Topic 57: Political, social and economic evolution of

UK and Ireland sin 1945. Their presence in the

European Community. Literature from these
countries over this period.

1. Introduction

2. From 1945 to the 70s

3. Social trends in the 70s

4. The 80s

5. The 90s and the 21st century

6. The Republic of Ireland

7. Presence in the EC

8. The novel

9. Drama

10. Poetry

11. Conclusion

12. Bibliography
Summary
 1. Introduction
In the 20th century Britain underwent many different phases which led it to change its state,
from being one of the greatest world powers at the beginning of the century to become no longer one
of them. This decline is due to three main reasons:
- The cost and effort of WWII.

- The cost of keeping up the Empire and its final lost.

- The weakness in Britain’s industrial power.

The USA and the USSR became then the new world powers.
In Ireland, the question of the Irish Independence had been settled at last. Protestant Ulster
remained part of the UK, and the rest of the island became a dominion till 1937. On that year, it
decided to leave the Empire and took the name of Eire. Eire kept out of WWII, but many of its men
fought in the British forces.
This topic aims to analyse the political, social and economic development of the UK and Ireland
since 1945 till the present day, as well as their role in the European Community and the literature of
this time. It is related to topics 52 to 58 of the official list of topics (Decree 850/1993) which also deal
with the World Wars and their aftermaths.

2. From 1945 to the 70s

1945 is an important year because it marks the end of WWII and the beginning of a new society in
Britain. A period in which Britain withdraws form many of its colonies such as Egypt or Palestine.

The coalition government of Churchill gave way to Clement Atlee’s Labour Government and his
introduction of the Welfare State.
Atlee’s aim was to create a Welfare State and to bring back prosperity following the principles of the
intellectual and economist John Maynard Keynes. He thought that a capitalist society could only survive
with a government-controlled economy. Therefore, Atlee tried to nationalize the Bank of England, the
most important industries (coal & steel mainly) and transports. The significant thing was the acceptance
by all parties of a permanent and continuous state intervention in the economy.
Also, the government took some measures in order to create the National Health Service, family
allowances, free education up to the age of 15, and a National Housing Programme.
But life was still very difficult. America itself contributed to Britain’s difficulties by imposing severe
terms for a post-war loan. The conditions of the loan were impossible to meet.

It was only the European Recovery Plan (the Marshall Plan) of 1947 which arrived just in time to prevent
the economic collapse.

In the general election of 1951, the Conservative Winston Churchill returned to power. Only a year
later, Elizabeth II came to the throne.
Churchill denationalised the steel industry and the road transport and encouraged private enterprise.
It was a period of prosperity and consumerism.
He also tried to improve Britain’s relations with the USSR and to establish an Anglo-American alliance.
Churchill, being in poor health, retired to give way to Anthony Eden. Eden had talks with Eisenhower
and Kruschev, but the USSR continued without lifting the so- called “Iron Curtain”
Also in the 1950s ethnic minorities, especially from the West Indies, started to pour into England
searching a job, due to its relative prosperity.

At the beginning of the 60s, Britain attended an economic crisis. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson,
had to deal with the sterling crisis, which became increasingly acute and made the pound to be
devaluated at the end of the decade.
Wilson, however, introduced several social reforms: death penalty was abolished, as well as censorship
and the laws against homosexuals.
The 60s were an important decade for young people. Nothing expressed the youthful pop culture better
than The Beatles, whose music quickly became universally known.

3. The 70s

By the mid-70s, prices were rising faster than ever since the war; unemployment reached the million
mark and the value of money was very low. It was a real crisis.
Also immigration, especially from the former colonies, became a major problem at this time.
Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973, but there were no economic gains during
the early years of their association, as we will see later on.
However, there was an expansion of the credit system and an unprecedented credit boom. But this
was followed by a period of industrial unrest which, after the Winter of Discontent, led to the collapse
of James Callaghan’s Labour government and the return of the Conservatives, with Margaret Thatcher
as Prime Minister in 1979. She promised a new beginning for Britain.

4. The 80s

In the early 80s unemployment reached new proportions when many old industries, like steel and newer
industries, like motor car manufacture closed plants and over three millions people were made
redundant.

During the 80s, Margaret Thatcher was PM, the first woman in such position, she based her
government on hard work, patriotism and self-help. The most notable measure of Thatcherism was the
privatisation of wholly or partly government-owned enterprises, believing that this could reduce
government borrowing and increase economic freedom. However, unemployment reached new
proportions, involving closures of plants and heavy redundancies. The most serious criticism against
the Thatcher government was that it created a more unequal society, a society of “two nations”, one
wealthy and the other poor.
 5. The 90s and the 21st century

The Conservative John Major succeeded M. Thatcher. His government faced the fact that reducing
public expenditure was harder than expected.

