20th century history
INTRODUCTION
1950. India declares itself a republic; UK and USA attack Korea; first credit cards; first organ transplant; Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard; Nobel prize – Bertrand Russell (UK)
1951. Festival of Britain; first colour TV; Conservatives defeat Labour in UK general election; Churchill becomes prime minister; UK troops seize Suez Canal zone; Benjamin Britten Billy Budd; Samuel Beckett, Malloy; Nobel prize – P. Lagerkvist (S)
1952. Death of George V. Accession of Queen Elizabeth II at 25; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Nobel prize – F. Mauriac (Fr)
1953. DNA discovered; conquest of Everest; Death of Stalin – and Prokofiev on same day; Nobel prize – Winston Churchill (UK)
1954. British troops withdrawn from Egypt; Four-minute mile broken;Nobel prize – E. Hemingway (USA)
1955. European Union created; Warsaw Pact founded; V. Nabokov, Lolita; Patrick White, The Tree of Man; Nobel prize – H. Laxness (Ic)
1956. Khruschchev denounces Stalin at Communist Party Conference; Anglo-French invasion of Suez, followed by withdrawal; Hungarian uprising crushed by Soviets; Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies; Nobel prize – J. Ramon Jiminez (Sp)
1957. European Economic Community established; Homosexuality decriminalised in UK; Patrick White, Voss; Nobel prize – A. Camus (Fr)
1958. Orson Wells, Touch of Evil; Nobel prize – B. Pasternak (USSR) [forced to refuse it]
1959. Castro overthrows Batista regime in Cuba; first motorway opened in UK; Nobel prize – S. Quasimodo (I)
1960. Sharpville massacres in S Africa; new republics declared in Africa;Lady Chatterley’s Lover cleared of charges of obscenity in UK; J.F. Kennedy elected US president; Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho; Nobel prize – A. St. Leger (Fr)
1961. Adolf Eichman on trial for role in Holocaust; USSR makes first manned space flight; USA-backed Bay of Pigs attack in Cuba fails; Berlin Wall erected; Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot; Samuel Beckett,Happy Days; Nobel prize – L. Andric (Y)
1962. US sends troops to Vietnam; Cuban missile crisis; Nelson Mandela jailed; Please Please Me first Beatles hit; Nobel prize – J. Steinbeck (USA)
1963. French veto Britain’s application to join European Common Market; Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech; Profumo scandal in UK; Kennedy assassination in USA; Nobel prize – G. Seferis (Gr)
1964. Khruschchev deposed by Breshnev in USSR; Vietnam attacks US destroyer in Gulf of Tonkin; Labour party gains power in UK under Harold Wilson; Saul Bellow, Herzog. Nobel prize – J-P. Sartre (Fr) [prize not accepted]
1965. Malcolm X assassinated; India invades Pakistan; US air raids in Vietnam; anti-war protests in US and Europe; Harold Pinter, The Homecoming; Nobel prize – M. Sholokov (USSR) [authorship subsequently disputed]
1966. Black Panthers established in US; Cultural revolution under Mao in China; Britain wins Wold Cup in football; Nobel prize – Samuel Agnon, Nelly Sachs (Il)
1967. Israel seizes land in 6 day war; first heart transplant; first colour TV transmissions in UK; Stalin’s daughter defects to west; ‘Summer of Love’ hippy demonstrations in San Francisco; decriminalisation of homosexuality in UK; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude; Nobel prize – Miguel Angel Asturias (Gu)
1968. Martin Luther King assassinated; student protests in Paris; USSR invades Czechoslovakia; theatre censorship abolished in UK after 23 years; Tet offensive in Vietnam; Nobel prize – Yasunari Kawabata (Jp)
1969. UK troops sent into N Ireland; US puts first men on the moon; death penalty abolished in UK; precursor of the Internet, ARPANET created; Woodstock music festival; Monty Python’s Flying Circus first broadcast;Nobel prize – Samuel Beckett (Ire)
1970. My Lai massacre; Rubber bullets used in N Ireland; Allende elected socialist president in Chile; anti-government demonstrations in Poland; age of majority lowered to 18 in UK; invention of computer floppy disks; Germaine Greer, The Femail Eunuch; Patrick White, The Vivesector;Nobel prize – Alexander Solzhenitsyn (USSR)
1971. Open University begins in UK; internment without trial in N Ireland; China joins UN; Nixon resumes bombing of Vietnam; video recorders introduced; Britain negotiates entry into EU; Nobel prize – Pablo Neruda (Ch)
1972. Miners strike in UK; Bloody Sunday in N Ireland; Watergate scandal begins in US; Nobel prize – Heinrich Böll (Gr)
