5

FORWARD

When you study the language of a country for a reasonable period of time you feel the need to find out some information about the culture, literature or history of that nation. These notes about important issues in the history of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and The United States of America will offer the students a better understanding of the people whose language they study. It is just a staring point in their further studies of the English speaking world.

6

I. VARIETIES OF ENGLISH

The British and Americans are divided by a common language. George Bernard Shaw

If there are people who claim that Chinese rather than English is

the language that has the largest number of speakers in the world, English is the most widely spread language on earth, as it is practically spoken on all continents, either as mother tongue or first language or as a second language (often an official language in the respective countries) by hundreds of millions of people. Nowadays English is the planet’s language for commerce, technology, military and increasingly, empowerment. According to a recent report from the British Council, within a decade or so a 2 billion people will be studying English and about half the world – some 3 billion people – will speak it. From Caracas to Karachi parents look for English-language schools for their children. While governments from Tunisia to Turkey are pushing English, recognizing that along with computers and mass migration, the language is the turbine engine of globalization.

Linguistically speaking, it is a whole new world. Non-native speakers of English now outnumber native speakers 3 to 1, according to English-language expert David Crystal who mentions that there has never before been a language that has been spoken by more people as a second language than a first. Be it called global language or international language the number of English users is growing and growing: it has topped 350 millions in Asia alone – that is the combined populations of USA, Britain and Canada – and the number of Chinese children studying English, about 100 million, outnumbers by far the number in Britain. The new English-speakers are not just passively absorbing the language – they are shaping it. All languages are works in progress. But English’s globalization, unprecedented in the history of languages, will revolutionize it in ways we can only begin to imagine Crystal suggests that in the future there could be a tri-English world, one in which you could speak a local English –

7

based dialect at home, a national variety at work or school, and international Standard English to talk to foreigners.

A language so widely geographically spread cannot be expected to be ‘the same’ in places of thousands of kilometers apart. In other words we cannot imagine that people in Sydney, Harare, Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles, The Falkland Islands, Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Glasgow, York or London speak the same ‘kind’ of English. The differences are not always proportional to the distances since General American usually abbreviated GA, is much closer to standard British English than some of the northern accents spoken on the very island of Britain. In many cases, the interaction between English and one or several local languages gave birth to so-called Pidgins. Differences between the varieties of English pertain not only in the vocabulary or grammar but also to pronunciation as well. Researchers are starting to study non-native speakers’ mistakes. In a generation’s time, teachers might no longer be correcting students for saying “a book who’ or ‘a person which’, and the Asians’ – and not only-trouble with pronouncing the ‘the’ sound might not matter so much. International pilots already pronounce the word three as tree in radio dispatches, since tree is more widely comprehensible.

Still, there is a constant concern for different official bodies and institutions in various countries to preserve the unity and even the purity of the language by standardizations. If this is easier to achieve at the level of the written language, difficulties are by far greater in the case of the spoken language. The need for a standardized, more or less universally acceptable and recognizable variant, is needed since English is not only the official language of many countries in the world but also the most widely used language in international conferences, meeting, etc, being the main language used by NATO and UN organizations, and having become since World War II a kind of lingua franca of contemporary world. Despite – or perhaps because of – all the new Englishes cropping up, it is the British and American versions that still carry prestige. In these two countries English has been institutionalized longer than anywhere else and its standard varieties have held an unchallenged position as reference models for teaching of English throughout the world. The UK and USA share some important characteristics: the most important of these is that both countries are overwhelmingly nonlinguistic in their official

8

orientation, even though throughout their history they have always been multilingual. Another similarity is that the standard varieties of English in the USA and the southern Britain each have well codified norms. The phonetic, phonological, lexical and syntactic differences between the two national varieties have long been recognized and described. Neither the UK nor the USA has ever had a legally sanctioned official or national language. It has been suggested that this reflects a cultural and philosophical view of the freedom of the individual in language choice. In the case of USA, neither the Declaration of Independence nor the American Constitution specified an official language, although the documents were written in English. It is only recently (1985) that a constitutional amendment was put before Congress, urging that English should be the official language of the USA and that Congress should have the power to enforce this legislation.

The English language was brought to America by masses of Englishmen who settled along the Atlantic coast in the 17th century. The territory that now forms The United States of America witnessed three great periods of immigrations:

– the first period that started with the settlement of Jamestown and ended in 1790, when the last colony ratified the Federal Constitution after the War of Independence or the American Revolution as it is generally called. Out of the about 4,000,000 people that reached the new territory 90 per cent came from Britain.

– the second period, which closed with the Civil War, about 1860, covered the expansion of the former thirteen colonies west of Appalachian Mountains, first into the south and the northwest then to the Pacific coast. Out of the about 3,000,000 people half came from Ireland and half from Germany.

– the third period, which ended before the world War II brought immigrants from the Scandinavian countries and especially from southern and eastern Europe.

From the linguistic point of view, the first period is the most important because it brought to North America the language that is spoken by the majority of its population.

The first colonists found themselves surrounded by new things and situations and they did not have the words to express them. So,

9

they often applied an existing English word to a slightly different thing. A pond designated not only an artificial pool but also a small lake; corn was used for maize; to squat means not only ‘to crouch’ but also ‘to settle on land without the owner’s permission’. Some of the new meanings were adopted by British English e.g. to squat/ squatter.

There are changes that have no historical or other explanations. The English biscuit is called a cracker in US, the English high boot is a boot in America, and the English boot is a shoe; nevertheless, an American calls the boy who shines his shoes a boot-black, while an Englishman calls him a shoe-black.

We can speak of differences in point of meanings of words where we have either the same word but two meanings, or the same meaning but two words; of pronunciation or grammar. In the preface to Webster’s New World Dictionary of American Language we are pointed out that at their widest, the real distinctions between literate American English and literate British English are quite insufficient to impede seriously the communication of ideas. When they do impede, the impediment is caused less by difficulties in understanding than by a deliberate desire to understand.

Here is a number of variations between the everyday vocabulary of Britain and that of the United States.

UK word USA word

full stop period note bill [unit of purer currency] maths math autumn fall bank holiday legal holiday [the day when offices are closed] drawing pin thumb tack [small pointed thing used to pin papers

onto walls] tick check zed zee [the name of the final letter of the Alphabet] pissed off pissed [angry] waist coat vest tights (panty) hose trousers pants trainers sneakers

10

braces suspenders dressing gown bathrobe [item of clothing worn in house at Night] hand bag purse dummy pacifier [what you put in a baby’s mouth] nappy diaper pavement sidewalk pedestrian crossing crosswalk [place to cross a street on foot] shop store chemist drug store bill check [payment in a restaurant] off license liquor store [place where alcoholic drinks are

bought] town centre downtown post mail postcode zip code reverse charge collect call free phone toll free [free telephone call paid by the company] .co.uk .com [company on the www] car automobile bonnet hood boot trunk number plate license plate aerial antenna spanner wrench [metal tool for tightening nuts and bolts] windscreen windshield wing, mud guard fender motorway freeway flyover overpass [road passing over another] lorry truck petrol gasoline petrol station gas station lay-by pull-off [area to stop off a major road] skip dumper [metal container in street for unwanted

items] single one way [ticket for one journey] return round trip [ticket for two journeys; out and back] railway railroad jam jelly jelly jell-O crisps chips chips French fries

11

jug pitcher [a large vessel for water or juice] sweets candy swiss roll jelly roll [rolled up cake with jam/jelly in the

middle] mince ground meat porridge oatmeal Muesli granola insect bug flat apartment tap faucet rubbish bin trash can torch flashlight ground floor first floor first floor second floor lift elevator cinema movie theatre semi detached house duplex programme show match game cricket baseball mobile cellular, cell queue line 1939-1945 1941-1945 [the dates of the second World War]

One Word – two Meanings

UK usage USA usage

Asian person of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi origin Philippine origin

person of Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese,

ass a donkey human posterior bathroom a room containing a bath or shower a room containing a toilet homely pleasant ugly mad not sane angry mean stingy aggressive momentarily for a short time soon presently soon now semi semi-detached house tractor-trailer smart well-dressed clever wash-up wash ditches after a meal wash face and hands

12

These lists are extremely long but sometimes misleading. Some of the entries on the American side of such lists are widely known in England while others known as British expressions are used in America. Thomas Pyles says that: … frequently it is simply a matter of degree, a question of a word or a phrase being somewhat more familiar in one country than in the other (p. 9). If we compare American and British idioms we find that a few of them are similar in form but different in meaning: black eye (AE rejection; BE bruised eye); green goods (AE forged money; BE fresh vegetables); long nines (AE cheap cigars; BE long pipes).

Most American idioms are bold, full of imagination and of humor. Here we mention the following ones: as mad as a wet hen, as tight as a drum [dead drunk], like a cow on ice, to look like a million dollars, to salt the cow to catch the calf, sudden death [very strong drink], scorpion bite [whisky of a very bad quality], a long drink of water [a very tall person], to sprinkle the flowers [to give bribes], the biggest frog in the pond [a local chief], to hand in one’s accounts [to die], to lose one’s shirt [to lose one’s temper], he’s so dumb you can sell him the Brooklyn Bridge [he’s a perfect fool], to live close to one’s belly/ to walk on one’s shoestrings [to be very poor], to mend one’s fences [to strengthen one’s political position] and the list could go on and on.

The differences existing between American English and British English must not be exaggerated; they are less numerous and important than certain people – especially non-native speakers but not only – might think. We should remember the anecdotic words of Bertrand Russell: The ordinary American believes that if a lord were to be awakened in the middle of the night to be told that his castle is on fire, the shock would make him lapse immediately into ‘natural American’.

The English language in Canada, Australia New Zealand, Asia

and South Africa English and French are the official languages of Canada, and all

regions are institutionally bilingual. Some 67 per cent of Canadians are monolingual English speakers, 16,5 per cent are monolingual French, about 15 per cent are English-French bilinguals and 1.5 per cent have a mother tongue neither English nor French. Of the

13

Canadians whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, almost all speak English, not French as their second language. With two official languages and numerous third languages, Canada is very rich in varieties of English. Anyway, the densely populated areas in Canada are very close to the border of the United States and that is why Canadian English resembles American English very much. Still there are fashionable private schools as well as some universities that encourage the use of British English usage.

The classical examples of Briticisms used in Canada are braces, meat-pie, summer holidays, sweets, tin, tram, and those of Americanisms are to guess, rooster, side-walk, store. Canada has a very wide territory so they are not to be heard all over the country because neither British English nor American English has exerted a general or uniform influence. It has been noticed that young Canadians are much more receptive than their elders to American speech as ell as American media and other cultural aspects. Compared to many nations Canada is relatively tolerant linguistically and this tolerance leads to linguistic diversity.

The Status of English in Australia English is the national language, regularly used by 98.6 per cent

of the population over the age of 5. A unique development and diversification of English is due to several features of the Australian situation: its geographic isolation, its social origin as a penal colony, and its recent wave of non-speaking immigrants. For the last two centuries, Australia has had the highest proportion of monolingual English speakers than any country in the world aside from England itself. For most of the population English is the first and only language. The languages other than English that are spoken in Australia include surviving languages of the aboriginal population (aborigines today constitute only one per cent of the Australian population and those who still speak an Aboriginal language natively are largely located in remote areas, primarily in the Northern Territory), and languages of non- English speaking immigrants. The teaching of English as a second language is a small industry, with extensive government support programs, providing initial ESL instruction to most newly arriving immigrants.

14

Australian English lacks geographic differentiations but has a sticking presence of social differentiations. Both features are traceable to its history: most early settlement in Australia disseminated from a single original point: Sydney. Places such as Hobart, Newcastle or Brisbane were all established as penal outstations from Sydney, rather than direct from England. There were frequent intersettlement transfers of convicts and soldiers. The social divisions between convicts and guards in the early period perpetuated sociolinguistic diversity.

The English spoken in Australia differs from that spoken in Britain not only in vocabulary but mostly in pronunciation. In Australian English there are a number of words that have been borrowed from the native languages of Australia and New Zealand: kangaroo, boomerang – that have become international words – billabong (small, swift-flowing steam of the North-east), bush (woodland, untilled district), humpy (native’s hut), larrikin (rowdy street loafer), yabber (language, to speak), ropeable (angry), diggings (mine, goldfield), fossick (to search), jackaroo (a trainee manager who is learning every aspect of the job), offsider (assistant), rouseabout (handyman), to barrack (to cheer), dinkum (honest, genuine; in Lincolnshire fair dinkum means fair play), skerrick (small amount).

There are also certain specifically Australian idioms such as my biggest boner (my greatest mistake), to be in the gun (to be criticized), to stage a barrel party (to hold an informal meal), you’ll be right (you’ll be all right), you’ll be in strife (you’ll be in trouble), to give away (to give up), you wouldn’t read about it (it’s marvelous, it’s incredible), to fine up (to become fine – of the weather), to rabble (to behave in a disorderly manner), to whip the cat (to cry over spilt milk), etc.

It is the spoken English that differs. The diphthong [ei] becomes [ai], the vowel in final unstressed syllables is generally [ą] not [i] as it is in Standard British English in words like basket, palace, riches, wanted. Likewise there is a shift from [a:] to [æ] in Australian English in words with the prefix trans- such as transport or transfer.

The English spoken in New Zealand is not very different from Australian English; it maintained itself closer to British English. [An increased nationalism starting by 1973 materialized in the legal recognition of a distinct national anthem in 1977 and of a national flag only in 1981; a substitution of ‘general’ NZ English in all contexts did not survive.] It has not adopted many native words, the few are

15

nowadays obsolete. New Zealand is one of the world’s most monolingual nations. English is the first language of 95 per cent of its about 4 million population. Maori are the largest minority group, constituting about 12 per cent of the population. Now less than 25 per cent of Maori people can speak their language fluently. Even in isolated rural areas it has virtually been replaced by English.

English in Africa In the East African region of Kenya and Tanzania a complex

multilingual situation exists. It comprises over 100 indigenous languages in Tanzania and about 40 in Kenya. In Kenya English is the official language of civil service correspondence and of the legal system, the language of the armed forces and police and generally of all modern sectors of socioeconomic activity including the commercial and industrial sectors. The leading papers are published in English. In Tanzania English is functioning as official in some peripheral areas but it is the language of instruction in post-primary education including universities –. In both Kenya and Tanzania, English is the language of diplomacy and of all international communication. In Kenya the importance of English increased after independence while in Tanzania the attitude is mixed, varying from warm acceptance to indifference. The English spoken here, mainly by the older generations, is very close to standard British English, mostly to a formal literary variety of English lacking the colorful English idiomatic expressions. The large number of high cost private and international schools – especially in Kenya – where many of the teachers are expatriate native speakers of English could be an explanation. Still, among middle class teenage groups a new variety of English seems to emerge, which is influenced by American English as a result of the influence of popular music and of American movies and discotheque jargon. In Kenya the use of English is a marker of good education and of modernity.

Southern Africa included English speaking countries – South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi and the Portuguese-speaking countries of Angola and Mozambique. Part of the reason for the dominance of English as a common language is that all language policies in the region recognize and promote English as the official language.

16

In South Africa the English language has to compete with Afrikaans – the variety of Dutch spoken there –. The English language spoken in South Africa borrowed elements mostly from the Dutch. Such Africanderisms are baas (master, boss), bosch (bush), brak (soil or water containing a great quantity of soda or salt), dorp (village), kopje (hill), sluit (ditch), vlei (valley) etc.

We find American English words too: store, cookies. In south Asia English is spoken in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri

Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. The origins of South Asian English lie in Britain. The first regular British contact came in 1600 with the formation of the British East India Company. During the period of British sovereignty from 1765 until the independence in 1947, English gradually became the medium of administration and education throughout the subcontinent. In India however, the conflict between the supporters of English, Hindi and regional languages led in the 1960s to a ‘three language formula’, in which English was introduced as the chief alternative to the local state language. It now has the status of an ‘associate official language, with Hindi the official language. In the south English is preferred ho Hindi: in Pakistan it is an associated official language but it has no official status in the other countries although it is universally used as the medium of international communication.

In the South-east Asia and the South Pacific there is a mixture of American and British English. In Singapore in the 1950s a bilingual educational system was introduced with English used as a unifying medium alongside Chinese, Malay or Tamil. English remained the language of government and the legal system. In Malaysia the situation is different: in 1957 the year of independence, Buhasa Malaysia was adopted as the national language and the role of English accordingly became more restricted. In Hong Kong, English has always had a limited use in the territory, associated with government, military, law, business and the media. Chinese (Cantonese) is the mother tongue of over 98 per cent of the population.