He also encountered a big recession in the whole of Europe that made many businesses to close down.
This fact brought a lot of unemployment and the collapse of the property market.
Tony Blair was elected in 1997, and the Labour took the power after 18 years. He has created the
New Labour Party, which is more to the right than the Old Labour. He clashed not only with the other
parties but also with half of his own, due to the Iraq conflict. The 11th September terrorist attacks
became defining moments Blair and his legacy. He allied with the USA and president Bush over the
need to confront militant Islamism, first in Afghanistan in 2001 and then, much more controversially in
2003 with the invasion of Iraq.
He resigned on 2007, and Gordon Brown became PM. The greatest challenge he faced in office was
the worldwide financial crisis and the following recession. In 2009, he hosted the G20 Summit in London
where world leaders pledged to make an additional 1.1. trillion dollars available to help the world
economy through the crisis and restore credit, growth and jobs. They also pledged to improve financial
supervision and regulation. UK combat operations in Iraq, came to an end under Brown’s mandate.
British forces withdrew from the country in 2009. He became heavily involved in international
negotiations to reach an agreement to replace Kyoto Treaty and in 2009 he attended the UN summit in
Denmark. Following the summit, he pledged to lead an international campaign to turn the agreements
reached at Denmark into a legally binding treaty.
During his time in Downing Street, he worked with his Irish counterpart Cowen to negotiate the
devolution of policing and justice powers in Northern Ireland. An agreement was finally reached in
February 2010 and the powers were passed to Northern Ireland’s government in the following April.
David Cameron became PM in 2010. He introduced great changes as regards immigration policy, an
Education Act (2011) a Health and Social Care Act (2012), The Marriage Act for same-sex couples
(which surprised his conservative party fellows).
In September 2014, he agreed to a referendum on the Independence of Scotland, which resulted in
“no” to the independence. In June 2016, the government celebrated a referendum to vote the exist of
the UK from the EU, which came to be known as Brexit. 52% of the population voted for the exit,
however there were essential territory differences, since Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay
in the EU. Since Cameron had supported the idea or remaining, he resigned.
Theresa May came into the office in 2016, the next year she invoked article 50 of the Treaty of the
EU, which begins the Brexit. In the same year, the UK suffered continuous Islamists attacks such as
the one in the Manchester Arena or the London Bridge. In 2018, several cabinet ministers resign to
protest at the PM Brexit negotiations, then May’s negotiated EU withdrawal was rejected twice in the
House of Commons, one of the reasons being the Irish backstop, the arrangements between the frontier
between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which all parties wanted to keep open. In July, the PM resigned.
Boris Johnson became PM in 2019. He confirmed his commitment to the UK leaving the EU by 31
October, despite widespread opposition from those who were in favour of remaining. In any case, it
wasn’t until 12th December that they achieved majority to finally leave the EU on the 30 th January 2020.
At the same time, the country began to be affected by the covid-19 crisis, with its first patient in
Newcastle and a lockdown beginning in March. His ministry was affected by the non-fulfilled promises
that the UK would improve after Brexit, the management of the pandemic, the energetic crisis due to
the war in Ukraine and several scandals such as PartyGate, which left the PM with no support in the
government. Mr Johnson tendered his not immediate resignation in 2022.
Then, Elizabeth Truss became PM. She had to cope with the inner division of her own party. She
wanted to decrease taxation and limit the cost of energy. However, the death of the Queen paralysed
the country and her measures could not be implemented, by the time the country was up and running
again, the pound had hit a record low and the Bank of England needed to intervene. She resigned after
45 days in office and Rishi Sunak is currently the PM, the youngest in two centuries and belonging to
an ethnic minority. He has announced that he will need to make difficult decisions to prevent the serious
upcoming economic recession.

6. The Republic of Ireland

In 1949 Eire withdrew from the Commonwealth, became a free state and adopted the name
of Republic of Ireland. However, the six counties in the North remained, and still remain, as part of
the UK (Ulster or Northern Ireland). Ever since then, in Northern Ireland we find two different
controversial forces:
a) The Protestant Unionists or Loyalists, who want to remain part of the UK.
b) The Catholic Nationalists or Republicans, who want their own nation together with Ireland.
On the Catholic side we find the IRA (Irish Republican Army). They fought since the beginning
of the 20th century for the independence of Ireland and only called a halt in 1994. The 1998 Good
Friday Agreement (GFA), which reaffirmed Northern Ireland's constitutional status in the UK while
also repealing the law by which Ireland was partitioned, was approved.

