The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)
20
The
United Kingdom “is probably the most homogeneous of all industrial
countries. It is homogeneous because
it is small, but this is not the only reason,
some smaller countries, like Belgium or Switzerland, have more
social diversity
than Britain. Moreover, sources of diversity are also present in Britain, as is
shown
by the division of the United Kingdom into four countries, England,
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
What makes Britain appear homogeneous
is the fact that the population is not uniformly spread in the four
countries but
highly concentrated in a small area. In the early part of the nineteenth century,
the
population of England became much greater than that of the three other
countries combined, and a century
later, Southern Ireland seceded from the
United Kingdom. As a result, over 80% of the whole British
population now
reside in England. “17 Even in England itself one
would find more diversity if the
population were uniformly spread over the 50,000 square miles. In fact,
the
concentration of population is in a strip of territory of roughly half the whole area
of England. In
all the counties which form the thickly populated area, there live
thirty five million people, or 80% of all
Englishmen and two-thirds of the
population of the British Isles. “The population is not only heavily
concentrated
in the centre and South-East. It also came to be agglomerated in large
conurbations on a
scale which has not been achieved in other industrial
countries.”18
Almost two-fifths of the British people live in the seven major
conurbations and almost one-fifth in the
largest of all, the Metropolis. Urban areas
are much more important in the social structure of Britain than
they are in France,
Italy or even Germany. “Within the central part of England the predominance
of
London increases the homogeneous character of the country. Germany never
really had a capital; Italy
has two; the supremacy of Paris has had to be imposed.
London did not become the political, social, economic,
cultural capital of the
country as a result of a decision taken by some seventeenth – or eighteenth
–
century monarch. It has long been unchallenged, even though its predominance
may still be resented in
many parts of the provinces.”19 London is located in such
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