ECONOMY
From 1981 to 1989 theBritish economy experienced eight years of sustained growth at the annualaverage rate over 3%. However, subsequently Britain and other majorindustrialized nations were severely affected by recession. In Britain growthslowed to 0.6% in 1990, and in 1991 gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 2.3%.GDP fell in 1992 as a whole by 0.4%, but it rose slightly in the second half ofthe year. The recovery strengthened during the first part of 1993; with GDP inthe second quarter being 2% higher than a year earlier; the European Commissionexpected Britain to be the fastest growing of all major European economies in1993 and1994.
Recentindications that the recovery is under may include:
· anincrease in manufacturing output;
· asteady upward trend in retail sales;
· increasesin new car registrations;
· recordlevels of exports;
· increasedbusiness and consumer confidence; and
· signsof greater activity in the housing market.
The Government’s policy is to ensuresustainable economic growth through low inflation and sound public finances.The Government’s economic policy is set in the context of a medium-termfinancial strategy, which is revived each year. Within this strategy, monetaryand fiscal policies are designed to defeat inflation. Short-term interest ratesremain the essential instrument of monetary policy.
Macroeconomic policy isdirected towards keeping down the rate of inflation as the basis forsustainable growth, while micro-economic policies seek to improve the workingof markets and encourage enterprise, efficiency and flexibility throughmeasures such as privatization, deregulation and tax reforms.
The economy is now benefiting fromsubstantially lower interest rates. In September 1993 base interest rates wereat 6%. They had been cut by 9 percentage points since October 1990, and were attheir lowest since 1977.INDUSTRY
Private enterprises generate overthree-quarters of total domestic income. Since 1979 the Government hasprivatized 46 major businesses and reduced the state-owned sector of industryby about two-thirds. The Government is taking measures to cut unnecessaryregulations imposed on business, and runs a number of schemes which providedirect assistance or advice to small and medium-sized businesses.
In some sectors a small number oflarge companies and their subsidiaries are responsible for a substantialproportion of total production, notably in the vehicle, aerospace and transportequipment industries. Private enterprises account for the greater part of activityin the agricultural, manufacturing, construction, distributive, financial andmiscellaneous service sectors. The private sector contributed 75% of totaldomestic final expenditure in 1992, general government 24 % and publiccorporations 1%.
About 250 British industrialcompanies in the latest reporting period each had an annual turnover of morethan £500 million. The annual turnover of the biggest company, BritishPetroleum’, makes it the llth largest industrial grouping in the world and thesecond largest in Europe. Five British firms are among the top 25 EuropeanCommunity companies.FINANCE
The service industries, which includefinance, retailing, tourism and business services, contribute about 65% ofgross domestic product and over 70% of employment. Britain is responsible forsome 10% of the world’s exports of services; overseas earnings from servicesamounted to 30% of the value of exports of manufactures in 1992. The number ofemployees in services rose from over 13 million in 1982 to 15.5 million by theend of 1992, much of the rise being accounted for by growth in parttime(principally female) employment.
Average real disposable income perhead increased by nearly three-quarters between 1971 and 1990 and this wasreflected in a rise in consumer spending of financial, personal and leisureservices and on the maintenance and repair of consumer durables. Demand forBritish travel, hotel and catering services rose as real incomes in Britain andother countries increased. The spread of home ownership, particularly duringthe 1980s, increased demand for legal and state agency services.
Britain is a major financial centre,housing some of the world’s leading banking, insurance, securities, shipping,commodities, futures, and other financial services and markets. Financialservices are an important source of employment and overseas earnings. Businessservices include advertising, market research, management consultancy,exhibition and conference facilities, computing services and auction houses.
By the year 2000, tourism is expectedto be the world’s biggest industry, and Britain is one of the world’s leadingtourist destinations. The industry is Britain’s second largest, employingnearly 7% of the workforce. Retailing is also a major employer and Britain hasan advanced distribution network. An important trend in retailing is the growthof out-of-town shopping centres.
The computing services industrycontinues to be one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy, andinformation technology is widely used in retailing and financial services.
A notable trend in the servicessector is the growth of franchising, an operation in which a company owningthe rights to a particular form of trading licenses them to franchises, usuallyby means of an initial payment with continuing royalties. The main areasinclude cleaning services, film processing, print shops, hair-dressing andcosmetics, fitness centres, courier delivery, car rental, engine tuning andservicing, and fast food retailing. It is estimated that franchising’s share oftotal retail sales is over 3%, a figure which is likely to increase.DEFENCE
The strength of the regular armedforces, all volunteers, was nearly 271,000 in mid-1993 — 133,000 in the Army,79,300 in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 58,500 in the Royal Navy and RoyalMarines. There were 18,800 women personnel — 7,500 in the Army, 6,800 in theRAF, and 4,400 in the Royal Navy.
British forces’ main military rolesare to:
· ensurethe protection and security of Britain and its dependent territories;
· ensureagainst any major external threat to Britain and its allies; and
· contributetowards promoting Britain’s wider security interests through the maintenanceof international peace and security.
Most of Britain’s nuclear andconventional forces are committed to NATO and about 95% of defence expenditureto meeting its NATO responsibilities. In recognition of the changed Europeansecurity situation, Britain’s armed forces are being restructured inconsultation with other NATO allies.
Under these plans, the strength ofthe armed forces is being cut by 22%, leaving by the mid-1990s some 119,000 inthe Army, 70,000 in the RAF and 52,500 in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines.This involves reductions in main equipment of:
· threeTornado GR1 squadrons, four Phantom squadrons, two Buccaneer squadrons and partof a squadron of Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft;
· 12submarines, nine destroyers and frigates and 13 mine
· countermeasuresships; and
· 327main battle tanks.