We are going to speak very briefly about the so-called hybrid colonial languages, the Pidgin English in the Far East, Beach-la-mar on the islands of the Pacific, Chinook in the Guiana and Kroo English in the west of Africa as they don’t seem to have a future, most probably they will disappear in the course of time. The name Pidgin is the corrupted pronunciation of the word business (as pronounced by a

17

Chinaman who has not learned English); Pidgin English means ‘business English’. It can be heard along the Chinese coast, among the uneducated Japanese and in the islands of the Pacific. Beach-la-mar is a kind of jargon used in commercial exchanges in the region of the Western Pacific. Kroo English [kroo is the name of Negroes on the coast of Liberia], is widely spread in Liberia and New Guinea; its vocabulary is based on English mixed with Portuguese words. These hybrid languages have a stock of mixed words and are characterized by an extreme simplification of grammar, substitution of [l] for [r] as [r doesn’t exist in Chinese; [v] is replaced by [b], etc; compounds and phrases are often coined on the spot. They are based on the poor English brought to these territories by the British sailors and the local words and phrases and pronunciation. It was compared with the baby-talk which adults impose on babies, being considered sub-language.

In the end we can summarize the complex situation of English around the world by adopting the suggestion of the US linguist Braj Kachru, that of the three concentric circles, representing different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used.

– the inner circle refers to the traditional bases of English, where it is the primary language: it includes the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

– the outer or extended circle involves the earlier phases of the spread of English in non-native settings, where the language has become part of a country’s chief institutions, and play an important ‘second language’ role in a multilingual setting: it includes Singapore, India, and over fifty other territories.

– the expanding circle involves those nations which recognize the importance of English as an international language, although English has no special administrative status. It includes China, Japan, Greece, Poland, Romania and a steadily increasing number of other states, where English is taught as a foreign language.

18

II. BRITAIN: THE FOUR LANDS

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people in mid-2008, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller islands and islets. The island of Ireland lies to its west.

The entire island is territory of the sovereign state the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and most of the United Kingdom’s territory is in Great Britain. The term Great Britain is sometimes used inaccurately to refer to the United Kingdom as a whole. Most of England, Scotland, and Wales are on the island, as are their capital cities, London, Edinburgh, and Cardiff. Great Britain is made up of three countries; England, Scotland and Wales. They used to be separate countries, each with its own language and government. Great Britain is the largest island in Europe. Each country includes several small islands: the Isle of Wight, the Scilly Isles (England), Anglesey (Wales) and the islands groups of Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands (Scotland). The Channel Islands in the English Channel and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea are independent.

The Kingdom of Great Britain resulted from the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland on 1 May, 1707 under Queen Anne. It existed until 1801 when the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland were united. This resulted in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This in turn became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in 1922 with the secession of the Irish Free State.

“Great Britain” refers to the majority of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (UK). It refers to the largest island only, or to England, Scotland and Wales as a unit (though these three countries also include many smaller islands). It does not include Northern Ireland.

19

In 1975 the government affirmed that the term Britain, not Great Britain, could be used as a shortened form of the United Kingdom. British refer, however, to all citizens of the United Kingdom – including Welsh, Scottish, English, and Northern Irish.

The earliest known name of Great Britain is Albion from either the Latin albus meaning white (referring to the white cliffs of Dover, the first view of Britain from the continent) or the “island of the Albiones”, first mentioned in the Massaliote Periplus by Pytheas. The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Brittania or Brittānia, the land of the Britons. Brittania was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. England has existed as a unified entity since the 10th century; the union between England and Wales, begun in 1284 and was formalized in 1536 with an Act of Union; in another Act of Union in 1707, England and Scotland agreed to permanently join as Great Britain; the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was implemented in 1801, with the adoption of the name the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 formalized a partition of Ireland; six northern Irish counties remained part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland and the current name of the country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was adopted in 1927.

Stonehenge and other examples of prehistoric culture are all that remain of the earliest inhabitants of Britain. Celtic peoples followed. Roman invasions of the 1st century B.C. brought Britain into contact with continental Europe. When the Roman legions withdrew in the 5th century A.D seven large Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were established, and the original Britons were forced into Wales and Scotland. It was not until the 10th century that the country finally became united under the kings of Wessex. Following the death of Edward the Confessor (1066), a dispute about the succession arose, and William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England, defeating the Saxon king, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings (1066). The Norman Conquest introduced Norman French law and feudalism.

On 20 October 1604 King James (who had succeeded separately to the two thrones of England and Scotland) proclaimed himself as

20

‘King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland’, a title that continued to be used by many of his successors. However, England and Scotland each remained legally in existence as separate countries with their own parliaments until 1707, when an Act of Union joined both parliaments. That act used two different terms to describe the new all-island nation, a ‘United Kingdom’ and the ‘Kingdom of Great Britain’. However, the former term is regarded by many as having been a description of the union rather than its formal name at that stage. Most reference books therefore, describe the all-island kingdom that existed between 1707 and 1800 as the “Kingdom of Great Britain”.

In 1801, under a new Act of Union, this kingdom merged with the Kingdom of Ireland, over which the monarch of Great Britain had ruled. The new kingdom was called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties attained dominion status within the British Empire, forming a separate Irish Free State. The remaining truncated kingdom is named the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Four Lands England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Its

inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population, while its mainland territory occupies most of the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain. England is bordered by Scotland to the north, Wales to the west and the North Sea, Irish Sea, Celtic Sea, Bristol Channel and English Channel. The capital is London, the largest urban area in Great Britain, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by many measures.

England became a unified state in the year 927 and takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled there during the 5th and 6th centuries. It has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world being the place of origin of the English language, the Church of England, and English law, which forms the basis of the common law legal systems of countries around the world. In addition, England was the birth place of the Industrial Revolution, thus being the first country in the world to industrialize. It is home to the Royal Society, which laid the foundations of modern experimental science.

21

England has the world’s oldest parliamentary system, and consequently, other constitutional, governmental and legal innovations that stemmed from England have been widely adopted by other nations.

The Kingdom of England (including Wales) continued as a separate state until 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union resulted in political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1800, Great Britain was united with Ireland through another Act of Union and became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the Irish Free State was created, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act in 1927 officially established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which exists today.

England’s land area is 50,319 square miles (130,325 square kilometers), or slightly smaller than Louisiana in the United States.

Most of England consists of rolling hills, but it is more mountainous in the north with a chain of low mountains, the Pennines, dividing east and west. There is also an area of flat, low-lying marshland in the east, the Fens, much of which has been drained for agricultural use.

England has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round. Temperatures rarely fall below 23°F (-5°C) or rise above 86°F (30°C), although they can be quite variable. The prevailing wind is from the south-west, bringing mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean. It is driest in the east and warmest in the south, which is closest to the European mainland. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring.

England’s best-known river is the Thames, which flows through London. At 215 miles (346 km), it is the longest river in England.

The City of London is a business and commercial center, ranking alongside New York City as the leading center of global finance

22

The capital city of England is London, which is the largest city in Great Britain, and the largest city in the European Union by most measures. The ancient City of London still retains its tiny medieval boundaries; but the name “London” has long applied more generally to the whole metropolis which has grown up around it. An important settlement for around two millennia, London is today one of the world’s leading business, financial and cultural centers, and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the major global cities.

The City of Birmingham

Birmingham is the second largest, both in terms of the city itself and its urban conurbation. A number of other cities, mainly in central and northern England, are of substantial size and influence. These include: Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, and Hull.

Scotland (Gaelic: Alba) is a country that is part of the United

Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland consists of over 790 islands including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

23

The main land of Scotland comprises the northern third of the land mass of the island of Great Britain, which lies off the northwest coast of Continental Europe. The total area is 78,772 km2 (30,414 sq mi), comparable to the size of the Czech Republic, making Scotland the 117th largest country in the world. Scotland’s only land border is with England, and runs for 96 kilometers (60 mi) between the basin of the River Tweed on the east coast and the Solway Firth in the west. The Atlantic Ocean borders the west coast and the North Sea is to the east. The island of Ireland lies only 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the southwestern peninsula of Kintyre; Norway is 305 kilometers (190 mi) to the east and the Faroes, 270 kilometers (168 mi) to the north.

Loch Tummel in Perth and Kinross.

The territorial extent of Scotland is generally that established by the 1237 Treaty of York between Scotland and England and the 1266 Treaty of Perth between Scotland and Norway. Important exceptions include the Isle of Man, which having been lost to England in the 14th century is now a crown dependency outside of the United Kingdom; the island groups Orkney and Shetland, which were acquired from Norway in 1472; and Berwick-upon-Tweed, lost to England in 1482.

The geographical centre of Scotland lies a few miles from the village of Newtonmore in Badenoch. Rising to 1,344 meters (4,409 ft) above sea level, Scotland’s highest point is the summit of Ben Nevis, in Lochaber, while Scotland’s longest river, the River Tay, flows for a distance of 190 kilometers (118 mi).

24

Edinburgh, the country’s capital and second largest city, is one of Europe’s largest financial centers. Edinburgh was the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, which transformed Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city was once one of the world’s leading industrial cities and now lies at the centre of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union.

The population of Scotland in the 2001 census was 5,062,011. This has risen to 5,168,500 according to June 2008 estimates. This would make Scotland the 112th largest country by population if it were a sovereign state. Although Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland it is not the largest city. With a population of just over 584,000 this honor falls to Glasgow. Indeed, the Greater Glasgow conurbation, with a population of over 1.1 million, is home to over a fifth of Scotland’s population.

The Central Belt is where most of the main towns and cities are located. Glasgow is to the west, while Edinburgh and Dundee lie on the east coast. Scotland’s only major city outside the Central Belt is Aberdeen, on the east coast to the north. Apart from Aberdeen, the Highlands are sparsely populated, although the city of Inverness has experienced rapid growth in recent years. In general only the more accessible and larger islands retain human populations, and fewer than 90 are currently inhabited. The Southern Uplands are essentially rural in nature and dominated by agriculture and forestry. Because of housing problems in Glasgow and Edinburgh, five new towns were created between 1947 and 1966. They are East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Livingston, Cumbernauld, and Irvine.

25

Scotland has three officially recognized languages: English, Scots and Scottish Gaelic. Almost all Scots speak Scottish Standard English, and in 1996 the General Register Office for Scotland estimated that 30% of the population are fluent in Scots. Gaelic is mostly spoken in the Western Isles, where a large number of people still speak it; however, nationally its use is confined to just 1% of the population.

There are many more people with Scottish ancestry living abroad than the total population of Scotland. In the 2000 Census, 9.2 million Americans self-reported some kind of Scottish descent. It is estimated that there are more than 27 million descendants of the Scots-Irish migration now living in the U.S. In Canada, the Scottish-Canadian community accounts for 4.7 million people. About 20% of the original European settler population of New Zealand came from Scotland.

The Kingdom of Scotland was an independent sovereign state before 1 May 1707 when it entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain. This union resulted from the Treaty of Union agreed in 1706 and enacted by the twin Acts of Union passed by the Parliaments of both countries, despite widespread protest across Scotland. Scotland’s legal system continues to be separate from those of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and Scotland still constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in public and in private law. The continued independence of Scots law, the Scottish education system, and the Church of Scotland have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and Scottish national identity since the Union. Although Scotland is no longer a separate sovereign state, issues surrounding devolution and independence continue to be debated. After the creation of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999, the first ever pro-independence Scottish Government was elected in 2007 when the Scottish National Party formed a minority administration after talks of a coalition with other parties broke down.

In 1603, James VI King of Scots inherited the throne of the Kingdom of England, and became King James I of England, and left Edinburgh for London. With the exception of a short period under the Protectorate, Scotland remained a separate state, but there was considerable conflict between the crown and the Covenanters over the

26

form of church government. After the Glorious Revolution, the abolition of episcopacy and the overthrow of the Roman Catholic James VII by William and Mary, Scotland briefly threatened to select a different Protestant monarch from England. On 22 July 1706 the Treaty of Union was agreed between representatives of the Scots Parliament and the Parliament of England and the following year twin Acts of Union were passed by both parliaments to create the united Kingdom of Great Britain with effect from 1 May 1707.

The Scottish Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution made Scotland into an intellectual, commercial and industrial powerhouse. After World War II, Scotland experienced an industrial decline which was particularly severe. Only in recent decades has the country enjoyed something of a cultural and economic renaissance. Economic factors which have contributed to this recovery include a resurgent financial services industry, electronics manufacturing, (see Silicon Glen), and the North Sea oil and gas industry.

Scotland’s head of state is the monarch of the United Kingdom, currently Queen Elizabeth II (since 1952).

Bi-lingual road signs are becoming increasingly common throughout the Scottish Highlands

Although Scotland has a long military tradition that predates the Treaty of Union with England, its armed forces now form part of the British Armed Forces, with the notable exception of the Atholl Highlanders, Europe’s only legal private army. In 2006, the infantry regiments of the Scottish Division were amalgamated to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Other distinctively Scottish regiments in the British Army include the Scots Guards, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the Scottish Transport Regiment, a Territorial Army Regiment of the Royal Logistic Corps.

27

Three frontline Royal Air Force bases are also located in Scotland. These are RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Kinloss and RAF Leuchars, the last of which is the most northerly air defence fighter base in the United Kingdom.

A piper playing the Great Highland Bagpipe

Wales is located on a peninsula in central-west Great Britain. Its area is about 20,779 km2 (8,023 sq mi) – about the same size as Massachusetts, Israel, Slovenia or El Salvador and about a quarter of the area of Scotland. It is about 274 km (170 mi) north-south and 97 km (60 mi) east-west. Wales is bordered by England to the east and by sea in the other three directions: the Môr Hafren (Bristol Channel) to the south, Celtic Sea to the west, and the Irish Sea to the north. Altogether, Wales has over 1,200 km (746 mi) of coastline. There are several islands off the Welsh mainland, the largest being Ynys Môn (Anglesey) in the northwest.

The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the cities of Cardiff (Caerdydd), Swansea (Abertawe) and Newport (Casnewydd) and surrounding areas, with another significant population in the north-east around Wrexham (Wrecsam).

Much of Wales’s diverse landscape is mountainous, particularly in the north and central regions. The mountains were shaped during

28

the last ice age The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia (Eryri), and include Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), which, at 1,085 m (3,560 ft) is the highest peak in Wales. The 14 (or possibly 15) Welsh mountains over 3,000 feet (914 m) high are known collectively as the Welsh 3000s, and are located in a small area in the north-west. The Brecon Beacons (Bannau Brycheiniog) are in the south (highest point Pen-y-Fan 886 m/2,907 ft, and are joined by the Cambrian Mountains in Mid Wales, the latter name being given to the earliest geological period of the Paleozoic era, the Cambrian.

Wales has three National Parks: Snowdonia, Brecon Beacons and Pembrokeshire Coast. It also has four Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. These areas include Anglesey, the Clwydian Range, the Gower peninsula and the Wye Valley. The Gower peninsula was the first area in the whole of the United Kingdom to be designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in 1956.

Much of the coastline of South and West Wales is designated as Heritage Coast. The coastline of the Glamorgan Heritage Coast, the Gower peninsula, Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Ceredigion is particularly wild and impressive. The modern border between Wales and England was largely defined in the 16th century, based on medieval feudal boundaries.

Wales has a population estimated at three million and is officially bilingual, with both Welsh and English having equal status; the majority use English as their first language.

Once a Celtic land, and considered one of the Celtic nations today, a distinct Welsh national identity emerged in the early fifth century, after the Roman withdrawal from Britain. The 13th-century defeat of Llewelyn by Edward I completed the Anglo-Norman conquest of Wales and brought about centuries of English occupation. Wales was subsequently incorporated into England with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542, creating the legal entity known today as England and Wales. However, distinctive Welsh politics developed in the 19th century, and in 1881 the Welsh Sunday Closing Act became the first legislation applied exclusively to Wales. In 1955 Cardiff was proclaimed as national capital and in 1999 the National Assembly for Wales was created, which holds responsibility for a range of devolved matters.