1973. Allende government overthrown by Pinochet in Chile; industrial strikes in UK; Arab-Israeli war; abortion legalised in US; US pulls out of Vietnam; Britain enters the European Common Market; Nobel prize -Patrick White (Aus)
1974. Miners strike in UK; Impeachment and resignation of president Nixon in US; Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist; Nobel prize – Eyvind Johnson, Harry Martinson (Sw)
1975. Margaret Thatcher elected leader of Tories in UK; Vietnam war ends with hasty retreat of US troops; first elections in Portugal for 50 years; Microsoft founded; Nobel prize – Eugenio Montale (It)
1976. Jeremy Thorpe resigns as UK liberal leader following sex scandal; Britain found guilty of torture in N Ireland; Jimmy Carter elected president in US; Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves; Nobel prize – Saul Bellow (USA)
1977. First democratic elections in Spain since 1936; student activist Steve Biko tortured to death in S Africa; Punk rock fashionable; Nobel prize – Vicente Aleixandre (Sp)
1978. World’s first test tube baby; Nobel prize – Isaac Bashevis Singer (USA)
1979. Shah leaves Iran; Ayatollah Khomeni returns from exile in Paris; Islamic republic declared; Margaret Thatcher elected first woman PM in UK; first heart transplant; Pol Pot convicted of murdering 3 million in Cambodia; Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now; Nobel prize – Odysseus Elytis (Gk)
1980. USSR Nobel peace prizewinner Sakharov sent into internal exile; Mugabe’s establishes one-party ZANU(PF) state in Zimbabwe; outbreak of Iran-Iraq war; Solidarity trade union recognised by Polish government; Ronald Regan elected US president; John Lennon shot in New York; Nobel prize – Czeslaw Milosz (Po)
1981. Greece joins EEC; Social Democrats launched in UK – merges with Liberals; Peter Sutcliffe convicted of Yorkshire Ripper murders; Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer; first reports of AIDS; Salman Rushdie,Midnight’s Children; Nobel prize – Elias Canetti (UK!)
1982. Argentina invades Malvinas (Falklands); UK re-takes islands; General Galtieri resigns; Polish government abolishes Solidarity; death of Breshnev; Nobel prize – Gabriel García Márquez (Co)
1983. Demonstrations in 20 Polish cities; IRA prisoners escape from Maze prison; US-backed invasion of Grenada; Cruise missiles installed in UK;Nobel prize – William Golding (UK)
1984. UK miners strike against pit closures; USSR boycotts Olympics in LA; Mrs Gandhi assassinated; Nobel prize – Jaroslav Seifert (Cz)
1985. USSR reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika called for by Gorbachev; Greenpeace ship sunk by French agents in NZ; Nobel prize – Claude Simon (Fr)
1986. Westland scandal in UK government; press disputes lead to move from Fleet Street to Wapping in UK; legal independence for Australia; US bomb Benghazi and Tripoli; Chernobyl nuclear disaster; 180-day detention without trial in S Africa; US and Commonwealth impose sanctions on South Africa; Nobel prize – Wole Soyinka (Ni)
1987. Gorbachev begins critique of Breshnev in USSR; white-only elections in S Africa; Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie guilty of crimes against humanity; Iran attacks US tanker in Persian Gulf; DNA first used to convict criminals; Nobel prize – Joseph Brodsky (USA)
1988. IRA members shot by UK in Gibraltar; first Gulf war begins; Gorbachev proposes democratic reforms in USSR; George Bush Snr president in US; Nobel prize – Naguib Mahfouz (Eg)
1989. Khomeini issues fatwa on Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses; Tiananamen Square massacre; elections, protests, and shakeups in Communist block; E Germany closes borders after demonstrations for reform; Iron Curtain begins to be removed; Romanian leader Ceausescu executed; playwright Vaclav Havel becomes Czech president; Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web; Nobel prize – Camilo José Cela (Sp)
1990. Lech Walesa becomes first president of Poland; Nelson Mandela freed after 27 years in jail; John Major replaces Margaret Thatcher as UK prime minister; Derek Walcott, Omeros; Nobel prize – Octavio Paz (Mx)
1991. Collapse of the Soviet Union; Apartheid laws repealed in S Africa; Iraq invades Kuwait; first Gulf war begins with Operation desert Storm; Satellite-based communications become established for TV and Internet; Nobel prize – Nadine Gordimer (SA)
1992. Official end of Cold War; Nobel prize – Derek Walcott (SL)
1993. Bosnian civil war; Use of the Internet grows exponentially; Nobel prize – Toni Morrison (USA)
1994. Channel tunnel opens in UK; Mandela elected president of S Africa; Rawandan genocide; Nobel prize – Kenzaburo Oe (Jp)
1995. Nobel prize – Seamus Heaney (Ire)
