The Queen's century of change | HistoryExtra
"‘And from the highs of the roaring 20s, we come to the lows of the 30s and the Great Depression. Can you tell us how that affects England?’
‘I can indeed. And you know, the funny thing actually, this is a brilliant example of how people view British history through the distorting prism of America. Because first of all, the 20s didn't roar in Britain. There's no roaring 20s in Britain, and in Britain, there's actually not much of a transition between the 20s and 30s, because you had quite high unemployment and lots of industrial unrest in Britain in the 20s. But then also, conversely, the Depression wasn't that bad in Britain. It wasn't as bad in Britain, as it was almost anywhere else… it doesn't start in Britain with the Wall Street crash at all. That's complete nonsense. But so at the peak of it's probably 1931 to 1935. It's a big economic downturn, and it particularly hits the north. So it's very regionally specific’...
‘The Second World War is seismic for Britain. I mean, the Second World War is by far the defining moment, I suppose, of the, of the Queen's lifetime, defining, I suppose, in the way that Britain sees itself... the Queen herself is involved in it, because her father says, you know, we will never leave Buckingham Palace, we’ll stay there even during the Blitz when it's been bombed. And she and her sister Margaret, they sort of become patriotic icons, really in the in the Second World War. This is they're doing their bit too, you know, driving Land Rovers or whatever or sort of doling things out to kids at photo ops and stuff. That’s because there's only four of them.
The royal family seems very small at that point, I think in the 1940s, at least in the public imagination. And I think that family becomes this kind of surrogate for Britain itself. They're seen as kind of a microcosm of the nation. And that sense of sort of duty and service. You know, it's the Queen has always kind of incarnated, you know, almost to the point of cliche. I think she gets a lot of that from the kind of rhetoric of wartime and that's when she comes of age, really. So that in her formative years, the airwaves as it were full of all this stuff about, you know, doing your bit for the country and all this and I think she absolutely absorbs this, and then basically lives it for the rest of her life’
‘It’s one of the ironies, isn't it when you're thinking about how Britain's changed in her lifetime? The one thing that seems to not have changed is the Queen herself. She's been very reliable and consistent.’
‘Yes. And that's been the trick, hasn't it? I mean, actually, it's a really, really interesting conjuring trick. And the Queen is, I think, massively underrated as a political operator. Because on the one hand, she appears not to have changed at all. And to be completely consistent, but actually, she has changed. And a very good example of that. Academics have have spent, you know, many happy hours listening to the Queen's Christmas broadcasts back to back, who would do that for fun? Anyway, they have, and they've tracked the ways that her accent has changed, become more demotic, become you know less, it's hard to believe, but it's become sort of less niche and sort of strangulated over the years. So the Queen has changed, but very subtly. And while always presenting herself as a kind of bulwark of stability. And of course, in turbulent political times, that makes her appeal all the greater’...
‘The washing machine, probably the most underrated sort of historical innovation of the 20th century because what the washing machine does is it liberates housewives, from the, the hours of drudgery of washing, and then drying clothes. And once you don't need to do that, then obviously you can start looking for other ways to spend your time on. One of them is to go and to, go and work. So there's a real sense in the 1950s I think, that it's weird that people look back now and they think of the 50s as terribly staid and done and the 60s as when it all happens, but actually all the foundations for that are laid in the 1950s.’
‘And this is something I wanted to ask you, did the 60s really swing?’
‘So typical historian’s answer: yes and no, they do swing for quite a small minority of people. So if you're that that, you know, 10th of the, of the country who goes in, goes to university, less than 10th in lots of areas actually. And you're affluent. You are kind of outward looking. You live in London, particularly, then yes, it does swing. It does seem like a world of parties, especially if you're aged between kind of 18 and 25. If you live in Barnsley, and you, you're 38 and you've got kids and stuff, do the 60s swing? They don't swing, they're just an extension of the 50s in many ways. They're, you’re, you're better off than ever before. You are kind of broadening your horizons and stuff, going on more day trips, going on the holidays, eating out more, you know redecorating your house, maybe buying a new house, all those kinds of things. Are you going to orgies and hanging around with Paul McCartney? Pretty unlikely.’...
‘And then the 50s and 60s, hundreds of 1000s of immigrants come to Britain. How does this change the nation?’
‘Well, it's an interesting one about immigration, actually, because the sort of trend now is to say, well, oh, there always been lots of black people in Britain. So this wasn't such a big change. I don't think that's right. Actually, I think it was a very big change. And you can tell that from the the accounts of immigrants themselves, when they come they describe the reaction. So the hostility sometimes, but also people are very curious. It may shock some listeners, but it was intensely unpopular, probably the single most unpopular developments of the 1950s and 1960s. But Britain badly needed labour.
There's also a sort of push factor from the colonies, people want to move to, maybe sometimes to escape sort of straightened [sp?] economic conditions. They believe, they believe they believe a lot of the rhetoric about Imperial brotherhood, they want to make better lives for themselves in what they've been told for years is the mother country and so on. So yes, you have hundreds of 1000s of people moving to Britain from basically two parts of the world, one the Caribbean, islands of the Caribbean, and the other India and Pakistan. And they tend to settle in specific areas that need jobs that need that have, you know, that need labor. So for example, the Mill Towns in West Yorkshire, or in London, or in the West Midlands, they work in, immigrants work in the foundries and so on, or they work driving buses, and all these kinds of things, or for the NHS,
The tragedy is that actually, some of this areas that attract high immigration in the 1950s, are then going to decline massively 10 or 20 years later. So for some immigrant communities, the ladder that they might reasonably expect will be there in 10, or 20 years time for their children ends up disappearing...
Brexit was probably quite good for the Queen and for the monarchy, because because they're in a very, very hyper politicized age. And basically, everybody claimed to have all this great knowledge about a question they hadn't thought about before 2016 and was incredibly impassioned, and had this belief that they want the forces of light and their opponents with the forces of darkness.
The queen, having no opinion about anything at all, seemed like this beacon of sense and, and non involvement in this sort of massive bear pit. And I think in many ways that that was probably quite good for the, for the royal families reputation, because it meant that they were, you know, if we'd had a president, an elected president who had strong political views then that President will, obviously been drawn into the Brexit debate and so on. The Queen stayed out, and it did a lot of good I would imagine.'"
To liberals, Britain always having had some black people is the same as Britain always having had a lot of black people. And that is how they fabricate history