29

The capital Cardiff is Wales's largest city with 317,500 people. For a period it was the biggest coal port in the world and, for a few years before World War One, handled a greater tonnage of cargo than either London or Liverpool. Two-thirds of the Welsh population live in South Wales, with another concentration in eastern North Wales. Many tourists have been drawn to Wales’s “wild... and picturesque” landscapes. From the late 19th century onwards, Wales acquired its popular image as the “land of song”, attributable in part to the revival of the eisteddfod tradition. Actors, singers and other artists are celebrated in Wales today, often achieving international success. Cardiff is the largest media centre in the UK outside of London.

Cymru Cymru is the native name for the country, while Cymro (singular)

and Cymry (plural) is the name for its people. This is likely derived from a (reconstructed) Brythonic word Combroges/Combrogos/ Combrogi meaning “compatriots”. The name competed for a long time in Welsh literature with the older name Brythoniaid (Britons/Brythons). Only after 1100 did the former become as common as the latter.

The Latin name for Wales is Cambria and an archaic English name is Cymric – both deriving from the Brythonic. The names Cumbria and Cumberland are also derived from the Brythonic, as these areas remained Brythonic-speaking much longer than the rest of England.

Nationalist Revival In the 20th century, Wales saw a revival in its national status.

Plaid Cymru was formed in 1925, seeking greater autonomy or independence from the rest of the UK. In 1955, the term England and Wales became common for describing the area to which English law applied, and Cardiff was proclaimed as capital city of Wales. The Welsh Language Society was formed in 1962, in response to fears that the language may soon die out.

Constitutionally, the United Kingdom is de jure a unitary state with one sovereign parliament and government in Westminster. Referenda held in Wales and Scotland in 1997 chose to establish a limited form of self-government in both countries. In Wales, the consequent process of devolution began with the Government of

30

Wales Act 1998, which created the National Assembly for Wales (Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru). Powers of the Secretary of State for Wales were transferred to the devolved government on 1 July 1999, granting the Assembly responsibility to decide how the Westminster government's budget for devolved areas is spent and administered. Devolved responsibilities include agriculture, economic development, education, health, housing, industry, local government, social services, tourism, transport, and the Welsh language. The National Assembly is not a sovereign authority and has no primary legislative powers, which the Westminster Government retains, but since the Government of Wales Act 2006 came into effect in 2007, the National Assembly can request powers to pass primary legislation as Assembly Measures on specific issues. The UK Parliament could, in theory, overrule or even abolish the National Assembly for Wales at any time.

The Assembly consists of 60 members, known as “Assembly Members (AM)”. Forty of the AMs are elected under the First Past the Post system, with the other 20 elected via the Additional Member System via regional lists in 5 different regions. The largest party elects the First Minister of Wales, who acts as the head of government. The Welsh Assembly Government is the executive arm, and the Assembly has delegated most of its powers to the Assembly Government. The new Assembly Building designed by Lord Rogers was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on St David’s Day (1 March) 2006.

The Welsh Language Act 1993 and the Government of Wales Act 1998 provide that the Welsh and English languages be treated on a basis of equality. However, even English has only de facto official status in the UK and this has led political groups like Plaid Cymru to question whether such legislation is sufficient to ensure the survival of the Welsh language. English is spoken by almost all people in Wales and is therefore the de facto main language. However, northern and western Wales retain many areas where Welsh is spoken as a first language by the majority of the population and English is learnt as a second language. 21.7% of the Welsh population is able to speak or read Welsh to some degree (based on the 2001 census), although only 16% claim to be able to speak, read and write it, which may be related to the stark differences between colloquial and literary Welsh. According to a

31

language survey conducted in 2004, a larger proportion than 21.7% claim to have some knowledge of the language. Today there are very few truly monoglot Welsh speakers, other than small children, but individuals still exist who may be considered less than fluent in English and rarely speak it. There were still many monoglots as recently as the middle of the 20th century. Road signs in Wales are generally in both English and Welsh; where place names differ in the two languages, both versions are used (e.g. “Cardiff” and “Caerdydd”), the decision as to which is placed first being that of the local authority.

During the 20th century a number of small communities of speakers of languages other than English or Welsh, such as Bengali or Cantonese, have established themselves in Wales as a result of immigration. This phenomenon is almost exclusive to urban Wales. The Italian Government funds the teaching of Italian to Welsh residents of Italian ancestry. These other languages do not have legal equality with English and Welsh, although public services may produce information leaflets in minority ethnic languages where there is a specific need, as happens elsewhere in the United.

Northern Ireland is a country that is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west. At the time of the 2001 UK Census, its population was 1,685,000, constituting between a quarter and a third of the island’s total population and about 3% of the population of the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland consists of six of the traditional nine counties of the historic Irish province of Ulster. It was created as a distinct subdivision of the United Kingdom on 3 May 1921 under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, though its constitutional roots lie in the 1800 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. For over 50 years it had its own devolved government and parliament. These institutions were suspended in 1972 and abolished in 1973. Repeated attempts to restore self-government finally resulted in the establishment of the present-day Northern Ireland Executive and Northern Ireland Assembly. Northern Ireland was for many years the site of a violent and bitter ethno-political conflict – The Troubles – between those claiming to represent nationalists, who are predominantly Roman Catholic, and

32

those claiming to represent unionists, who are predominantly Protestant. Unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, while nationalists wish it to be politically united with the rest of Ireland. Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, most of the paramilitary groups involved in the Troubles have ceased their armed campaigns. The issue of identity in Northern Ireland is a complicated one. In general, Unionists consider themselves British and Nationalists see themselves as Irish, though these identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The all-island Kingdom of Ireland (1541-1801) merged into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 under the terms of the Act of Union, under which the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain merged under a government and parliament based in London. In the early 20th century, Unionists led by Sir Edward Carson opposed the introduction of Home Rule in Ireland. Unionists were in a minority on the island of Ireland as a whole, but were a majority in the northern province of Ulster. The six counties, containing an overall unionist majority, would later form Northern Ireland.

The island of Ireland was partitioned in 1921 under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Six of the nine Ulster counties in the north-east formed Northern Ireland and the remaining three counties (including County Donegal, despite it having a large Protestant minority as well as it being the most northern county in all of Ireland) joined those of Leinster, Munster and Connacht to form Southern Ireland. Whilst Southern Ireland had only a brief existence between 1921 and 1922, a period dominated by the Anglo-Irish War and its aftermath, Northern Ireland was to continue on.

The Ireland Act of 1949 gave the first legal guarantee to the Parliament and Government that Northern Ireland would not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without consent of the majority of its citizens.

The Troubles, starting in the late 1960s, consisted of about thirty years of recurring acts of intense violence between elements of Northern Ireland’s nationalist community (principally Roman Catholic) and unionist community (principally Protestant) during which 3,254 people were killed. The conflict was caused by the disputed status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and the discrimination against the nationalist minority by the dominant unionist majority. The violence was characterized by the armed campaigns of paramilitary groups, including

33

the Provisional IRA campaign of 1969-1997 which was aimed at the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and the creation of a new “all-Ireland”, “thirty-two county” Irish Republic.

The Troubles were brought to an uneasy end by a peace process which included the declaration of ceasefires by most paramilitary organizations and the complete decommissioning of their weapons, the reform of the police, and the corresponding withdrawal of army troops from the streets and from sensitive border as agreed by the signatories to the Belfast Agreement. This reiterated the long-held British position, which had never before been fully acknowledged by successive Irish governments, that Northern Ireland will remain within the United Kingdom until a majority votes otherwise.

As part of the United Kingdom, people from Northern Ireland are British citizens. They are also entitled to Irish citizenship by birth which is covered in the 1998 Belfast Agreement between the British and Irish governments, which, provides that: it is the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly [the two governments] confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.

As a result of the Agreement, the Constitution of Ireland was amended so that people born in Northern Ireland are entitled to be Irish citizens on the same basis as people from any other part of the island of Ireland.

This does not however, account for the complex identities within Northern Ireland, given that many of the population regard themselves as “Ulster” or “Northern Irish”, either primarily, or as a secondary identity. A 2008 survey found that 57% of Protestants described themselves as British, while 32% identified as Northern Irish, 6% as Ulster and 4% as Irish. Compared to the same survey carried out in 1998 this shows a fall in the percentage of Protestants identifying as British and Ulster, and a rise in those identifying as Northern Irish. The 2008 survey found that 61% of Catholics described themselves as Irish, with 25% identifying as Northern Irish, 8% as British and 1% as Ulster. These figures were largely unchanged from the 1998 results.

34

The Union Flag (also known as the Union Jack) represents the United Kingdom.

This is the only flag with official status in Northern Ireland

Former Governmental Coat of Arms of Northern Ireland 1925-72

Belfast City Hall

The dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland shows influence from Scotland, with the use of such Scots words as wee for ‘little’ and aye for ‘yes’. The Irish language (Gaeilge) is the native language of the whole island of Ireland. It was spoken predominantly throughout what is now Northern Ireland before the settlement of Protestants from Great Britain in the 17th century. Most placenames throughout Northern Ireland are anglicized versions of their Gaelic originals. These Gaelic placenames include thousands of lanes, roads, townlands, towns, villages and all of its modern cities. In Northern Ireland the Irish language has long been associated with Irish nationalism. The language was seen as a common heritage and indeed the object of affection by many prominent 19th century Protestant republicans and Protestant unionists. There are three main dialects in

35

the island of Ireland – Ulster, Munster and Connacht. Speakers of each dialect often find others difficult to understand. Speakers in Northern Ireland speak the Ulster dialect.

Other Languages There are an increasing number of ethnic minorities in Northern

Ireland. Chinese and Urdu are spoken by Northern Ireland’s Asian communities; though the Chinese community is often referred to as the “third largest” community in Northern Ireland, it is tiny by international standards. Since the accession of new member states to the European Union in 2004, Central and Eastern European languages, particularly Polish, are becoming increasingly common.

36

III. HISTORY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

The British Isles have a rich history going back thousands of years.

History is an interweaving of events and people, and it’s not just about kings and queens, it’s about ordinary people and how events influenced them, and on occasions how they influenced events.

Birth of the United Kingdom 410 to 1066 Anglo Saxon Britain Viking raids The breakdown of Roman law and civilization was fairly swift

after the Roman army departed in 410 AD. To counter the raids from continental pirates, Vikings, Picts and Scots towns would bring in mercenaries from Europe to defend them from attack. These mercenary soldiers were Angles and Saxons from northern Germany.

The deal was that the mercenaries brought their families with them, and got paid with land which they could farm. Eventually the Anglo Saxon mercenaries realized that they were stronger than their employers and appear to have taken over the running of areas themselves.

The new Anglo Saxon invaders slowly colonized northwards and westwards, pushing the native Celts to the fringes of Britain. Roman Britain was replaced by Anglo Saxon Britain, with the Celtic peoples remaining in Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. The Anglo Saxon areas eventually combined into kingdoms, and by 850 AD the country had three competing kingdoms.

Next came another wave of Viking attacks. The net effect was that the English king, Ethelred the Unready, found his kingdom under attack on all coasts by Norsemen. On Ethelred's death in 1016, the Viking leader Cnut was effectively ruling England. But on Cnut's death, the country collapsed into a number of competing Earldoms under a weak king, Edward the Confessor.

37

There were two major influences on English life during this whole period of English history, at opposite ends of the aggression spectrum. One was the coming of Christianity to Britain, brought by Irish monks. The other was the Viking raider. And it was the Viking raider that paradoxically allowed William to conquer Britain.

When Edward the Confessor died, the Vikings saw a chance to regain a foothold in Britain, and landed an army in Yorkshire in 1066. Harold marched north to take on the Vikings under Harald of Norway and Tostig (King Harold’s brother).He defeated the Norsemen near York, but while celebrating his victory, learnt that William of Normandy had landed in southern England.

Within 13 days he had marched his army some 240 miles from Yorkshire to Sussex, where the Normans were camped near Hastings. The ensuing Battle of Hastings was won by the Normans who were fresh, and had better archers and cavalry. Harold died with an arrow through his eye. William was crowned William I in London on Christmas Day 1066.

The Norman kings consolidate their hold on Britain The Tower of London was built with the express aim of showing

the inhabitants of London who was in charge now. William continued with a demonic round of castle building across the whole country. The uniqueness of the Norman conquest in British history is that not only did the ruler change, but also the whole of the ruling class changes, and there was even a new language. The English nobility lost their lands, and the new landowners built castles like Warwick and Windsor that survive to this day. By the time William died in 1087 around 100 major castles had been built.

Henry II is known for his ordering the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in Canterbury Cathedral – stabbed at the high alter in 1170.

38

Wars in France, revolt in England, Civil War in England After Henry II, English in started running into problems, either

with the Barons, the people or from pretenders to the throne. King John was defeated by the barons and only kept the throne by

signing the Magna Charta, which stated that the king was not above the law, that he only ruled by the will of the people, and that if he broke his part of the contract, then the people had the right to overthrow the king. The whole episode amounted to a civil war, and was probably not as cozy as the painting on the left depicts.

Between 1370 and 1413, Kings were dethroned; Peasants revolted and the House of Lancaster seized the throne. Henry V’s reign was brief and colourful (1413 to 22).

The consequence of the loss of the French territories was that the Royal House of Lancaster became discredited. A series of coups and counter-coups, intrigue and murder gripped the throne. A litany of kings came and went between the battle of St Albans in 1455 and the battle of Bosworth in 1485. The result was a new royal house – the Tudors. Henry VII seized the throne on winning the battle of Bosworth and England was to enter a new period of history.

The Tudors – Henry VII, Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth Henry VIII, who came to the throne in 1509, was a man who left

his stamp on history. His six marriages in search of a male heir led to two daughters (Mary and Elizabeth) and a son Edward (who died young). Henry’s need for a divorce led to a row with the pope who refused to grant Henry one. Henry countered by dissolving the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, and setting up the Church of England.

A Church of England with Henry at the head could then allow Henry to divorce his wife. He divorced the two European wives, Anne of Cleeves and Catherine of Aragon. Henry was a tyrant and a despot. Completely ruthless he let nothing and nobody get in his way. Cardinal Woolsey was banished, Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More were executed.

One other bonus for Henry from his split with Rome was that he gained control of the monasteries – the monastic buildings and land were sold off after the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538. Many of the buildings fell into decay, and they lost their farmlands for ever.

39

Henry’s elder daughter Mary was a Catholic – and a militant Catholic at that. Her efforts as queen to restore Catholicism to England made her the most unpopular queen in British history, and the means that she used to pursue her aims earned her the nickname “bloody Mary”. There were 283 Protestant martyrs burnt at the stake in her reign. Among the martyrs were Cranmer (Archbishop of Canterbury), Ridley (Bishop of London) and Latimer (a leading preacher).

A loveless marriage to the King of Spain produced no children. So when Mary died she was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth.

Elizabeth’s reign brought in one of the most glorious eras of British history. Exploration, colonization, victory in war, and growing world importance are some of her accomplishments. The Arts flourished, this was the age of Shakespeare and Bacon. But as with her sister, plots against the queen were mounted – Mary Queen of Scots, was finally executed in 1587 – the Earl of Essex, a former favourite, was executed for leading a revolt in 1601. And the wars against Spain and in Ireland were expensive – she was £400,000 in debt when she died.

The Spanish wars had crippled the English exchequer, inflation soared, and in 1601 Elizabeth had to go to Parliament to get more money. Sensing hostility, as Parliament was angry about the privileges she had granted her favourites, she gave way graciously, and gave a “Golden Speech” which became in later years a model for the relationship between monarch and the nation – with obligations on both sides.

A few months later came news of the defeat of the long running battle against the rebels in Ireland. But by now Elizabeth’s health had declined, and she was dying. The choice of successor was not straightforward, as she was the last of Henry VIII’s children and none of them had any children themselves. Elizabeth delayed making her choice of successor until she was on her death bed. Her successor would be James Stuart, King of Scotland, and son of Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth had executed as a traitor.

40

James I, Charles I and the descent into Civil War, the King executed, Cromwell rules

James Stuart was a Scottish Catholic who believed in the “Divine Right” to rule as he pleased. This brought him into conflict with the English Parliament. The failed Catholic Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 led to anti catholic riots. The failure of both James and his son Charles I to understand the English tradition of parliamentary liberty led eventually to civil war.

James died unlamented in 1625. Charles I immediately came in to conflict with Parliament. He tried to rule without summoning parliament for 11 years, but eventually ran out of money, and summoned Parliament in 1640.