With the passing of years, in 2012 Enda Kenny and David Cameron agreed to strengthen East-West
economic, political and bureaucratic links followed by the symbolic visit of Queen Elizabeth in 2011 - in
which she paid her respects to republican dead and gave a speech on Anglo-Irish history - drew near
universal praise.

Brexit rudely and crudely interrupted that new equilibrium. It exposed large differences of interests
between the two states and peoples, as well as placing the Irish Border issue at the centre of UK-EU
relations. It put further strain on the Belfast Agreement and the institutions it created.

7. Presence in the European Community

In 1957 there was the idea of a more integrated Europe: France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux signed
the Treaty of Rome, which gave birth to the European Common Market. Britain didn’t sign, mainly
because of fear of losing identity and sovereignty.
Soon, it became clear that Britain’s attitude was mistaken. As its financial and economic difficulties
increased, Britain could not afford to stay out of Europe. They made several attempts to join the EC,
but De Gaulle vetoed them. In the 70s they tried again and in 1973, together with Ireland and
Denmark, they became members. However, Britain’s attitude towards the EC continued to be
unenthusiastic.
PM Margaret Thatcher welcomed closer cooperation in Europe, but only if that didn’t mean any
lessening of sovereignty. Most Europeans saw this like a contradiction. Throughout the last 20 years,
Britain has been one of the most argumentative members, being against many agreements, such
as the Euro. And all because they are afraid of losing their identity. On the contrary, Ireland has known
a great economic growth since 1973.
The UK’s aloofness towards the EU culminated in 2016 when the country choose to exit the community
and finally did it in 2020. Since then, the UK has seen food shortages, fuel shortages and its economy
is rather unstable.

8. The novel

Tendencies which, without copying, are based in literary trends from other centuries. As there are many
important novelists, I’m going to focus in those I consider to be the most representative ones:

a. George Orwell
Born in India but brought to England at the age on one, George Orwell belongs to a group of social-
compromised writers: he detested Imperialism, he was involved in left-winged politics and his main
topic is the social class struggle.
Animal Farm (1945)
It is a children’s classic although it was meant for adults. The story lays on a political revolution in a
farm, led by the pigs. When they are in control of the farm against humans, they represent their role
and start to keep the other animals under the same conditions they suffered before the revolution. Oto
s a political allegory, even if it can be firstly read as a political fable at first level, but at a second level
it is a satire on Stalin’s dictatorship.
Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949)
It represents a dark and despairing picture of the world, a view influenced by Orwell’s experience in
WW2 and his deception in the Spanish civil war.
The story deals with a future world where everything and everybody is controlled by State by means of
a TV monitor that can watch as well as be watched. Language is very important to control people: the
author shows how language can be used to hide the truth and also how governments use language to
deceive people. They manipulate language so that people can communicate only the concepts and ideas
that the governments wants.

b. Jean Rhys – Ella Gwendolen Rees Williams

She was a West-Indian novelist and it was there that his best-known novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, is set.
She lived in Dominica until the age of 16 when she left for Paris to be an actress. Her four earlier novels
death with women determined to explore the implications of their sexuality, with women adrift and
exploited. Then, she moved of Cornwall and wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel set in 1830s which rakes
the character os the madwoman in the attic as in Jane Eyre. She reconstructed the earlier life of the
fictional character Antoinette Cosway and explores the nature of loneliness, exploitation and
victimization. The novel interlocks the corrupt society of the post-emancipation of the Caribbean, its
decaying plantations, its exotic gardens, its ghosts and its tropical storms with Bertha’s mental
turbulence.

c. William Golding

WW2 stimulated novelists, among them, Golding, to examine the nature and relations of good and evil,
innocence and experience, God and the Devil. Depressing truths about man and his nature are present
throughout Golding’s novels. They are already apparent in his first novel, still his most popular Lord of
the Flies (1954), which demonstrates what the novel defines as the end of innocence, the darkness of
man’s heart. Golding develops his theme in loose analogy with the Bible story of original sin in the
Garden of Eden. A group of well—behaved civilized children is marooned in an island. They rapidly loose
their manners and start worshipping death.
Other words by him include Darkness Visible or Rites of Passage, also related to evil in men and
Golding’s pessimistic view of the human race. He was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1983.

