MODERN BRITAIN

Press, Volume C, Issue 29466, 18 March 1961, Page 3

MODERN BRITAIN

Henry Pelling. Nelson. 212 pp. This is the last of a series of eight volumes covering the history of England from Julius Caesar’s invasion to 1955. The special aim of the series, the editors tell us. is to provide serious and yet challenging books. not buried under a mountain of detail. This is particularly hard for a writer dealing with recent events: it is not easy to view them in perspective and to select the appropriate trees from the adjacent thick wood. Mr Pelling has performed his task w’ith considerable skill. He deals with his period in nine chapters, each of which he has arranged uniformly. Jn the opening section he writes of foreign and Imperial or Commonwealth affairs because, he says, the country’s external relations, both economic and political, were of such fundamental importance at this stage of its history. From this he goes on to domestic politics and legislation, and finally in the third section to the major trends of social change. So he takes us step by step through these seventy most eventful years in a book that is both concise and readable.

Mr Pelling justifies 1885 as his starting point for two reasons. At this time, he says, began “the questioning of the accepted assumptions of natural progress and prosperity;” it was also the beginning of the period of political democracy. We are perhaps inclined to think of the late Victorian era as a time of prosperity, but Mr Pelling points out that when the depression came to an end in the mid-nineties the expansion of overseas investment and trade diverted resources from the reequipment of home industry to meet foreign competition. Nor was there much new industry at this time, and the decline of agriculture continued. The lack of capital investment at home continued at the beginning of the present century, and after 1918 the United States had become predominant in more ways than one. A quarter of British investment had been sold mostly to the United States, which had become the principal source of foreign investment for the rest of the world and had now become the chief exporting nation.

Great Britain's dependence on the United States became only too obvious after 1945, and the association in foreign policy begun in 1918 also became closer. Mr Pelling also reminds us that in more recent times efforts to improve the economic lot of the more backward parts of the Commonwealth. as well as its financial structure and military defence, depend on American assistance.

This is one aspect of one of Mr Polling’s main themes —Great Britain’s external difficulties, and her gradual recognition of the need to alter her political and economic relations within the Empire and Commonwealth and with other nations. His other main theme is concerned with*the social and political conflicts at home, and the elimination of various forms of inferiority. Here too he has an interesting story to tell. The two parallel processes have, he says, been accomplished gradually and on the whole peacefully, and have transformed the character of British society and the country’s place in the world. The simple and hierarchical relation of the beginning of the period, both in the Empire and at home, have become complex, and authority has become dispersed. Whether these changes have been for the better Mr Pelling is not sure. “Happiness does not necessarily spring either from material progress or from emancipation from the

restraints of authority. However, he thinks that they may provide more possibilities of happiness than before, and “no country of anything like equal size can claim to have dealt more successfully with tire major problems that have divided its citizens at home and challenged them abroad.”