Parliament refused him money, and the country split between supporters of the king and supporters of parliament The first major Engagement of the Civil War was at Edgehill in the Cotswolds on 1642. Indecision among the Royalists and the moulding of the New Model army by the parliamentarians led to Parliament gaining the upper hand, and by 1645 Cromwell won the decisive Battle of Naseby. Charles was captured and put on trial for treason in 1649. He refused to recognise the court, but was regardless found guilty. 59 republicans signed the death warrant. Oliver Cromwell and the army emerged as the power in the land. Cromwell dissolved parliament with the words Depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go! It was the start of England’s only period of dictatorship Cromwell was unable to find anything to replace the monarchy. When he died in 1658 his son Richard succeeded him, but he was not a man to rule Britain, and in 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne his father had died for.

Restoration Charles II, James II, William III and Anne Cromwell’s failure to put in place a workable alternative to the

monarchy resulted in the country bringing back from exile the monarchy in the form of Charles II, son of the beheaded Charles I.

Soon after Charles succession Britain had two major catastrophes – the Plague in 1665: 70,000 died in London alone and the Great Fire of London the following year.

41

However it was the succession that concerned the country. Charles produced no legitimate heirs, and it was his Catholic brother James II who succeeded him in 1685. Britain had briefly been republic, but it was now back to Protestant and Catholic kings.

James II reign proved disastrous, he antagonized the government by suspending the anti Catholic laws, then arresting 6 bishops. Leading politicians turned to James II Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange and offered them the throne. William landed with an army. James fled to Ireland, where he was eventually defeated in battle by William.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on 1 May 1707, as a result of the political union of the Kingdom of England (which included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland. The terms of the union had been agreed in the Treaty of Union that was negotiated the previous year and then ratified by the parliaments of Scotland and England each approving Acts of Union.

Though previously separate states, England and Scotland had shared monarchs since 1603 when James VI of Scotland become James I of England on the death of the childless Elizabeth I, an event known as the Union of the Crowns. Queen Anne, (reigned 1702-14), who had favored deeper political integration between the two kingdoms, became the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The union was valuable from a security standpoint, since it meant that the European powers could no longer use Scotland for backdoor invasions of England.

Though now a united kingdom, certain aspects of the former independent kingdoms remained separate in line with the terms in the Treaty of Union. Scottish and English law remained separate, as did the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Anglican Church of England, as well as the separate systems of education.

The House of Hanover ruled Britain 1714-1815 Queen Anne died in 1714, and the Elector of Hanover, George

Louis, became king as George I. There were a lot of better qualified people available to be king of England – unfortunately most of them were Catholic. George I was a German who did not speak a word of

42

English, but was Protestant. So started the rule of the House of Hanover, under whom Britain achieved wealth and peace over the next century Parliament became more powerful, and the leading politician was Walpole who was prime minister until 1742. He avoided the expense of war, and Britain prospered. During his reign, the rising power of Prussia led to two major conflicts in Europe, the War of the Austrian Succession from 1740-1748, and the Seven Years War from 1756-1763. Both spilled over into the American colonies, and when the latter ended, Britain gained all of Canada and France was destroyed as a colonial power in North America.

Although British sea power proved decisive in the wars, the French navy had become a serious challenger by the middle of the 18th century and an invasion of Britain nearly took place in 1759. After the death of George II in 1760, his grandson became king as George III at the age of 22. Unlike his two predecessors, he was born in Britain and English was his first language.The coming of George III to the throne brought the first British born king for 50 years and a king who was to reign for the next 50 years. They were exciting times, marred only by the loss of the American Colonies. Britain won new territories in Canada and India, but lost the oldest settlement of all, with the declaration of independence by the American colonies in 1776 and the final surrender at Yorktown in 1781 The loss of the American colonies brought about changes in Britain with the appointment of Pitt the Younger as prime minister, whose legislative programme was to bring about the end of royal power.

At home the industrial revolution was in full swing. Coal fires lit the night sky as they powered steam engines in factories. But in Europe, French power was manifesting itself following the French revolution in 1789. Nelson's victory at Trafalgar ensured the Britain ruled the seas, but French troops controlled Europe.

British Empire The Seven Years’ War, which began in 1756, was the first war

waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France’s future as a colonial power there was

43

effectively ended with the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years War therefore left Britain as the world’s dominant colonial power.

The loss of the Thirteen Colonies, at the time Britain’s most populous colonies, marked the transition between the first and second empires, in which Britain shifted its attention to Asia, the Pacific and later to Africa. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 confirmed the view that political control was not necessary for economic success.

On 22 August 1770, James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook’s botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.

At the threshold to the 19th century, Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations.

The British government had somewhat mixed reactions to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, and when war broke out on the Continent in 1792, it initially remained neutral. But the following January, Louis XVI was beheaded. This combined with a threatened invasion of the Netherlands by France spurred Britain to declare war. For the next 23 years, the two nations were at war except for a short period in 1802-1803. Britain alone among the nations of Europe never submitted to or formed an alliance with France. Throughout the 1790s, the British repeatedly defeated the navies of France and its allies, but were unable to perform any significant land operations. An Anglo-Russian invasion of the Netherlands in 1799 accomplished little except the capture of the Dutch fleet.

It was not only Britain’s position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened invasion of Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun.

44

19th century The second stage in the development of the United Kingdom took

effect on 1 January 1801, when the Kingdom of Great Britain merged with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

The legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland was completed under the Act of Union 1800, changing the country’s name to United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Napoleonic wars During the War of the Second Coalition (1799-1801), Britain

occupied most of the French and Dutch colonies (the Netherlands had been a satellite of France since 1796), but tropical diseases claimed the lives of over 40,000 troops. When the Treaty of Amiens ended the war, Britain was forced to return most of the colonies. The peace settlement was in effect only a cease fire, and Napoleon continued to provoke the British by attempting a trade embargo on the country and by occupying the German city of Hanover (a fief of the British crown). In May 1803, war was declared again. Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain failed due to the inferiority of his navy, and in 1805, Lord Nelson’s fleet decisively defeated the French and Spanish at Trafalgar, which was the last significant naval action of the Napoleonic wars.

United Kingdom possessed the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade to its processions from its rapidly new expanding Empire. That sufficed to ensure that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace or threaten British colonies outside the continent thanks to Britain’s naval supremacy.

The Spanish uprising in 1808 at last permitted Britain to gain a foothold on the Continent. The Duke of Wellington and his army of British and Portuguese gradually pushed the French out of Spain and in early 1814, as Napoleon was being driven back in the east by the Prussians, Austrians, and Russians, Wellington invaded southern France. After Napoleon’s surrender and exile to the island of Elba, peace appeared to have returned, but when he escaped back into France in 1815, the British and their allies had to fight him again. The armies of Wellington and Von Blucher defeated Napoleon once and for all at Waterloo.

45

Victorian Era The Victorian era of the United Kingdom is a term commonly

used to refer to the period of Queen Victoria’s rule between 1837 and 1901 which signified the height of the British Industrial Revolution and the apex of the British Empire.

Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars a very different country than it had been in 1793. As industrialization progressed, society changed, becoming more urban and less rural.

The exhaustion of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars kept any major conflicts from occurring for over three decades. Prussia, Austria, and Russia, as absolute monarchies, were committed to a policy of stamping out liberalism and revolution in Europe wherever it might occur, but Britain declined to participate in this, instead intervening in Portugal in 1826 to defend a constitutional government there and recognizing the independence of Spain’s American colonies in 1824. The British also intervened in 1827 on the side of the Greeks, who had been waging a war of independence against the Ottoman Empire since 1824.

William IV succeeded his brother in 1830 and ruled for seven years. When he died in 1837, his niece Victoria became queen. Her long reign would see Britain reach the zenith of its economic and political power. Exciting new technologies such as steam ships, railroads, photography, and telegraphs appeared, making the world much faster-paced. Britain again remained mostly inactive in Continental politics, and it was not affected by the wave of revolutions in 1848. The Great London Exhibition of 1851 clearly demonstrated the country’s preeminence in the world.

Empire expands In 1867, Britain united most of its North American colonies as the

Dominion of Canada, giving it self-government and responsibility for its own defence, although Canada did not have an independent foreign policy until the 1920s. Several of the colonies briefly refused to join the Dominion despite pressure from both Canada and Britain; Newfoundland held out until 1949.

The second half of the 19th century saw a huge expansion of Britain’s colonial empire in Asia and Africa. In the latter continent, there was talk of the Union Jack flying from “Cairo to Cape Town”,

46

which only became a reality at the end of World War I. Having possessions on six continents, Britain had to defend all of its empire with a volunteer army, for it was the only power in Europe to have no conscription.

Ever since Britain had taken control of South Africa from the Netherlands in the Napoleonic Wars, it had run afoul of the Dutch settlers there, which led to the Boer (farmer in the Afrikaner language) War in 1899-1902, when the British attempted to consolidate all the local republics into a single colony. The Boers waged a guerilla war, which gave the British regulars a difficult fight, although weight of numbers, superior equipment, and often brutal tactics eventually brought about victory. The war had been costly in human life, and was widely criticized in Europe, the French being among the loudest opponents of Britain’s war effort. The Boer republics were thus unified, and in 1910 gave way to the self-governing Union of South Africa.

20th century Queen Victoria died in 1901 and her son Edward VII became king,

inaugurating the Edwardian Era, which was characterized by great and ostentatious displays of wealth in contrast to the somber Victorian Era. With the event of the 20th century, things such as motion pictures, automobiles, and airplanes were coming into use. The new century was characterized by a feeling of great optimism. Edward died in 1910, to be succeeded by George V. The Edwardian Era barely lasted longer than its namesake, for it all came crashing down in the summer of 1914, just as Europe was at the zenith of its power in the world.

World War I In June 1914, the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand was

assassinated by a Serbian nationalist, leading to war between those two countries. The system of alliances caused a local conflict to engulf the entire continent. Great Britain was part of the Triple Entente with France and Russia while the German Empire, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, so-called Central Powers, were allied.

Britain did not enter at first, but in August the Germans invaded Belgium, and as Britain was still bound by an 1839 treaty to protect that country, it declared war on Germany and its allies. The British and French launched repeated assaults on the German trench lines in 1915-1916, which killed and wounded hundreds of thousands, but failed to

47

accomplish anything significant. By 1916, with few still willing to volunteer for the army, Britain had to introduce conscription for the first time. The navy continued to dominate the seas, fighting the German fleet to a draw in the great 1916 Battle of Jutland. But a sensational defeat inflicted on a British squadron off the coast of South America by the Germans in November 1914 marked the first time since the War of 1812 that Britain had lost a naval engagement outright.

World War II and rebuilding The United Kingdom, along with the British Empire’s crown

colonies, especially British India, declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, after the German invasion of Poland. Hostilities with Japan began in 1941, after it attacked British colonies in Asia. The Axis powers were defeated by the Allies in 1945.

The UK at the time was poor, relying heavily on loans from the United States of America (which were finally paid off in February 2007) to rebuild its damaged infrastructure. Rationing and conscription dragged on into the post war years, and the country suffered one of the worst winters on record. Nevertheless, morale was boosted by events such as the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and the Festival of Britain.

As the 1950s wore on, the UK had lost its place as a superpower and could no longer maintain its large Empire. This led to decolonization and a withdrawal from almost all of its colonies by 1970.

From Empire to Commonwealth Between 1867 and 1910, the UK had granted Australia, Canada,

and New Zealand “Dominion” status (near complete autonomy within the Empire). They became charter members of the British Commonwealth of Nations (known as the Commonwealth of Nations since 1949), an informal but closely-knit association that succeeded the British Empire. Beginning with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the remainder of the British Empire was almost completely dismantled. Today, most of Britain's former colonies belong to the Commonwealth, almost all of them as independent members. There are, however, 13 former British colonies, including Bermuda, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, and others, which have elected to continue their political links with London and are known as British Overseas Territories.

48

IV. THE POLITICAL BRITISH SYSTEM

The United Kingdom is a Constitutional monarchy. That means that the sovereign reigns but does not rule the country. There always has been an English monarchy except for a short period of time between 1649 and 1660 when England became a republic under the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell.

The monarchy is based on: – hereditary principle According to the Act of Settlement of 1700-only Protestant

descendants of Princess Sophia, granddaughter of James I of England, may succeed to the throne.

The monarch is formally: head of state, head of the executive, head of the judiciary, head of the legislature, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, supreme governor of the Church of England and head of the Commonwealth The king or the queen is politically neutral: acts only on the advice of political ministers; cannot make laws, impose taxes, spend public money, act unilaterally; performs executive and legislative duties like the opening and dissolving of Parliament, signing bills, holding of audiences with the Prime Minister, carrying out of international duties as head of state.

The official duties of the monarch are numerous: the Sovereign summons, prorogues and dissolves Parliament and formally appoints the officials like: Government ministers, judges, officers in the armed forces, governors, British ambassadors, high commissioners and bishops of the Church of England as well as the Prime Minister. The Monarch must also give Royal Assent to bills passed by Parliament, although if assent were refused a constitutional crisis and the abolition of monarchy would almost certainly result.

The Parliament is the most important authority in Britain It first met in the 13th century. The term was officially used in 1236-to describe the assembly of barons and representatives from the towns and counties of England – summoned by the King if extraordinary taxation was required.

49

By the 15th century, Parliament had acquired the right to make laws. Parliament is the legislature and the supreme authority. The executive consists of:

– The Government: the Cabinet and other ministers responsible for national policies.

– government departments responsible for national administration – local authorities responsible for local services. – Public corporation responsible for operating particular

nationalized industries or other bodies subject to ministerial contro. The judiciary determines common law and interprets statutes, and

is independent both of the legislature and the executive. Parliament consists of the Monarch, the House of Lords and the

House of Commons. The House of Lords, currently comprising 750 peers, consists of

the following members: – The Lords Spiritual: the Archbishops of Canterbury and York

and 24 senior bishops of the Church of England. – The Lords Temporal:

a) all hereditary peers and peeresses – those for whom the title of Lord or Lady passes from one generation to the next in strict succession-(limited to 92 in 1999);

b) all life peers and peeresses – those peers that are appointed by the Monarch for the duration of their life , usually in recognition of distinguished service in public life, but whose descendants do not benefit from the title – (about 570);

c) the Law Lords or the Lords of Appeal –senior judges who are created life peers to assist the House of Lords in its judicial duties –it is the highest court of appeal in the UK.

– there are about 113 women entitled to sit in the House of Lords (including Mrs. Margaret Thatcher –who was made a Baroness after resigning as prime minister).

– the house is presided over by the Lord Chancellor. Members of the House of Lords lose the right to vote into

parliamentary elections or to stand as a candidate in such elections.

50

However they may serve as ministers of a Government and a certain number of ministers in the House of Lords is necessary to promote the policies of the Government there. The Lord Chancellor (who is also a Cabinet minister and head of the judiciary) presides over the House, seated on the Woolsack, a wide red seat stuffed with wool symbolizing England’s prosperous wool trade during the Middle Ages.

The house of Lords has no real power but acts as an advisory council for the House of Commons. The Lords can suggest amendments to a bill proposed by the Commons, but after two rejections they are obliged to accept it.

● a Bill is a proposal for a new law, or a proposal to change an existing law that is presented for debate before Parliament;

● Bills are introduced in either the House of Commons or House of Lords for examination, discussion and amendment;

● when both Houses have agreed on the content of a Bill it is then presented to the reigning monarch for approval (known as Royal Assent);

● once Royal Assent is given a Bill becomes an Act of Parliament and is law;

● different types of Bills can be introduced by: the government, individual MPs or Lords or private individuals or organizations;

● there are three different types of Bill: Public, Private and Hybrid Bills [these mix the characteristics of Public and Private Bills;

● the changes to the law proposed by a Hybrid Bill would affect the general public but would also have a significant impact for specific individuals or groups [The Bills passed concerning the construction of the Channel Tunnel are examples of Hybrid Bills];

● there is also another kind of Public Bill called Private Members’ Bills [they are Public Bills introduced by MPs and Lords who aren’t government ministers];

● the Lords work in Parliament’s second chamber – the House of Lords – and complement and operate alongside the business of the House of Commons. It is one of the busiest second chambers in the world;

● the expertise of its Members and flexibility to scrutinize an issue in depth means the Lords makes a significant contribution to Parliament’s work;

51

● the UK public does not elect Members of the Lords. Making laws ● making laws takes up the bulk of the House of Lords time; ● Its Members are involved throughout the process of proposing,

revising and amending legislation; ● some Bills introduced by the Government begin in the Lords,

to spread the workload between the two Houses. Judicial work ● the House of Lords is the highest court in the land: the supreme

court of appeal a group of full-time judges known as Law Lords carries out this judicial work.