1996. Prince Charles divorces Princess Diana in UK; Mad cow disease hits UK; Nobel prize – Wislawa Szymborska (Po)
1997. Hong Kong returns to China; Princess Diana dies in car crash in Paris; Tony Blair wins landslide victory in UK with New Labour Party; Nobel prize – Dario Fo (It)
1998. India and Pakistan test nuclear weapons; US President Clinton in sex scandal; use of mobile phones and Internet becomes commonplace; digital technology widely introduced into broadcast media; Nobel prize – José Saramago (Pt)
1999. New Euro currency introduced; NATO forces in Serbia; hereditary peers abolished in UK House of Lords; Nobel prize – Gunter Grass (Gr)
2000. First elected Mayor of London in UK; Legal age for consensual gay sex reduced to 16;Nobel prize – Gao Xingjian (Fr)
2001. Labour Party re-elected with huge majority; Twin Towers attacked and destroyed in New York; Britain joins US in Afghanistan war; Nobel prize – V.S. Naipaul (UK)
2002. Nobel prize – Imre Kertész (Hu)
2003. Nobel prize – J.M.Coetzee (SA)
2004. Nobel prize – Elfriede Jelinek (Au)
2005. Nobel prize – Harold Pinter (UK)
2006. Nobel prize – Orhan Pamuk (Tk)
2007. Nobel prize – Doris Lessing (UK)
2008. Nobel prize – J-M.G.Le Clezio (Fr)
2009. Nobel prize – Herta Muelller (Gr)
http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/a319/a319_15b.htm
DEVELOPMENT
The Affluent Society
However in the mid-1950s Britain became an affluent society. For the first time ordinary people had substantial amounts of money to spend on luxuries. Consumer goods became common. By 1960 44% of homes owned a washing machine. In 1959 about 2/3 of homes owned a vacuum cleaner.
In the 1960s Britain became a truly affluent society. Washing machines and vacuum cleaners became near universal. Cars and fridges became common. Foreign holidays became common for the first time. Central heating, electric blankets, electric kettles and toasters and a host of other goods became common in the 1960s. By 1975 90% of homes had a vacuum cleaner, 85% had a fridge and 70% owned a washing machine. Furthermore 52% had a telephone and 47% had central heating.
Meanwhile Britain became a ‘permissive’ society. For decades society was becoming less puritanical. Then in the 1960s society became much more liberal and tolerant. In 1967 homosexuality was made legal between aged over 21. Also in 1967 abortion was made legal. In 1968 censorship of the theatre was abolished. In 1969 divorce was made easier.
Meanwhile in the 1950s public opinion turned against capital punishment especially after two innocent men were hanged, Timothy Evans (1950) and Derek Bentley (1953). In 1957 it was abolished for certain categories of murder. From then on only people who murdered on more than one occasion, or who murdered during a robbery or who killed a policeman or prison officer while they were on duty could be hanged. In 1965 hanging was abolished for a period of 5 years. However in 1969 it was abolished for all kinds of murder.
The birch (hitting people with birch twigs) was banned in 1948. Flogging was last used in a British prison in 1962.
Until the late 20th century teachers were allowed to physically and verbally abuse children. However the Society of Teachers Opposed to Physical Punishment was formed in 1968. During the early and mid 1970s corporal punishment was abolished in most primary schools. (It was formally abolished in London primary schools in 1973. Corporal punishment in London secondary schools was abolished in 1980). Corporal punishment ended in state secondary schools in 1987. However it was allowed in private schools till 1999.
Meanwhile until the mid-1970s there was full employment in most areas of Britain. For most of the period 1945-1973 unemployment was less than 5%. By 1973 it was creeping upwards but it was still only 3%.
From 1951 to 1964 Britain was ruled by the Conservatives. From 1951 to 1955 Winston Churchill was Prime Minister. Anthony Eden who was Prime Minister till 1957 replaced him. He was followed by Harold Macmillan who was prime minister till 1963.
Sir Alec-Douglas Home was prime minister for a short period in 1963-64. However in 1964 Labour won a general election and Harold Wilson became prime minister. Labour won another election in 1966. Wilson remained prime minister until 1970.
Meanwhile in the 1960s and 1970s most secondary schools became comprehensives. Also in the 1960s there was a big expansion of further and higher education. In 1945 there were only 17 universities. By the 1970s there were 46. There were also 30 polytechnics. (In 1992 they were upgraded to universities).