Children’s literature

d. Roald Dahl
His stories feature how cruel and nasty can be, antagonist to their parents and making fun of vulnerable
characters. The Twits is about an ugly and unpleasant husband and wife. He also wrote Matilda and
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, both adapted to film.
e. J .R. R. Tolkien
He created a fictional world that includes mythology, fable and fantasy. He was a philologist and
professor of medieval language and literature, ant his influences his novels. His hero Bilbo Baggins is a
hobbit whose adventures take him through a range of landscapes and encounters with heroes and
villains in modern epic: The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

f. J. K. Rowling
She is the author of the best-selling Harry Potter series of books. Harry is a lonely downtrodden 11-
year-old orphan who learns he’s actually a wizard when he is magically invited to attend Hogwarts
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The popularity of these books has been truly astounding, and has
made the author the highest-earning woman in Britain. The series is so far made up of seven books:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone… J.K. Rowling was awarded Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras
in October 2003.
 9. Drama

In the decade of 1950, we find two important movements in drama, The Angry Young Men and
the Theatre of the Absurd.

- Angry Young Men is the term applied to a group of English novelists and playwrights who
emerged in the 1950s and expressed scorn and disaffection with the established socio-political order
of their country. The first use of the term probably came in the mid-50s with the broadcasting of
some of the new works. Within a couple of years, the Angry Young Men phenomenon was everywhere,
as John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956), the most representative work of the movement,
was immensely successful. Its protagonist, Jimmy Porter, captured the angry nature of the post-war
generation and came to represent, therefore, an entire generation of “angry young men”. The impetus
of the movement was exhausted in the early 1960s.

- The Theatre of the Absurd appeared also in the 1950s with a group of playwrights which
included the Irish Samuel Beckett with his play Waiting for Godot (1954). This type of theatre is
characterized for the absence of plot and little action. In Waiting for Godot we find two human
characters in the situation of being in the world not knowing what for. They are waiting for somebody,
called Godot, who never arrives. This Godot may be represented as God.

10. Poetry

In the 1950s there is a publication of a number of manifestoes from a group of poets called “The
Movement”. These poets treated everyday British life with a plain and straightforward language and
often with traditional forms. “The Movement” represented a reaction against both Modernism and
Internationalism. Among his writers were Philip Larkin, who wrote The Less Deceived (1955); Ted
Hughes, poet laureate of England during the years 1984 and 1998, who wrote a series of story-poems
called Crow (1970); and Thom Gunn, author of Fighting Terms (1954).

In the 1960s another group of young poets started to meet in Cambridge once a week to discuss about
poetry. It was called “The Group” and it gathered together poets like Peter Porter with Once Bitten,
Twice Bitten (1961); Martin Bell, with his only book Collected Poems 1937-1966; and George
Macbeth with The Orlando Poems. “The Group” was stylistically less coherent than “The Movement”,
although more colloquial and naturalistic.

11. Conclusion

As we have seen, the last 50 years have been full of changes. This is a characteristic of the modern
world which seems to develop and change faster than ever. It is important to give our students some
cultural background of the countries where English is spoken. The UK and Ireland have a different story
and different habits to those we have, and so our students should be aware of this fact in order to
understand that culture, become more tolerant and facilitate the communication with English- spoken
people.
There are many reasons to integrate history and literature into our English-language classes, a reading
sequence will be hereby suggested for 1st year of Bachillerato, covering two lessons. This sequence will
focus on aspects dealing with elements of syntax and discourse (the expression of logical relations) and
lexis (holidays) as established by Royal Decree 217/2022, in which the basic curriculum is specified, and
in the official curriculum of Madrid (Decree 65/2022)

The main task will consist on reading an adaptation of Animal Farm, in which the paragraphs are not in
order. In pairs they will have to decide the order in which the events happened. By mixing the paragraphs
we make reading a more active activity in which oral interaction is also needed. After figuring out the
correct order of the text, students will check their prediction. Then, they will have to put themselves in
the place of the main characters and figure out how to survive in a dessert island. In teams, they will
choose four items to take to the island, after this, situations in which other objects are needed will be
posed by both the teacher and the other teams, and they will have to figure out how to survive.This
would be preceded by a warm-up and followed by a follow-up activity, in order to round up the learning
process.

In this teaching exploitation oral skills are also prioritised as established by LOMLOE 3/2020 and means
of scaffolding, cooperative learning and a top-down approach will be present in the class in order to cater
to all students (Order 1493/2015)

12. Bibliography
Huntington, Robert Fletcher. A Hisotry of English Literature. Gutenberg e-books, 2008.

Cannon, John. The Oxford Companion to Britsh History. Oxford: OUP, (2003)

Sanders, A. The Short Story of English Literature. Oxford: OUP, (1996)