Checking the work of government ● Lords check the work of the Government by questioning and

debating decisions made by ministers and government departments. Specialist committees ● there are permanent committees investigating work relating to

Europe, science and technology, economics and the constitution; ● occasionally one-off committees are set up to deal with issues

outside these areas; ● an Act of Parliament creates a new law or changes an existing

law. Putting the Act into force ● an Act may come into force immediately, on a specific starting

date, or in stages; ● the practical implementation of an Act is the responsibility of

the appropriate government department, not Parliament [for example, laws relating to transport issues would come under the administration of the Department for Transport];

● Parliament or its committees may investigate how the government implements the Act and would consider any future Bills that amended or replaced it.

Changes to Acts ● future changes to the law happen through the passing of

another Act or delegated legislation; ● an Act can also be repealed so that its provisions no longer

apply;

52

● Parliamentary committees examine UK laws and recommend the removal of out of date legislation.

Text of Acts as passed ● texts of Acts of Parliament as originally passed by Parliament

since 1988 are available on the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) website;

● the Parliamentary Archives has copies of original Acts from 1497.

The House of Commons is an assembly of 651 Members of Parliament, or MPs, elected by universal adult suffrage. The House is presided by the Speaker, an office which has been in continuous existence since 1377. The Speaker is responsible for relations with the crown, the House of Lords and other authorities as well as keeping order in debates with strict impartiality. The Speaker is elected by the House itself but cannot vote or make speakers.

● the Government party sits on the Speaker’s right; ● the members of opposition sit on his left; ● all members of the House of Commons are paid a salary

(unlike the members of the House of Lords are not paid salaries but may claim allowances based on attendance);

● if every MP turned up at the House of Commons at the same time there wouldn’t be enough seats for all of them to sit down!

The Parliamentary System ● general elections are by secret ballot; ● voting is not compulsory in Britain; ● British, Commonwealth and Irish Republic citizens may all

vote provided: – they are residents in Britain – aged 18 or over – registered in a constituency – not subject to disqualifications (certain mentally, ill

patients; persons convicted of corrupt or illegal election practices)

Each political party puts up one candidate for each constituency /the one who wins the most votes is elected MP for that area. This system is known as the simple majority or first past the post.

53

The Political Parties ● There are few political parties, main ones being the

Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Among other minor parties we mention: Green Party, Scottish

National Party, Plaid Cymru (the Welsh National Party), the Protestant Northern Irish parties, Sinn Fein (the Catholic Northern Irish Party).

The Conservative Party mainly represents the middle and upper classes [a sizeable percentage of skilled and unskilled workers have always voted Conservatives] particularly strong in southern England while the Labour Party traditionally gathered its support from the Trade Unions, the working class and some middle class backing (intellectuals and academics) with its electoral strongholds: south Wales, Scotland and the Midlands and industrial cities of Northern England.

The party system ● nearly all MPs represent political parties; ● the party with the most MPs after a general election usually

forms the Government; ● the next largest party becomes the official Opposition; ● if an MP does not have a political party, they are known as an

'Independent‘. Members of the House of Lords are organized on a party basis in

much the same way as the House of Commons but with important differences: Members of the Lords do not represent constituencies and many are not members of a political party.

● Lords who do not support one of the three main parties are known as Crossbenchers or Independent Peers;

● there is also a small number who are not affiliated to any of the main groups;

● MPs from the same party tend to sit together in the House of Commons Chamber. Because the Chamber is a rectangular shape, the Government and the Opposition can face each other. The Government sits on the benches to the right of the Speaker. The official Opposition and MPs from other parties sit on the benches to the left of the Speaker.

Frontbenchers and Backbenchers ● in both the Commons and the Lords, Government ministers and

Opposition shadow ministers sit on the front benches and are known as ‘frontbenchers’;

54

● MPs and Members of the Lords who do not hold ministerial positions sit towards the back of the Chamber and are known as ‘backbenchers’.

Independent MPs and Crossbench and Independent Lords ● MPs and Members of the Lords do not have to belong to a

political party; ● Instead, MPs can sit as Independents; ● Lords can sit as Crossbenchers or Independents. Crossing the Floor ● members of either the House of Commons or House of Lords

can change political party at any time - known as ‘crossing the floor’; ● the term comes from the fact that, traditionally, Members of

Parliament from opposing parties sit on opposite sides of the Chamber; ● therefore, a Member who changes party usually has to cross the

floor of the House to sit on the other side of the Chamber; ● the term is used to signify the changing of allegiance. The Prime Minister ● the leader of the party who wins the elections is made Prime

Minister; ● his first job: to choose his cabinet consisting of the most

important ministers in the government. About 100 members of his party in both Houses are appointed ministers and other officials. At the same time the Opposition forms a ‘shadow’ cabinet with corresponding shadow ministers, who try to make things as difficult as possible for the Government spokespeople. The ministers may be questioned and held accountable for government actions and decisions.

The office of prime minister has become like an all-powerful presidency.

A greater emphasis today is on prime ministerial government rather than the traditional constitutional notions of Cabinet government. Usually the Prime Minister takes policy decisions with the agreement of the Cabinet.

Generally the maximum duration of a Parliament is 5 years, although Prime Ministers have the faculty to dissolve Parliament and call a General Election when they wish. If an MP resigns or dies there is a by-election-that is, an election in the relevant constituency only.

55

V. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – THE NEW LANDS

The United States of America is a federal republic made up of fifty states and the District of Columbia. Its 9,529,063 square kilometers – nearly forty times the size of the United Kingdom – make it the fourth largest country in the world.

In the east it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and in the west by the Pacific Ocean; approximately 4,500 km of immensely varied land separate the east coast from the west coast. If you travel from east to west you cross no less than four time zones: Eastern Time (New York City), Central Time (Chicago), Mountain Time (Denver) and Pacific Time (Los Angeles). Each zone is an hour apart, so when it is 6pm in New York it is only 3 pm in Los Angeles.

In the north the USA borders Canada and in the south it borders Mexico.

Forty-eight states are conterminous – each state borders with at least one other state –; the remaining two states of Alaska (which has become part of the Union in 1959) and the eight islands of Hawaii (the fiftieth state to be created in the same year), are situated near the Arctic Circle and 3,200 km away in the Pacific Ocean respectively. The United States also includes the island territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, both located in the Atlantic Ocean. The smallest state is Rhode Island (capital: Providence) with an area of 3,139 sq. km, the largest being Alaska (capital: Juneau) with its 1,530,693 sq. km. The second smallest state is Delaware (capital: Dover) which covers an area of 5,294 sq. km, the second largest state being Texas (691,027 sq. km.) its capital being Austin. The District of Columbia, the site of the capital city, Washington, has an area of 179 sq km.

Very broadly, the regions of the United States can be divided up in four main areas: The south, The Pacific coast states, the north central region (containing the Midwest) and the northeast.

56

A. The Northeast The north-eastern region is made up of the six states of New

England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut), the Mid-Atlantic states (Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as the District of Columbia). Both of these sub – regions are heavily populated and are among the most heavily industrialized areas in the USA. The northeast is also the wealthiest region in the country, with incomes exceeding the national average by about 10 per cent.

Boston is an important seaport and manufacturing centre situated in Massachusetts. Two of the most important world centers of learning, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are in Cambridge, near Boston.

New York with its some 8 million people is the most heavily populated city in the U.S. and it comprises five boroughs: Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. It is a famous arts, media and show business centre. Washington DC situated at the head of the Potomac River, is the federal capital of the United States. Philadelphia, the fifth largest American city and the site of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, the first capital of the Union in 1790, is situated in the state of Pennsylvania.

B. The North Central Region It is midway between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains. It

comprises the states of the Great lakes (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin) and those of the Midwest (Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota). This region is an area of great diversity in terms of climate, soil and resources. The vast stretches of rich, flat farming land – the Central Plains of the Midwest being one of the world’s most productive agricultural areas – and an excellent water system have allowed this area to become the most important economic region in the country. Midwest is nicknamed the breadbasket of America because of its vital contribution to food production. In addition to Lake Michigan, the four lakes bordering with Canada (Lakes Superior, Huron, Erie and

57

Ontario) are estimated to contain about half the world’s fresh water and a network of transportation routes around the lakes is the greatest freshwater navigation system in the world. The main industrial centers are concentrated along the Great Lakes; Detroit is still the automobile capital of the world. Its nickname is Motortown or Motown-the latter is also the name of the world famous record label; Chicago, the third most populated city in America is the commercial and business capital of Illinois as well as an important inland port. We should also mention that the first steel structured skyscraper was built here in 1889, and it now possesses one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world-the 110storey (443) Sears Tower.

The Northern Central Region also includes the Rocky Mountain States or interior west states of Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Despite occupying almost one fifth of United States territory, it only accounts for 3% of the population. Although much of the landscape of this area has changed over recent years, many parts of it remain sparsely populated and poorly irrigated. It is no coincidence that most of the commercial centers (like Salt Lake City in Utah) of this arid and semi-arid region are located in oases. Tourism, mining and irrigation development are the area’s main sources of Industry.

C. The Pacific Coast States Apart from Washington, Oregon and the ‘golden states’ of

California, this region also includes Alaska and Hawaii. Lying on the extreme north western point of North America, the ‘last frontier’ state of Alaska is rich in mountains – at 6,194 m Mount McKinley (named after US President William McKinley) is the highest peak in North America; – rivers and lakes. It is the largest state in the USA: one third of its territory lies within the Arctic Circle and has permanent frost. In 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia.

Hawaii annexed in 1898 consists of a group of eight main islands. It is noted for its cultivation of sugar cane and pine apple crops, but tourism is probably its most important source of income. The U.S. Pacific Fleet has its naval base and headquarters in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor.

58

California the third largest state after Alaska and Texas is the most densely populated state in America. Although predominantly white, California has the highest percentages of Spanish speakers, American Indians, Chinese, Philippines, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese. The number of blacks and Asian Indians living in the state is the second highest in America. As the changes in climate and landscape testify, California is a land of immensely contrasts. Magnificent beaches and mountain ranges (particularly the Sierra Nevada) contrast with the famous canyons and deserts.

Los Angeles is the largest urban centre in the USA, home to Hollywood and the largest conglomeration of television studios in the world. Situated on a number of hills, San Francisco or Frisco is an important shipping centre and home to one of the most socially cosmopolitan ethnic populations of the United States. Each ethnic group has carved out an enclave within the city; San Francisco’s Chinatown is said to contain the largest concentration of Chinese people outside Asia.

D. The South This region is at its turn divided into two sub-regions: the Southern

States and the South-western States. The first is made up of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida (purchased from Spain in 1819), Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana (purchased from France for $15 million in 1803), Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are often referred collectively as the Deep South. These southern states are extremely diverse in terms of landscape. The sunbelt as the warm climate of this region is referred to, is much warmer than the snowbelt of the north. Cotton, sugar cane and rice are growing here. One hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico on the east bank of the Mississippi River stand New Orleans one of the most romantic and picturesque cities of America, home to the blues and New Orleans jazz.

The states of Arizona (containing the magnificent Grand Canyon), New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas make up what are commonly referred to as the Southwestern states. In 1848, Texas-a state which is bigger than any European country – along with California and New Mexico were annexed to the U.S. after a brief war with Mexico.

59

Despite often difficult climatic conditions – much of this region is arid and suffers from a lack of rainfall – many people have achieved a high standard of living. By the 1959’s, Texas had become the nation’s major petroleum producer. An important aerospace research and development centre, Houston is the largest city and the fourth most populated city in the United States. Dallas, the eighth largest American city is an important banking and financial centre for the south west region as well as a leading and computer sciences centre.

History and Major Events The history of the United States has been an experiment in

democracy for more than 200 years. Issues that were addressed in the early years continue to be addressed and resolved today: – big government versus small government, individual rights versus group rights, unfettered capitalism versus regulated commerce and labor and engagement with the world versus isolationism –.

The expectations for American democracy have always been high, and the reality has sometimes been disappointing, yet the nation has grown and prospered, through a continual process of adaptation and compromise.

The First Americans crossed the land bridge from Asia and were believed to have stayed in what is now Alaska for thousands of years; they then moved south into the land that was to become the United States.

They settled along the Pacific Ocean in the Northwest, in the mountains and deserts of the Southwest, and along the Mississippi River in the Middle West.

The first famous explorer was Christopher Columbus of Genoa; his trips were financed by Queen Isabella of Spain. Columbus landed on islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, but he never saw the mainland of the future United States.

John Cabot of Venice came five years later on a mission for the king of England; his journey was quickly forgotten, but it provided the basis for British claims to North America. The 1500s were the age of Spanish exploration in the Americas, Juan Ponce de León landed in what is now Florida in 1513, Hernando De Soto reached Florida in 1539 and continued as far as the Mississippi River. In 1540, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado set out north from Mexico, which Spain had

60

conquered in 1522, in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola; he never found them, but his travels took him as far as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as well as into the Great Plains.

The Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the journeys of other Europeans; these included Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier, and Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the continent – America – would be named. The first permanent European settlement in what was to become the United States was established by the Spanish in the middle 1500s at St. Augustine in Florida, but it would not play a part in the formation of the new nation. That story took place in settlements farther north along the Atlantic coast – in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and the 10 other areas colonized by a growing tide of immigrants from Europe.

Most settlers who came to the British colonies in the 1600s were English, others came from The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, and later from Scotland and Northern Ireland. They had various reasons to flee their homelands among which we mention: to escape war, political oppression, religious persecution or a prison sentence; some left as servants who expected to work their way to freedom; black Africans were sold into slavery and arrived in shackles. By 1690, the population was 250,000 and less than 100 years later; it had climbed to 2.5 million.

All along this time 13 distinct colonies developed. New England – including Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode

Island – developed an economy based on wood products, fishing, shipbuilding, and trade; the middle colonies – including New York and Pennsylvania – had a milder climate and more varied terrain, both industry and agriculture developed there, and society was more varied and cosmopolitan (In New York one could find Bohemians, Danes, Dutch, English, French, Germans, Irish, Italians, Norwegians, Poles, Portuguese, Scots, and Swedes).

The Southern colonies – Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas – had a long growing season and fertile soil, and the economy was primarily agricultural; there were both small farmers and wealthy aristocratic landowners who owned large plantations worked by African slaves.

61

The settlement of the American colonies was directly sponsored not by the British government, but by private groups; all except Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders or as proprietorships chartered by the king. Some were governed rigidly by company leaders, but in time, all developed a system of participatory government based on British legal precedent and tradition.

Britain's 13 North American colonies matured during the 1700s. They grew in population, economic strength, and cultural attainment and at the same time they were experienced in self-government. Yet it was not until 170 years after the founding of the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, that the new United States of America emerged as a nation. The war between Britain and France in the 1750s was fought partly in North America; Britain was victorious and soon initiated policies designed to control and fund its vast empire.

These measures imposed greater restraints on the American colonists' way of life. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 restricted the opening of new lands for settlement; the Sugar Act of 1764 placed taxes on luxury goods, including coffee, silk, and wine, and made it illegal to import rum; the Currency Act of 1764 prohibited the printing of paper money in the colonies; the Quartering Act of 1765 forced colonists to provide food and housing for royal troops while the Stamp Act of 1765 required the purchase of royal stamps for all legal documents, newspapers, licenses, and leases.

Colonists objected to all these measures, but the Stamp Act sparked the greatest organized resistance. The main issue, in the eyes of a growing number of colonists, was that they were being taxed by a distant legislature in which they could not participate (taxation without representation), so in October 1765, 27 delegates from nine colonies met in New York to coordinate efforts to get the Stamp Act repealed.

They passed resolutions asserting the individual colonies’ right to impose their own taxes. Samuel Adams of Massachusetts was the most effective of all; he wrote newspaper articles and made speeches appealing to the colonists’ democratic instincts and also helped organize committees throughout the colonies that became the basis of a revolutionary movement.

62

By 1773, the movement had attracted colonial traders who were angry with British attempts to regulate the tea trade. In December, a group of men sneaked on to three British ships in Boston harbor and dumped their cargo of tea overboard. To punish Massachusetts for the vandalism, the British Parliament closed the port of Boston and restricted local authority; the new measures, rather than isolate one colony, they rallied the others. All the colonies except Georgia sent representatives to Philadelphia in September 1774 to discuss their “present unhappy state”.

