u201cthe adolescent hunger for new music\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nPostmodern Britain: From 1970 to the End of the Century\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

The international decline of England began with the process of decolonization much earlier in the century. However, the formal independence of India and Pakistan; the decolonization of Africa beginning with Ghana signaled the end of the empire. Closer home, Northern Ireland remained a festering wound in the English body politic. The violent Irish conflict for constitutional status called \u2018The Troubles\u2019, began with a \u201ccivil rights march in Londonderry on 5th October 1968\u201d and ended with \u201cthe Good Friday agreement on 10th April 1998.\u201d Immigration into England from commonwealth countries that began by the middle of the century increased considerably. \u201cBy 1999 over 58 million people lived in Britain\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Britain became a more \u201cethnically diverse country than ever before in its history\u201d. Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi restaurants added spice to \u201cmuch maligned British cuisine\u201d (31), just as \u201cPizzas and Italian meals, American fast-food outlets, and Greek and Spanish restaurants became increasingly common\u201d. Multiculturalism became the order of the day, though it was not easy for the native majority to accept some cultural practices of minority immigrant groups. Among the Christian population however, \u201cchurch attendances had declined\u201d(31) over the\u00a0postwar years; \u201csecularization had eroded much of the influence of the Church of England and other Christian churches\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

Supermarkets \u201cgrew massively\u201d(32); giants like \u201cTesco, Sainsbury\u2019s, Asda and Safeway (later Morrisons), dominated shopping and consumerism\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Employment opportunities for women increased considerably, though inequalities \u201ccontinued within the workplace\u201d (32). \u201cThe equal pay legislation of 1971\u201d (32), went a long way in improving pay parity.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Leisure became \u201cmore abundant\u201d (32), affordable, and people began to spend more on it than before. Cinema made a \u201ccomeback from the mid-1980\u2019s\u201d (32). The first multiplex cinema \u201copened in 1985\u201d (32) and grew in \u201cthe centres and around the outskirts of towns and cities\u201d (32). By 1990\u2019s every British home owned a television set and the PC became a new need of the times.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Sexual relationships became much freer with rising number of gay and lesbian relations; families grew smaller, and it was no longer stigmatic \u201cto have children outside of marriage, or to live as an unmarried couple\u201d (33). Clapson suggests that the \u201cDivorce Act of 1969 had also contributed to the growth in the number of smaller households\u201d (33). Towards the end of the century, the last \u201clingering traces of Victorian censoriousness were wiped away by the introduction of liberalised opening hours of pubs and bars, and by the introduction in 1994 of the National Lottery\u201d (33). In the sphere of culture, at least, England had turned the American way by adopting consumerism as a way of life. The state now actively sought to \u201cpromote and profit from\u201d (33) what it once \u201ctried to prohibit\u201d.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
you can view video on Post-Empire Britain<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\nReference<\/strong>\r\n
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