History of England 1-6

For those with eyes to see, some modest gains were apparent. British Aerospace took over the Marconi defence electronics arm of the GEC, becoming Europe’s biggest defence and aerospace company. Signs of progress emerged elsewhere, too. The government again voted to lower the age of sexual consent for homosexuals. Other liberal measures were assured of a similar progress. The death penalty was formally abolished for all offences, in accordance with Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In February 1999, the Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence case was published. The report became famous for its controversial use of the term ‘institutional racism’ to describe the workings of the Metropolitan Police, though a close reading of the report reveals something more circumspect:

It is vital to stress that neither academic debate nor the evidence presented to us leads us to say or conclude that an accusation that institutional racism exists in the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] implies that the policies of the MPS are racist. No such evidence is before us … It is in the implementation of policies and in the words and actions of officers acting together that racism may become apparent.

The expression referred to a culture in which even black officers were by their own admission often complicit. Clearly something had floated up between the cracks of policy.

The government suffered three defeats in the House of Lords over plans to abolish the hereditary component of the upper chamber. Blair himself expressed a certain affection for the sanctuary of ermine and scarlet, but remarked, ‘I just don’t see what it’s got to do with Britain today.’ The House of Lords Act of 1999 reduced the number of hereditary peers to ninety-one; thus the great reform of the upper house was at last achieved. But if Blair or his successors imagined that an elected house would be more pliable than a hereditary one, they were quickly disabused.

Nonetheless, many born to privilege were tottering. Jonathan Aitken, whose hubristic lawsuit against the Guardian newspaper had backfired, was forced to plead guilty in 1999 to two charges of perjury. Accused of corruption by both the Guardian and World in Action, he had sued them, armed with imprudent clichés about the ‘sword of truth’, before the sword duly turned on him. Like Oscar Wilde, he went to jail and wrote a ballad, and, like Profumo, he began a lifetime of penitence.

Social amelioration proceeded apace. A £60 million government campaign to halve the incidence of under-eighteen pregnancies by 2010 was announced; single mothers must be protected, but underage pregnancies avoided. Somehow, a Cromwellian politics could coexist with cavalier liberty. Like Margaret Thatcher, Blair wanted a Britain that would suit his own personality.

Much that was odd or wayward died in this time, though much of the same strand was born. Screaming Lord Sutch of the Monster Raving Loony party gave up his anarchic ghost. And yet a Carnival against Capitalism broke out in the heart of capitalism itself, the City of London. It was, by later standards, a happy affair, with a spoof edition of the Evening Standard, the Evading Standard, printed and circulated. In similarly quixotic fashion, Tony Blair announced his bill to ban hunting with hounds in July 1999, as the Countryside Alliance had predicted, even though they could not have foreseen the forum for that announcement, on the television programme Question Time. It was also a busy month for relations with the Continent. The European Commission formally lifted its ban on beef imports from Britain. The great matter of Europe impinged in other respects. Forty, mainly religious, independent schools confirmed that they would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against legislation banning corporal punishment in all UK schools. The irony of such an appeal was lost on them.

In December 1999, the Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998, came into force. For thirty years, the Troubles had blighted Northern Ireland; over 4,000 lives had been lost. How could a tourniquet to the bloodletting be applied? Somehow, irreconcilable demands must be respected and met. Under the government of John Major, a ‘three-strand’ solution to the problems of the Province had been mooted. Under Blair, this was now implemented. The central suggestion was radical indeed. Northern Ireland would remain a part of the United Kingdom, but only for as long as the majority of its citizens wished it so. The ‘Good Friday Agreement’, as it became known, would not have been possible without careful movements in the wings of power. Two taoiseachs, three prime ministers, a president of the United States and the leaders of both the nationalist and Unionist communities of Northern Ireland all brought about the conditions for a devolved Assembly and Executive, for ‘north-south’ cooperation between the north and the Republic, and for ‘east-west’ cooperation across the Irish Sea.