Colonists felt a growing sense of frustration and anger over British encroachment on their rights. There was not unanimity of thought on what should be done: loyalists wanted to remain subjects of the king while the moderates favored compromise to produce a more acceptable relationship with the British government and the revolutionaries wanted complete independence. They began stockpiling weapons and mobilizing forces – waiting for the day when they would have to fight for it.

● the American Revolution – its war for independence from Britain – began as a small skirmish between British troops and armed colonists on April 19, 1775;

● the British had set out from Boston, Massachusetts, to seize weapons and ammunition that revolutionary colonists had collected in nearby villages.

The first shots of the American Revolution fired at Lexington, Massachusetts where they met a group of Minutemen, who got that name because they were said to be ready to fight in a minute. These intended only a silent protest, and their leader told them not to shoot unless fired on first. The British ordered the Minutemen to disperse, and they complied; as they were withdrawing, someone fired a shot so the British troops attacked the Minutemen with guns and bayonets. Fights broke out at other places along the road as the British soldiers in their bright red uniforms made their way back to Boston; more than 250 "redcoats" were killed or wounded while the Americans lost 93 men.

Calls for independence intensified in the coming months. The radical political theorist Thomas Paine helped crystallize the argument for separation; in a pamphlet called Common Sense, which sold

63

100,000 copies, he attacked the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Paine presented two alternatives for America: either it continued submission under a tyrannical king and outworn system of government or fight for liberty and happiness as a self-sufficient, independent republic.

The Second Continental Congress appointed a committee, headed by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, to prepare a document outlining the colonies’ grievances against the king and explaining their decision to break away. This Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776 (the 4th of July has since been celebrated as America’s Independence Day).

The Declaration of Independence announced the birth of a new nation; it drew upon French and British political ideas, especially those of John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, reaffirming the belief that political rights are basic human rights and are thus universal.

But declaring independence did not make Americans free. British forces routed continental troops in New York, from Long Island to New York City succeeding in defeating the Americans at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, and occupying Philadelphia thus forcing the Continental Congress to flee. On the other hand, the American forces were victorious at Saratoga, New York, and at Trenton and Princeton in New Jersey.

George Washington continually struggled to get the men and materials he desperately needed. Decisive help came in 1778 when France recognized the United States and signed a bilateral defense treaty (France wanted to weaken the power of Britain, its long-time adversary). The fighting that began at Lexington, Massachusetts, continued for eight years across a large portion of the continent; battles were fought from Montreal, Canada, in the north to Savannah, Georgia, in the south.

A huge British army surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, yet the war dragged on with inconclusive results for another two years when a peace treaty was finally signed in Paris on April 15, 1783. The Treaty of Paris acknowledged the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the 13 former American colonies, now states.

64

The 13 American colonies became the 13 United States of America in 1783. Before the war ended, they ratified a framework for their common efforts; these Articles of Confederation provided for a union, but an extremely loose and fragile one. George Washington called it a “rope of sand” as: there was no common currency, there was no national military force; many states still had their own armies and navies; there was little centralized control over foreign policy; the states negotiated directly with other countries and there was no national system for imposing and collecting taxes.

There were problems among the colonies too. Thus, the disputes between Maryland and Virginia over navigation rights on the Potomac River, which formed their common border, led to a conference of five states in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786. Alexander Hamilton, a delegate from New York, said that what was needed was a rethinking of the Confederation. He and the other delegates proposed holding a convention. With the support from Washington, unquestionably the most trusted man in America, they won over those who thought the idea was too bold The gathering in Philadelphia in May 1787 was remarkable; the 55 delegates elected to the convention had experience in colonial and state government, they were knowledgeable in history, law, and political theory; although most of them were young, the group also included the elderly Benjamin Franklin. Two notable Americans were not there: Thomas Jefferson was in Paris as American ambassador to France, and John Adams was in London as ambassador to Great Britain.

George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789. He had been in charge of organizing an effective military force during the Revolution-now he was in charge of building a functioning government. He worked with Congress to create departments of State, Treasury, Justice, and War. The heads of those departments would serve as presidential advisors, his cabinet. A Supreme Court composed of one chief justice and five associate justices was established, together with three circuit courts and 13 district courts. Policies were developed for administering the western territories and bringing them into the Union as new states. Washington served two four-year terms and then left office, setting a precedent that eventually became law.

65

The next two presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, represented two schools of thought on the role of government; this divergence led to the formation of the first political parties in the Western world: the Federalists, led by Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s secretary of the Treasury. They represented trade and manufacturing interests; they feared anarchy and believed in a strong central government that could set national economic policies and maintain order and who had the most support in the North and the Republicans, led by Jefferson, generally represented agricultural interests. They opposed a strong central government as they believed in states' rights and the self-sufficiency of farmers and had the most support in the South.

For about 20 years, the young nation was able to thrive in relative peace; its policy was to be friendly and impartial to all other nations but it was not immune from political developments, particularly in Britain and France, which were at war. The British navy seized American ships headed to France, and the French navy seized American ships headed to Britain. Various diplomatic negotiations averted hostilities during the 1790s and early 1800s, but the United States would have to defend its interests. War with Britain came in 1812 most of the fighting taking place mostly in the Northeastern states and along the east coast. One British expeditionary force reached the new capital of Washington, in the District of Columbia; it set fire to the executive mansion – causing President James Madison to flee – and left the city in flames. In the end the U.S. army and navy won enough decisive battles to claim victory: after two and a half years of fighting, and with a treasury depleted by a separate war with France, Britain signed a peace treaty with the United States. The U.S. victory ended once and for all any British hopes of reestablishing influence south of the Canadian border.

The United States doubled in size with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France ($15 million) in 1803 and Florida from Spain in 1819. From 1816 to 1821, six new states were created and in 1848, Texas, California and New Mexico became American territories, after a brief war with Mexico. Between 1812 and 1852, the population tripled and the young nation’s size and diversity became a

66

land of contrasts. In 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia and in 1898 Hawaii was annexed. The United States was a country of both civilized cities built on commerce and industry, and primitive frontiers where the rule of law was often ignored; it was a society that loved freedom but permitted slavery but the Constitution tried to hold all these different parts together. The very existence of the Union was in danger and the North and South went to war in April 1861. The Southern states had claimed the right to secede and had formed their own Confederacy and their forces fired the first shots while the Northern states, under the leadership of President Lincoln, were determined to stop the rebellion and preserve the Union as; the North had more than twice as many states and twice as many people; it had abundant facilities for producing war supplies, as well as a superior railway network. The South had more experienced military leaders and had the advantage of fighting mostly on its own territory. For four years, ground battles involving tens of thousands of soldiers and horses were fought in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia while naval battles were fought off the Atlantic coast and on the Mississippi River. In that area, Union forces won an almost uninterrupted series of victories while in Virginia, by contrast, they met defeat after defeat in their attempts to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital.

Britain and France had been planning to recognize the Confederacy but they delayed their decisions, and the South never received the aid it desperately needed. Several months later, President Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves living in Confederate states and authorized the recruitment of African Americans into the Union army. The North was no longer fighting just to preserve the Union; it was fighting to end slavery. The Union forces gained momentum in 1863 with victories at Vicksburg in Mississippi and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania; by April 1865, huge Union armies under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant had surrounded Robert E. Lee in Virginia. Lee surrendered, and the American Civil War was over.

The Terms of Surrender were generous. “The rebels are our countrymen again”, Grant reminded his troops. In Washington,

67

President Lincoln was ready to begin the process of reconciliation; he never got the chance as in less than a week after the South surrendered, he was assassinated by a Southerner embittered by the defeat. The task would fall to Lincoln’s vice president, Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who favored quick and easy “Reconstruction”. Johnson issued pardons that restored the political rights of many Southerners. By the end of 1865, almost all former Confederate states had held conventions to repeal the acts of secession and to abolish slavery. All except Tennessee refused to ratify a constitutional amendment giving full citizenship to African Americans.

The Republicans in Congress decided to implement their own version of Reconstruction and they enacted punitive measures against former rebels and prevented former Confederate leaders from holding office. They divided the South into five military districts administered by Union generals; denied voting rights to anyone who refused to take a loyalty oath to the Union and strongly supported the rights of African Americans. President Johnson tried to block many of these policies and was impeached.

68

VI. AMERICAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

America, the federal republic made up of fifty states and the District of Columbia is one of the oldest democracies in the world. The government of this highly diversified nation is based on a written document called the Constitution drawn up in 1787 and ratified a year later by the representatives of the original thirteen colonies. It is considered to be a landmark in the development of constitutional and governmental law. Being the oldest written national constitution currently in force, it defines the basic organs of government and their legal duties, responsibilities and jurisdiction. Deriving in large part from the English Magna Charta, the American Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791 consisted of a series of ten Amendments to the US Constitution. These amendments sought to guarantee the rights of the individual (freedom of speech, religion, the press), against possible federal tyranny. A further sixteen amendments have been added to the Constitution since 1791. Despite numerous revisions, the basic principles underlying the present system of government can be traced back to the original document drawn up more than hundred years earlier. The notion of popular consent (whereby the government is answerable to the people) had been gaining ground in Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, but this doctrine was resisted by the ancient regime (“Old Rule”, “Old Order”, or simply “Old (or Ancient”) Regime Power in the Ancient Régime relied on three pillars: the monarchy, the clergy and the aristocracy), and a well established social order. Many of the settlers in the American colonies had left Europe in order to escape religious or political persecution. As time passed, the descendants of these early settlers gradually forged a new identity for themselves; the idea of basing a political order on the consent of the governed seemed perfectly natural.

Another important notion accepted by Americans was that government should be confined within prescribed limits by the rule of law. Colonists believed that there were certain natural rights which

69

government could not justifiably interfere with. In addition to these two fundamental principles of popular consent and prescribed limitations, a third was to be of equal importance in the eyes of early American political thinkers: the sovereignty of the national – or federal – government.

The Constitution Unlike Britain but like most nation states, the American political

system is clearly defined by basic documents. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1789 form the foundations of the United States federal government. The Declaration of Independence establishes the United States as an independent political entity, while the Constitution creates the basic structure of the federal government. Both documents are on display in the National Archives and Records Administration Building in Washington, D.C.

The US Constitution has proved to be a remarkably stable document. If one accepts that the first 10 amendments were in effect part of the original constitutional settlement, there have only been 17 amendments in over 200 years. One of the major reasons for this is that – quite deliberately on the part of its drafters – the Constitution is a very difficult instrument to change. First, a proposed amendment has to secure a two-thirds vote of members present in both houses of Congress. Then three-quarters of the state legislatures have to ratify the proposed change (this stage may or may not be governed by a specific time limit).

At the heart of the US Constitution is the principle known as separation of powers, a term coined by the French political, enlightenment thinker Montesquieu. This means that power is spread between three institutions of the state – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary – and no one institution has too much power and no individual can be a member of more than one institution.

This principle is also known as checks and balances, since each of the three branches of the state has some authority to act on its own, some authority to regulate the other two branches, and has some of its own authority, in turn, regulated by the other branches.

70

Not only is power spread between the different branches; the members of those branches are deliberately granted by the Constitution different terms of office which is a further brake on rapid political change. So the President has a term of four years, while members of the Senate serve for six years and members of the House of Representatives serve for two years. Members of the Supreme Court effectively serve for life.

The great benefit of this system is that power is spread and counter-balanced and the founding fathers – the 55 delegates who drafted the Constitution – clearly wished to create a political system which was in sharp contrast to, and much more democratic than, the monarchical system of absolute power then in force in Britain. The great weakness of the system is that it makes government slow, complicated and legalistic which is a particular disadvantage in a world – unlike that of 1776 – in which political and economic developments are fast-moving.

Politics of the United States The United States is a presidential, federal republic, in which the

President of the United States (the head of state and head of government), Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments. Federal and state elections generally take place within a two-party system, although this is not enshrined in law.

The executive branch is headed by President and is independent of the legislature. Legislative power is vested in the two chambers of Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Judicial power is exercised by the judicial branch (or judiciary), composed of the Supreme Court and lower federal courts. The judiciary’s function is to interpret the United States Constitution as well as federal laws and regulations. This includes resolving disputes between the executive and legislative branches. The federal government of the United States was established by the Constitution. American politics has been dominated by two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, since the American Civil War, although other parties have also existed.

71

Major differences between the political system of the United States and that of most other developed democracies are the power of the Senate as the upper house of the legislature, the wide scope of power of the Supreme Court, the separation of powers between the legislature and the executive government, and the dominance of the two main parties – the United States being one of the world’s developed democracies in which third parties have the least political influence.

Federal, state and local governments The federal entity created by the Constitution is the dominant

feature of the American governmental system. However, some people are also subject to a state government, and all are subject to various units of local government. The latter include counties, municipalities, and special districts.

This multiplicity of jurisdictions reflects the country's history. The federal government was created by the states, which as colonies were established separately and governed themselves independently of the others. Units of local government were created by the colonies to efficiently carry out various state functions. As the country expanded, it admitted new states modeled on the existing ones.

State government States governments have the power to make laws on all subjects

that are not granted to the national government or denied to the states in the U.S. Constitution. These include education, family law, contract law, and most crimes. Unlike the national government, which only has those powers granted to it in the Constitution, a state government has inherent powers allowing it to act unless limited by a provision of the state or national constitution.

Like the national government, state governments have three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. The chief executive of a state is its popularly elected governor, who typically holds office for a four-year term (although in some states the term is two years). Except for Nebraska, which has unicameral legislature, all states have a bicameral legislature, with the upper house usually called the Senate and the lower house called the House of Representatives, the House of

72

Delegates, Assembly or something similar. In most states, senators serve four-year terms, and members of the lower house serve two-year terms.

The constitutions of the various states differ in some details but generally follow a pattern similar to that of the federal Constitution, including a statement of the rights of the people and a plan for organizing the government. State constitutions are generally more detailed, however.

Local government There are 87,000 local governments, including 3,034 counties,

19,498 municipalities, 16,500 townships, 13,500 school districts, and 35,000 other special districts which deal with issues like fire protection. To a greater extent than on the federal or state level, the local governments directly serve the needs of the people, providing everything from police and fire protection to sanitary codes, health regulations, education, public transportation, and housing.

About 28% of the people live in cities of 100,000 or more population. City governments are chartered by states, and their charters detail the objectives and powers of the municipal government. For most big cities, cooperation with both state and federal organizations is essential to meeting the needs of their residents.

Types of city governments vary widely across the nation. However, almost all have some kind of central council, elected by the voters, and an executive officer, assisted by various department heads, to manage the city’s affairs.

There are three general types of city government: the mayor-council, the commission, and the council-manager. These are the pure forms; many cities have developed a combination of two or three of them.

Mayor-Council: This is the oldest form of city government in the United States and, until the beginning of the 20th century, was used by nearly all American cities. Its structure is similar to that of the state and national governments, with an elected mayor as chief of the executive branch and an elected council that represents the various neighborhoods forming the legislative branch. The mayor appoints heads of city departments and other officials, sometimes with the approval of the council. He or she has the power of veto over ordinances – the laws of the city – and frequently is responsible for preparing the city’s budget. The

73

council passes city ordinances, sets the tax rate on property, and apportions money among the various city departments. As cities have grown, council seats have usually come to represent more than a single neighborhood.

The Commission: This combines both the legislative and executive which function in one group of officials, usually three or more in number, elected city-wide. Each commissioner supervises the work of one or more city departments. One is named chairperson of the body and is often called the mayor, although his or her power is equivalent to that of the other commissioners.

Council-Manager: The city manager is a response to the increasing complexity of urban problems, which require management expertise not often possessed by elected public officials. The answer has been to entrust most of the executive powers, including law enforcement and provision of services, to a highly trained and experienced professional city manager.

The city manager plan has been adopted by a large number of cities. Under this plan, a small, elected council makes the city ordinances and sets policy, but hires a paid administrator, also called a city manager, to carry out its decisions. The manager draws up the city budget and supervises most of the departments. Usually, there is no set term; the manager serves as long as the council is satisfied with his or her work.

County government The county is a subdivision of the state, sometimes – but not

always – containing two or more townships and several villages. New York City is so large that it is divided into five separate boroughs, each a county in its own right. On the other hand, Arlington County, Virginia, the United States’ smallest county, located just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is both an urbanized and suburban area, governed by a unitary county administration. In other cities, both the city and county governments have merged, creating a consolidated city–county government.