In 1973 the school leaving age was raised to 16. In 1988 a national curriculum was introduced.
The 1970s
Meanwhile in the years after 1945 the trade unions grew very powerful. By 1970 their membership had almost doubled. Nearly half the workforce belonged to a union.
In the winter of 1972 the coal miners went on strike and the government was forced to give in to their demands. They went on strike again in the winter of 1974. This time Heath was determined not to back down and he called an election in February 1974 on the issue ‘who governs the country?’. However Heath lost the election and Wilson became prime minister again. Wilson won another election in October 1974.
Meanwhile in 1973 Britain joined the EEC (forerunner of the EU). The first elections for the European parliament were held in 1979.
By 1973 the long period of economic prosperity was coming to an end. By the spring of 1975 unemployment had climbed to 1 million. It was over 5% of the workforce. By 1977 it had risen to 5.5% and in 1979 it stood at 5.3%. Meanwhile there was also high inflation.
In 1978 in an effort to tackle inflation the government tried to persuade trade unions to limit pay rises to no more than 5%. The trade unions refused to accept the limit and Britain was hit by a wave of strikes. As a result the government’s popularity diminished and in may 1979 the Conservatives won a general election. Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister.
The 1980s
In 1980-82 Britain suffered a severe recession. Unemployment rose sharply. By January 1982 it was 11.5%, double the May 1979 figure. Not surprisingly the government was deeply unpopular.
However in April 1982 the Argentineans invaded the Falkland Islands. The British sent a taskforce and on 14 June 1982 the Falklands were recaptured. The war greatly boosted the government’s popularity and it contributed to the government’s victory in the general election of 1983. (The Conservatives won a third election in 1987).
Meanwhile recession ended in the autumn of 1982 and recovery began. Furthermore unemployment levelled off. As long as unemployment was rising it was an important issue. As soon as it stopped rising it was much less important. Most people were not very worried about unemployment as long as it was stable. In other words they were not unduly worried as long as their own job wasn’t threatened. (Unemployment remained very high until 1986. In the summer of that year the official figure was 14.1%. However unemployment then fell steadily. The government also succeeded in greatly reducing inflation.
Despite the mass unemployment of the 1980s most people with a job experienced a substantial rise in their living standards during the decade.
On the other hand the percentage of people living in poverty increased. That was partly due to mass unemployment. Another cause was the rapidly rising number of single parent families many of whom lived on state benefits.
The Conservatives also sold council houses cheaply and the number of council houses fell significantly. The government also privatised industries. British Aerospace and Cable and Wireless were sold in 1981. Then in 1982-83 the National Freight Corporation and Associated Business Ports were sold. British gas was sold in 1986. British telecom was sold in 1984. British gas was sold in 1986.
A showdown between the government and the trade unions took place with the 1984-85 coal strike. The National Coal Board announced the closure of certain collieries. Some Yorkshire coal miners went on strike in March 1984. However the miner’s trade union leader, Arthur Scargill, refused to call a national ballot to decide if all miners should go on strike. Instead it was left to each region to decide.
That was a fatal mistake because miners in Nottinghamshire (who were much less likely to lose their jobs) stayed at work. As long as some miners kept working the strike could not succeed.
Furthermore the government was in a strong position. For one thing they had stockpiled coal. For another generating stations that usually burned coal could burn a mixture of coal and oil. Also striking miners could not claim welfare benefits. So all the government had to do was wait until poverty forced the strikers back to work.
The miners strike began to crumble in November 1984 as miners drifted back to work. By January more than half of all strikers had returned to work and the strike ended in March 1985. It was a severe defeat for militant trade unionism.
Furthermore during the 1980s the government passed a series of laws restricting the powers of the trade unions.
The 1990s
In 1990 the government introduced a new tax in England called the community charge (popularly known as the poll tax). It was very unpopular and in 1993 it was replaced by the council tax.
Meanwhile Margaret Thatcher resigned in 1990. She was replaced by John Major.
In the middle of 1990 a long recession started and unemployment rose sharply. It was made worse by the government’s decision to enter the exchange rate mechanism, which pegged the pound to certain European currencies. Britain was forced to leave the ERM in September 1992. Economic recovery began shortly afterwards.
From 1993 onwards unemployment fell steadily and by 2000 it was at a level not seen since 1979.
Meanwhile in April 1992 the Conservatives won another general election, even though the country was in recession. Labour was forced to modernise, which meant ditching socialism.
In 1997 Labour finally won an election and Tony Blair became prime minister.
http://www.localhistories.org/20thengland.html