74

Suffrage Suffrage is nearly universal for citizens 18 years of age and older.

All 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, contribute to the electoral vote for President. However, the District, and other U.S. holdings, like Puerto Rico and Guam, lacks the states’ representation in Congress. These constituencies do not have the right to choose any political figure outside their respective areas. Each commonwealth, territory, or district can only elect a non-voting delegate to serve in the House of Representatives.

Voting rights are sometimes restricted as a result of felony conviction, but such laws vary widely by state. Election of the president is an indirect suffrage: Voters vote for electors, who in turn vote for President. In theory, these electors vote as they please, but in modern practice they do not vote against the wishes of their constituencies (though they have abstained from voting in protest).

Political parties Since the 1790s the country has been run by two major parties.

The United States does not have a parliamentary system, in which governing coalitions are formed after elections, so coalitions are formed before elections under the umbrella of the party organizations. In the absence of a parliamentary system, third parties cannot thrive. Since the Civil War, the two major parties have been called the Republican and Democratic parties. Many minor or third political parties appear from time to time. They tend to serve a means to advocate policies that eventually are adopted by the two major political parties. At various times the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Populist Party for a few years had considerable local strength and then faded away. At present the Libertarian Party is the most successful third party.

Most officials in America are elected from single-member districts and win office by beating out their opponents in a system for determining winners called first-past-the-post – the one who gets the plurality wins, (which is not the same thing as actually getting a majority of votes). This encourages the two-party system.

75

To an extent quite extraordinary in democratic countries, the American political system is dominated by two political parties: the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (often known as the ‘Grand Old Party’ or GOP). These are very old and very stable parties – the Democrats go back to the 1824 and the Republicans were founded in 1854. The Democratic Party is sometimes represented as a donkey, while the Republican Party is sometimes featured as an elephant.

Organization of American political parties American political parties are more loosely organized than those

in other countries. The two major parties, in particular, have no formal organization at the national level that controls membership, activities, or policy positions, though some state affiliates do. Thus, for an American to say that he or she is a member of the Democratic or Republican Party, is quite different from a Briton’s stating that he or she is a member of the Labor party. In the United States, one can often become a “member” of a party, merely by stating that fact. In some U.S. states, a voter can register as a member of one or another party and/or vote in the primary election for one or another party, but such participation does not restrict one’s choices in any way; nor does it give a person any particular rights or obligations with respect to the party, other than possibly allowing that person to vote in that party’s primary elections (elections that determine who the candidate of the party will be). A person may choose to attend meetings of one local party committee one day and another party committee the next day. The sole factor that brings one closer to the action is the quantity and quality of participation in party activities and the ability to persuade others in attendance to give one responsibility.

Party identification becomes somewhat formalized when a person runs for partisan office. In most states, this means declaring oneself a candidate for the nomination of a particular party and intent to enter that party’s primary election for an office. A party committee may choose to endorse one or another of those who is seeking the nomination, but in the end the choice is up to those who choose to vote in the primary, and it is often difficult to tell who is going to do the voting. The result is that American political parties have weak central organizations.

76

The Presidency Although the ‘founding fathers’ wanted to avoid a political system

that in any way reflected the monarchical system then prevalent in Britain and for a long time the Presidency was relatively weak, the vast expansion of the federal bureaucracy and the military in the 20th century has in current practice given a greater role and more power to the President than is the case for any single individual in most political systems.

The President is both the head of state and the head of government, as well as the military commander-in-chief and chief diplomat. He presides over the executive branch of the federal government, a vast organization numbering about 4 million people, including 1 million active-duty military personnel. Within the executive branch, the President has broad constitutional powers to manage national affairs and the workings of the federal government and he may issue executive orders to affect internal policies.

The President may sign or veto legislation passed by Congress and has the power to recommend measures to Congress. The Congress may override a presidential veto but only by a two-thirds majority in each house.

The President has the power to make treaties (with the ‘advice and consent’ of the Senate) and the power to nominate and receive ambassadors. The President may not dissolve Congress or call special elections, but does have the power to pardon criminals convicted of offences against the federal government, enact executive orders, and (with the consent of the Senate) appoint Supreme Court justices and federal judges.

The President is elected for a fixed term of four years and may serve a maximum of two terms. Elections are always held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November to coincide with Congressional elections.

The President is not elected directly by the voters but by an Electoral College representing each state on the basis of a combination of the number of members in the Senate (two for each state regardless of size) and the number of members in the House of Representatives (roughly proportional to population). The states with the largest

77

number of votes are California (55), Texas (34) and New York (31). The states with the smallest number of votes – there are six of them – have only three votes. The District of Columbia, which has no voting representation in Congress, has three electoral votes. In effect, therefore, the Presidential election is not one election but 51.

The total Electoral College vote is 538. This means that, to become President, a candidate has to win at least 270 electoral votes. The voting system awards the Electoral College votes from each state to delegates committed to vote for a certain candidate in a “winner take all” system, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska (which award their Electoral College votes according to Congressional Districts rather than for the state as a whole). In practice, most states are firmly Democrat – for instance, California and New York – or firmly Republican – for instance, Texas and Tennessee. Therefore, candidates concentrate their appearances and resources on the so-called “battleground states”, those that might go to either party. The three largest battleground or swing states are Florida (27 votes), Pennsylvania (21) and Ohio (20).

This system of election means that in theory a candidate can win the largest number of votes nationwide but fail to win the largest number of votes in the Electoral College and therefore fail to become President. Indeed, in practice, this has happened three times in US history, most recently in 2000. If this seems strange (at least to non-Americans), the explanation is that the ‘founding fathers’ who drafted the American Constitution did not wish to give too much power to the people and so devised a system that gives the ultimate power of electing the President to members of the Electoral College. The same Constitution, however, enables each state to determine how its members in the Electoral College are chosen and since the 1820s states have chosen their electors by a direct vote of the people. The United States is the only current example of an indirectly elected executive president.

The President may be impeached by a majority in the House and removed from office by a two-thirds majority in the Senate for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.

78

Since 1939, there has been an Executive Office of the President (EOP) which has consistently and considerably expanded in size and power. Today it consists of some 1,600 staff and costs some $300M a year.

The position of Vice-President is elected on the same ticket as that of the President and has the same four-year term of office. The Vice-President is often described as ‘a heart beat away from the Presidency’ since, in the event of the death or incapacity of the President, the Vice-President assumes the office. In practice, however, a Vice-Presidential candidate is chosen (by the Presidential candidate) to ‘balance the ticket’ in the Presidential election (that is, represent a different geographical or gender or ethnic constituency) and, for all practical purposes, the position only carries the power accorded to it by the President – which is usually very little (a major exception has been Dick Cheney under George W Bush). The official duties of the Vice-President are to sit as a member of the “Cabinet” and as a member of the National Security Council and to act as ex-officio President of the Senate.

Although the President heads the executive branch of government, the day-to-day enforcement and administration of federal laws is in the hands of the various federal executive departments, created by Congress to deal with specific areas of national and international affairs. The heads of the 15 departments, chosen by the President and approved with the ‘advice and consent’ of the Senate, form a council of advisors generally known as the President’s “Cabinet”. This is not a cabinet in the British political sense: it does not meet so often and does not act so collectively.

The first US President was George Washington, who served from 1789-1797, so that the current President Barrack Obama is the 44th to hold the office.

The Presidency is often referred to by the media as the White House, the West Wing, and the Oval Office.

The House of Representatives The House of Representatives is the lower chamber in the

bicameral legislature known collectively as Congress. The founders of

79

the United States intended the House to be the politically dominant entity in the federal system and, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the House served as the primary forum for political debate. However, subsequently the Senate has been the dominant body.

The House consists of 435 members, each of whom represents a congressional district and serves for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the states by population according to each decennial census. Typically a House constituency would represent around 500,000 people.

Members of the House are elected by first-past-the-post voting in every state except Louisiana and Washington, which have run-offs. Elections are always held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even numbered years. Voting in congressional elections – especially to the House – is generally much lower than levels in other liberal democracies. In a year when there is a Presidential election, turnout is typically around 50%; in years when there is no Presidential election (known as mid-terms), it usually falls to around one third of the electorate.

In the event that a member of the House of Representatives dies or resigns before the end of the two-year term, a special election is held to fill the vacancy.

The House has four non-voting delegates from American Samoa (1981), the District of Columbia (1971), Guam (1972) and the Virgin Islands (1976) and one resident commissioner for Puerto Rico (1976), bringing the total formal membership to 440.

Much of the work of the House is done through 19 standing committees which perform both legislative and investigatory functions.

Each chamber of Congress has particular exclusive powers. The House must introduce any bills for the purpose of raising revenue. However, the consent of both chambers is required to make any law.

Activity in the House of Representatives tends to be more partisan than in the Senate.

80

The House and Senate are often referred to by the media as Capitol Hill or simply the Hill.

The Senate The Senate is the upper chamber in the bicameral legislature

known collectively as Congress. The original intention of the authors of the US Constitution was that the Senate should be a regulatory group, less politically dominant than the House. However, since the mid 19th century, the Senate has been the dominant chamber and indeed today it is perhaps the most powerful upper house of any legislative body in the world.

The Senate consists of 100 members, each of which represents a state and serves for a six-year term (one third of the Senate stands for election every two years).

Each state has two Senators, regardless of population, and, since there are 50 states, then there are 100 senators. This equality of Senate seats between states has the effect of producing huge variations in constituency population (the two senators from Wyoming represent less than half a million electors, while the two senators from California represent 34M people) with gross over-representation of the smaller states and serious under-representation of racial and ethnic minorities.

Members of the Senate are elected by first-past-the-post voting in every state except Louisiana and Washington, which have run-offs. Elections are always held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even numbered years.

In the event that a member of the Senate dies or resigns before the end of the six-year term, no special election is held to fill the vacancy. Instead the Governor of the state that the Senator represented nominates someone to serve until the next set of Congressional elections when a normal election is held to fill the vacancy.

Much of the work of the Senate is done through 16 standing committees which perform both legislative and investigatory functions.

Each chamber of Congress has particular exclusive powers. The Senate must give ‘advice and consent’ to many important Presidential

81

appointments. However, the consent of both chambers is required to make any law.

Activity in the Senate tends to be less partisan and more individualistic than in the House of Representatives. Senate rules permit what is called a filibuster when a senator, or a series of senators, can speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless a supermajority of three-fifths of the Senate (60 Senators, if all 100 seats are filled) brings debate to a close by invoking what is called cloture (taken from the French term for closure). The Senate and House are often referred to by the media as Capitol Hill or simply the Hill.

82

VII. EDUCATION IN UK AND US

Education in the United Kingdom Each of the countries of the United Kingdom have separate

systems under separate governments: the UK Government is responsible for England, and the Scottish Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Northern Ireland Executive are responsible for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, respectively. While the systems in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are more similar, the Scottish system is quite different.

Education in England is overseen by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. At a local level the local authorities take responsibility for implementing policy for public education and state schools.

Full-time education is compulsory for all children aged between 5 and 16 (inclusive). Students may then continue their secondary studies for a further two years (sixth form), leading most typically to an A level qualification, although other qualifications and courses exist, including GNVQ (General national vocation qualification), and the International Baccalaureate. The leaving age for compulsory education was raised to 18 by the Education and Skills Act 2008. The change will take effect in 2013 for 17 year olds and 2015 for 18 year olds. State-provided schools are free of charge to students, and there is also a tradition of independent schooling, but parents may choose to educate their children by any suitable means.

Higher education typically begins with a 3-year Bachelor's Degree. Postgraduate degrees include Master’s Degrees, either taught or by research, and Doctor of Philosophy, a research degree that usually takes at least 3 years. Universities require a Royal charter in order to issue degrees, and all but one are financed by the state with a low level of fees for students.

83

Primary and secondary education The school year begins usually on the 1st of September

(sometimes the 2nd or 3rd if the 1st falls on a weekend). Education is compulsory for all children from the term after their fifth birthday to the last Friday in June of the school year in which they turn 16. This will be raised in 2013 to the year in which they turn 17 and in 2015 to the year in which they turn 18.

The state-funded school system State-run schools and colleges are financed through national taxation,

and take pupils free of charge between the ages of 3 and 18. The schools may levy charges for activities such as swimming, theatre visits and field trips, provided the charges are voluntary, thus ensuring that those who cannot afford to pay are allowed to participate in such events. Approximately 93% of English schoolchildren attend such schools.

A significant minority of state-funded schools are faith schools, which are attached to religious groups, most often the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. There are also a small number of state-funded boarding schools, which typically charge for board but not tuition.

Nearly 90% of state-funded secondary schools are specialist schools, receiving extra funding to develop one or more subjects in which the school specializes.

School years In the vast majority of cases, pupils progress from primary to

secondary levels at age 11; in some areas either or both of the primary and secondary levels are further subdivided. A few areas have three-tier education systems with an intermediate middle level from age 9 to 13.

State-funded nursery education is available from the age of 3, and may be full-time or part-time. If registered with a state school attendance is compulsory beginning with the term following the child’s fifth birthday. Children can be enrolled in the reception year in September of that school year thus beginning school at age 4 or 4.5. Unless the student chooses to stay within the education system school attendance ends on the last Friday in June during the academic year in which a student attains the age of 16.

84

Under the National Curriculum system, all pupils undergo Standard Assessment Tests (SATs = The SAT Reasoning Test (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test and Scholastic Assessment Test) is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States.) towards the ends of Key Stage 2 in core subjects, but not foundation subjects, where teacher assessment is used. They normally take GCSE exams in the last two years of Key Stage 4, but may take other Level 2 qualifications, such as GNVQ. Former tests at the end of Key Stage 3 were abandoned after the 2008 tests, when severe problems emerged concerning the marking procedures. Now at Key Stages 1 and 3, assessment is by teacher assessment against the National Curriculum Attainment Targets for all subjects. Tests results for schools are published, and are an important measure of their performance.

Years 12 and 13 are often referred to as lower sixth form and upper sixth form respectively, reflecting their distinct, voluntary nature and situation as the A level years. Some independent schools still refer to years 7 to 11 as first form to fifth form, reflecting earlier usage. Even more historically, this arose from the system in public schools, where all forms were divided into Lower, Upper, and sometimes Middle sections. Year 7 is equivalent to “Upper Third Form”, Year 8 would have been known as “Lower Fourth”, and so on. Some independent schools still use this way of counting the years.

Curriculum All maintained schools in England are required to follow the

National Curriculum, which is made up of twelve subjects. The core subjects – English, Mathematics and Science – are compulsory for all students aged 5 to 16. The other foundation subjects are compulsory at one or more Key Stages: Art & Design, Citizenship, Design & Technology, Geography, History, Information & Communication Technology, Modern Foreign Languages, Music, Physical Education.

In addition, other statutory subjects are not covered by the National Curriculum, including Religious Education in all year groups, and Career education, Sex education and Work-related learning at secondary age. School governance.

85

Almost all state-funded schools in England are maintained schools, which receive their funding from local authorities and are required to follow the national curriculum. In such schools, all teachers are employed under the nationally-agreed School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document.

Since 1998, there have been 4 main types of maintained school in England:

● community schools (formerly county schools), in which the LA employs the schools’ staff, owns the schools’ lands and buildings and has primary responsibility for admissions. ● voluntary controlled schools, which are, almost always, church schools, with the lands and buildings often owned by a charitable foundation. However, the LA employs the schools’ staff and has primary responsibility for admissions. ● voluntary aided schools, linked to a variety of organizations. They can be faith schools (often the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church), or non-denominational schools, such as those linked to London Livery Companies. The charitable foundation contributes towards the capital costs of the school, and appoints a majority of the school governors. The governing body employs the staff and has primary responsibility for admissions. ● foundation schools, in which the governing body employs the staff and has primary responsibility for admissions. The school land and buildings are owned by the governing body or by a charitable foundation. The Foundation appoints a minority of governors. All state-funded schools are regularly inspected by the Office for

Standards in Education (Ofsted), which publishes reports of the quality of education at each school. Schools judged by Ofsted to be providing an inadequate standard of education may be placed in special measures, which may include replacing the governing body and senior staff.

Secondary schools by intake English secondary schools are mostly comprehensive and can be

divided into 8 types (with some overlap) based on the ability range of their intake:

86

● super-selective: almost all of the intake from the top 10%. These are the few highly selective grammar schools that dominate school performance tables. ● selective: almost all of the intake from the top 25%. These include grammar schools in areas where the tripartite system survives. ● comprehensive (plus): admit children of all abilities, but concentrated in the top 50%. These include partially selective schools and a few high-status faith schools in areas without selection. ● comprehensive: intake with an ability distribution matching the population. These schools are most common in rural areas and small towns with no nearby selection, but a few occur in urban areas. ● comprehensive (minus): admit children of all abilities, but with few in the top 25%. These include comprehensive schools with nearby selective schools “skimming” the intake. ● secondary modern: hardly any of the intake in the top 25%, but an even distribution of the rest. These include non-selective schools in areas where the tripartite system survives. ● secondary modern (minus): no pupils in the top 25% and 10-15% in the next 25%. These schools are most common in urban areas where alternatives of types 1-5 are available. ● sub-secondary modern: intake heavily weighted toward the low end of the ability range. This ranking is reflected in performance tables, and thus the

schools’ attractiveness to parents. Independent schools Approximately 7% of English schoolchildren attend privately run

independent schools, which are sometimes called public schools. Education at independent schools is usually chargeable. Such schools, some of which are boarding schools, cover primary and secondary education and charge between £2500 and £30000 per year. Some schools offer scholarships for those with particular skills or aptitudes or bursaries to allow less well-off students to attend.

87

Some schools are single sex, however a growing number are co-educational. Independent schools usually take children between age 3-11 transferring to 11-18. Some of the more famous schools such as Eton and Harrow take boys at 13 years of age. Many students must pass the Common Entrance Exam at 11 or 13 to gain entry into highly selective schools.

Education otherwise than by schooling The Education Act requires parents to ensure their children are

educated either by attending school or otherwise. Small but increasing numbers of parents are choosing the otherwise option. This style of education is often referred to as Elective Home Education. Parents do not need permission to educate their own children. There is no requirement to follow the National Curriculum or to give formal lessons. Parents do not need to be qualified teachers, or to follow school hours or terms. Parents who choose to educate their children otherwise than at school have to finance the education provision themselves.

Further education Students at both state schools and independent schools take the

GCSE examinations, which mark the end of compulsory education. Above school leaving age, the independent and state sectors are similarly structured. In the 16-18 age group, “sixth-form” education is not compulsory.

Students will typically study in either the Sixth Form of a School, a Sixth form college, or a further education college. These courses can also be studied by adults over 18. This sector is referred to as Further Education. All 16-18 students are encouraged (this is only mandatory in some institutions) to study Key Skills in Communication, Application of Number and Information Technology.

Universities in the United Kingdom Students normally enter University from 18 onwards and study

for an Academic Degree. All undergraduate education outside the private University of Buckingham is largely state financed, with a small contribution from top-up fees. The state does not control syllabuses, but it does influence admission procedures. Unlike most

88

degrees, the state still has control over teacher training courses, and uses Ofsted inspectors to maintain standards. The typical first degree offered at British universities is the Bachelor’s degree (typically three years). Many institutions now offer an undergraduate Master’s degree as a first degree, typically lasting four years. During a first degree students are known as undergraduates. The difference in fees between undergraduate and traditional postgraduate Master’s degrees (and the possibility of securing LEA funding for the former) makes taking an undergraduate Master’s degree as a first degree a more attractive option, although the novelty of undergraduate Master’s degrees means that the relative educational merit of the two is currently unclear.

Some universities offer a vocationally-based Foundation degree, typically two years in length for those students who hope to continue to take a first degree but wish to remain in employment.

Postgraduate education Students who have completed a first degree are eligible to

undertake a postgraduate degree, which includes: – Master’s degree (typically taken in one year); – Doctorate degree (typically taken in three years); – Postgraduate education is not automatically financed by the

State, and so admission is in practice highly competitive. Adult education Adult education, Continuing education or Lifelong learning is

offered to students of all ages. These can include the vocational qualifications mentioned above and also: One or two year access courses to allow adults access to university.

The Open University runs a distance learning program which can result in a Degree. The Workers’ Educational Association offers large numbers of semi-recreational courses, with or without qualifications, are made available by Local Education Authorities under the guise of Adult Education, such as holiday languages, crafts and yacht navigation.

Education in the United States Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public

sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal,

89

state, and local. Child education is compulsory. A sub-type of compulsory education is public education. Public education is universal at the primary and secondary levels (known inside the United States as the elementary and high school levels). At these levels, school curricula, funding, teaching, and other policies are set through locally elected school boards with jurisdiction over school districts. School districts are usually separate from other local jurisdictions, with independent officials and budgets. Educational standards and standardized testing decisions are usually made by state governments. The ages for compulsory education vary by state, beginning at ages five to eight and ending at the ages of fourteen to eighteen. A growing number of states are now requiring compulsory education until the age of 18.

Compulsory education requirements can generally be satisfied by educating children in public schools, state-certified private schools, an approved home school program or in an orphanage. In most public and private schools, education is divided into three levels: elementary school, middle school (sometimes called junior high school), and high school (sometimes referred to as secondary education). In almost all schools at these levels, children are divided by age groups into grades, ranging from kindergarten (followed by first grade) for the youngest children in elementary school, up to twelfth grade, the final year of high school. The exact age range of students in these grade levels varies slightly from area to area.

Post-secondary education, better known as “college” in the United States, is generally governed separately from the elementary and high school system, and is described in a separate section below.

School grades Most children enter the public education system around ages five

or six. The American school year traditionally begins in August or September, after the traditional summer recess. Children are assigned into year groups known as grades, beginning with preschool, following by kindergarten and culminating in twelfth grade. Children customarily advance together from one grade to the next as a single cohort or “class” upon reaching the end of each school year in May or

90

June, although developmentally disabled children may be held back a grade and gifted children may skip ahead early to the next grade.

Basically, the USA education system comprises of 12 grades of study over 12 calendar years of primary and secondary education before graduating and becoming eligible for college admission. After pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, there are five years in primary school. After completing five grades, the student will enter secondary school to get the high school diploma after successful completion of twelve grades.

Thus, Americans are more likely to say “First Grade” rather than “Grade One”. Typical ages and grade groupings in public and private schools may be found through the U.S. Department of Education Many different variations exist across the country. Those who complete high school and would like to attend college or university must attend undergraduate school. These are schools that offer either a two-year degree or a four-year degree in a specific course of study. The course of study is called the ‘major’, which comprises of the main or special subjects. The next level of education system in the US is graduate school. After getting the undergraduate degree, the education can be continued for next two levels. The first one is, studying to get master’s degree’ as an extended specialized study of the subject taken up in the under graduation course. It is of two years duration. The next level is to pursue PhD that leads to a doctorate degree. The minimum duration for this is about three years and may vary up to even seven to eight years depending upon the specialized and chosen topic and the ability of students in presenting their thesis.

Preschool There are no mandatory public prekindergarten or crèche programs

in the United States. The federal government funds the Head Start preschool program for children of low-income families, but most families are on their own with regard to finding a preschool or childcare.

Elementary and secondary education Schooling is compulsory for all children in the United States, but

the age range for which school attendance is required varies from state to state. Most children begin elementary education with kindergarten (usually five to six years old) and finish secondary education with

91

twelfth grade (usually eighteen years old). In some cases, pupils may be promoted beyond the next regular grade. Some states allow students to leave school between 14 and 17 with parental permission, before finishing high school; other states require students to stay in school until age 18.

Most parents send their children to either a public or private institution. According to government data, one-tenth of students are enrolled in private schools. Approximately 85% of students enter the public schools, largely because they are free. Most students attend school for around six hours per day, and usually anywhere from 175 to 185 days per year. Most schools have a summer break period for about two and half months from June through August. Parents may also choose to educate their own children at home; 1.7% of children are educated in this manner.

Elementary school Elementary school is a school of kindergarten through fifth grade

(sometimes, the first eight grades or up to fourth grade or sixth grade), where basic subjects are taught. Elementary school provides and often remains in one or two classrooms throughout the school day, with the exceptions of physical education (“P.E.” or “gym”), library, music, and art classes. Typically, the curriculum within public elementary education is determined by individual school districts. The school district selects curriculum guides and textbooks that are reflective of a state’s learning standards and benchmarks for a given grade. Learning Standards are the goals by which states and school districts must meet adequate yearly progress.

Secondary education As part of education in the United States, secondary education

usually covers grades 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 through 12.

Junior and senior high school Middle school and Junior high school are any school intermediate

between elementary school and senior high school. It usually includes sixth, seventh and eighth grade; for “junior high”, ninth grade. Middle school is often used instead of junior high school when demographic

92

factors increase the number of younger students. At this time, students are given more independence as choosing their own classes. Usually, starting in ninth grade, grades become part of a student’s official transcript. Future employers or colleges may want to see steady improvement in grades and a good attendance record on the official transcript.

Generally, at the high school level, students take a broad variety of classes without special emphasis in any particular subject. Curricula vary widely in quality and rigidity; for example, some states consider 65 (on a 100-point scale) a passing grade, while others consider it to be as low as 60 or as high as 75.

The following subjects are fairly universally required in the United States: ● Science (usually two years minimum, normally biology,

chemistry and physics). ● Mathematics (usually two years minimum, normally including

algebra, geometry, algebra II, and/or precalculus/trigonometry). ● English (usually four years minimum, including literature,

humanities, etc). ● Social Science (usually three years minimum, including various

history, government/economics courses). ● Physical education (at least one year).

Electives Many high schools offer a wide variety of Elective courses,

although the availability of such courses depends upon each particular school’s financial resources and desired curriculum emphases.

Common types of electives include: ● Visual arts (drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, film). ● Performing arts (drama, band, chorus, orchestra, dance). ● Technology education (“Shop”; woodworking, metalworking,

automobile repair, robotics). ● Computers (word processing, programming, graphic design). ● Athletics (cross country, football, baseball, basketball, track

and field, swimming, tennis, gymnastics, water polo, soccer, wrestling, cheerleading, Volleyball, lacrosse, ice hockey, field hockey, boxing, skiing/snowboarding).

93

● Publishing (journalism/student newspaper, yearbook/annual, literary magazine).

● Foreign languages (Spanish, French are common; Chinese, Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Arabic, and Japanese are less common).

● Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Advanced courses Many high schools provide Advanced Placement (AP) or

International Baccalaureate (IB) courses. These are special forms of honors classes where the curriculum is more challenging and lessons more aggressively paced than standard courses. AP or IB courses are usually taken during the 11th or 12th grade of high school.

Home schooling There were 1.5 million children that were home schooled in 2007,

up 74% from 1999 when the U.S. Department of Education first started keeping statistics. This was 2.9% of all children. Many select moral or religious reasons for home schooling their children. The second main category is unschooling, those who prefer a non-standard approach to education. Parents often form groups to help each other in the homeschooling process, and may even assign classes to different parents, similar to public and private schools.

Grading scale In schools in the United States children are continually assessed

throughout the school year by their teachers, and report cards are issued to parents at varying intervals. Generally the scores for individual assignments and tests are recorded for each student in a grade book, along with the maximum number of points for each assignment. At any time, the total number of points for a student when divided by the total number of possible points produces a percent grade, which can be translated to a letter grade. Letter grades are often but not always used on report cards at the end of a marking period, although the current grade may be available at other times (particularly when an electronic grade book connected to an online service is in use). Although grading scales usually differ from school to school, the most common grade scale is letter grades – “A” through “F” – derived from a scale of 0-100

94

or a percentile. In some areas, Texas or Virginia for example, the “D” grade (or that below 70) is considered a failing grade. In other jurisdictions, such as Hawaii, a “D” grade is considered passing in certain classes, and failing in others.

Standardized Testing All American states must test students in public schools statewide to

ensure that they are achieving the desired level of minimum education. The SAT and ACT are the most common standardized tests that

students take when applying to college. Extracurricular Activities A major characteristic of American schools is the high priority

given to sports, clubs and activities by the community, the parents, the schools and the students themselves. Extracurricular activities are educational activities not falling within the scope of the regular curriculum but under the supervision of the school. These activities can extend to large amounts of time outside the normal school day; home-schooled students, however, are not normally allowed to participate. Student participation in sports programs, drill teams, bands, and spirit groups can amount to hours of practices and performances. Most states have organizations that develop rules for competition between groups. These organizations are usually forced to implement time limits on hours practiced as a prerequisite for participation. Sports programs and their related games, especially football and/or basketball, are major events for American students and for larger schools can be a major source of funds for school districts. In addition to sports, numerous non-athletic extracurricular activities are available in American schools, both public and private. Activities include musical groups, marching bands, student government, school newspapers, science fairs, debate teams, and clubs focused on an academic area or cultural interests.

College and University Post-secondary education in the United States is known as college or

university and commonly consists of four years of study at an institution of higher learning. There are 4,352 colleges, universities, and junior colleges in the country. In 2008, 36% of enrolled students graduated from

95

college in four years. 57% completed their undergraduate requirements in six years, at the same college they first enrolled in.

Like high school, the four undergraduate grades are commonly called freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years (alternatively called first year, second year, etc.). Students traditionally apply to receive admission into college, with varying difficulties of entrance. Schools differ in their competitiveness and reputation; generally, the most prestigious schools are private, rather than public. Once admitted, students engage in undergraduate study, which consists of satisfying university and class requirements to achieve a bachelor’s degree in a field of concentration known as a major. (Some students enroll in double majors or “minor” in another field of study.) The most common method consists of four years of study leading to a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), or sometimes another bachelor’s degree such as Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.), Bachelor of Social Work (B.S.W.), Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng.,) or Bachelor of Philosophy (B.Phil.) Five-Year Professional Architecture programs offer the Bachelor of Architecture Degree (B.Arch.) Professional degrees such as law, medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry, are offered as graduate study after earning at least three years of undergraduate schooling or after earning a bachelor’s degree depending on the program. These professional fields do not require a specific undergraduate major, though medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry have set prerequisite courses that must be taken before enrollment.

Costs The vast majority of students (up to 70 percent) lacks the

financial resources to pay tuition up front and must rely on student loans and scholarships from their university, the federal government, or a private lender. All but a few charity institutions charge all students tuition, although scholarships (both merit-based and need-based) are widely available. Generally, private universities charge much higher tuition than their public counterparts, which rely on state funds to make up the difference. Because each state supports its own university system with state taxes, most public universities charge much higher rates for out-of-state students.

96

REFERENCES

1. Allen, Dereck, Smith, Paul: Life and Culture in the English

Speaking World, Milan, La Spiga languages, 1998 2. Crystal, David: English as a Global Language, Cambridge

University Press, 1997 3. Cheshire, Jenny: English Around the World. Sociolinguistical

Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991 4. David, Christopher: British Culture: An Introduction,

Routledge, 1999 5. Farndon, John: British History, Miles Kelly Publishing Ltd,

Essex, 2003 6. Kirby, D.P., The earliest English kings, Edition: 2, revised,

illustrated, Published by Routledge, 2000 7. Edwards, George C., Wattenberg, Martin P., and Lineberry,

Robert L., Government in America: People, Politics and Policy (12th Edition, 2005)

8. Iarovici, Edith, A History of the English Language, Bucureşti, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică, 1973

9. Macdonald, Fiona: 100 things you should know about kings and queens, Miles Kelly Publishing Ltd, Essex, 2005

10. O’Driscoll, James: Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000

11. Oxenden, Clive, Latham-Koenig, Christina, English File, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007

12. Pyles, Thomas, Words and ways of American English, New York, 1952

13. Roberts, Rachel, Roberts, J., The English Speaking World, Milan, Modern Languages, 2006

14. Sedeen, Margaret, Star-Spangled Banner, National Geographic Society, Book division, 2001;

15. Strong, Roy, Coronation – From the 8th to the 21st Century, Harper Perennial, London, 2006

16. Volman, Jane, Straus, Ira, No Frontiers: English Speaking World, Milan, La Spiga languages, 2006

97

17. *** An Outline of American History, United States Information Agency, 1994

18. *** Webster’s New World Dictionary of American Language, Cleveland and New York, 1959

19. www.britainusa.com/sections/index 20. http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-

universities/2009/10/20/worlds-best-universities-top-200 21. http://www.alternet.org/story/ 22. http://www.britannia.com/history/stgeorge.html. 23. http://www.nndb.com/edu 24. http://www.anglobilia.com/culture.html 25. http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk 26. www.usatoday.com