Civilian staff employed bythe Ministry of Defence will be reduced from 169,100 in 1991 to 135,000.
As a member of NATO, Britain fullysupports the Alliance’s current strategic concept, under which its tasks areto:
· helpto provide a stable security environment, in which no country is able tointimidate or dominate any European country through the threat or use of force;
· serveas a transatlantic forum for Allied consultations affecting member states’vital interests; deter from aggression and defend member states againstmilitary attack; and
· preservethe strategic balance within Europe.
THE PRESS, RADIO AND TELEVISION
National Daily and Sunday Papers.
The British buy more newspapers thanany other people except Swedes and the Japanese. The daily press differs intwo obvious ways from that of any similar western European country. First, allover Britain most people read “national” papers, based in London, whichaltogether sell more copies than all eighty-odd provincial papers combined.Second, there is a striking difference between the five “quality” papers’ andthe six mass-circulation popular “tabloids”.
These characteristics are still moresalient with the Sunday press. Almost no papers at all are published in Britainon Sundays except “national” ones: six “popular”’ and five “quality” based inLondon. Three appear on Sundays only; the others are associated with dailieswhich have the same names but different editors, journalists and layouts. The“quality” Sunday papers devote large sections to literature and the arts. Theyhave colour supplements and are in many ways more like magazines thannewspapers. They supply quite different worlds of taste and interest from the“popular” papers.
Scotland has two important “quality”papers, “The Scotsman” in Edinburgh and the “Glasgow Herald”.
The dominance of the national pressreflects the weakness of regional identity among the English. The gap inquality is not so much between Labour and Conservative, as between levels ofability to read and appreciate serious news presented seriously. Of the fivequality morning papers only “The Daily Telegraph” is solidly Conservative;nearly all its readers are Conservatives. “The Times” and “Financial Times”have a big minority of non-Conservative readers. Of the popular papers only the“Daily Mirror” regularly supports Labour. Plenty of Labour voters read popularpapers with Conservative inclinations, but do not change their publican opinionbecause of what they have read. Some of them are interested only in the humaninterest stories and in sport, and may well hardly notice the reporting ofpolitical and economic affairs.
Except in central London thereare very few newspaper kiosks in town streets. This may be because mostpavements are too narrow to have room for them. In towns the local eveningpapers are sold by elderly men and women who stand for many hours, stampingtheir feet to keep warm. Otherwise, newspapers can be bought in shops ordelivered to homes by boys and girls who want to earn money by doing“paper-rounds”.
Most of the newspapers are owned bybig companies, some of which have vast interests in other things, ranging fromtravel agencies to Canadian forests. Some have been dominated by strongindividuals. The greatest of the press “barons” have not been British inorigin, but have come to Britain from Canada, Australia or Czechoslovakia. Themost influential innovator of modern times is partly Indian, and spent hisearly years in India. He pioneered the introduction of new technology inprinting.
Among the “quality” papers thestrongly Conservative “Daily Telegraph” sells more than twice as many copies asany of the others. It costs less to buy and its reporting of events is verythorough. The “Financial Times” has a narrower appeal, but is not narrowlyrestricted to business news. “The Guardian” has an old liberal tradition, andis in general a paper of the Left.
The most famous of all Britishnewspapers is “The Times”. It is not now, and has never been, an organ of thegovernment, and has no link with any party. In 1981 it and “The Sunday Times”’were taken over by the international press company of the Australian RupertMurdoch, which also owns two of the most “popular” of the national papers. Itseditorial independence is protected by a supervisory body, but in the 1980s ithas on the whole been sympathetic to the Conservative government. The publishedletters to the editor have often been influential, and some lead to, prolongeddiscussion in further letters. Under the Murdoch regime it has continued amovement away from its old austerity.
The popular newspapers are nowcommonly called “tabloids”, a word first used for pharmaceutical substancescompressed into pills. The tabloid newspapers compress the news, and areprinted on small sheets of paper. They use enormous headlines for the leadingitems of each day, which are one day political, one day to do with crime, oneday sport, one day some odd happening. They have their pages of politicalreport and comment, short, often over-simplified but vigorously written and(nowadays) generally responsible. They thrive on sensational stories andexcitement.
The two archetypal popular papers,the “Daily Mail”’ and “Daily Express” were both built up by individual tycoonsin the early 20th century. Both had a feeling for the taste of anewly-literate public: if a man bites a dog, that’s news. The “Daily Express”was built up by a man born in Canada. He became a great man in the land, aclose friend and associate of Winston Churchill, and a powerful minister in hisWar Cabinet. The circulation of the “Daily Express” at one time exceeded fourmillion copies a day. Now the first Lord Beaverbrook is dead, and the dailysales are not much more than half of their highest figure. The history of the“Daily Mail”, with its more conventional conservatism, is not greatlydifferent.
In popular journalism the “DailyMirror” became a serious rival of the “Express” and “Mail” in the 1940s. Itwas always tabloid, and always devoted more space to picture than to text. Itwas also a pioneer with strip cartoons. After the Second World War it regularlysupported the Labour Party. It soon outdid the “Daily Express” in size ofheadlines, short sentences and exploration of excitement. It also became thebiggest-selling daily newspaper. For many years its sales were about fourmillion; sometimes well above.
Until the 1960s the old “DailyHerald” was an important daily paper reflecting the views of the trade unionsand the Labour Party. Then it went through several changes, until in the 1970sits successor, “The Sun”, was taken over by Mr Murdoch’s company. In its newtabloid form it became a right-wing rival to the “Daily Mirror”, with hugeheadlines and some nudity. In the 1980s its sales reached four million andexceeded the “Daily Mirror”. Mr Murdoch’s News International already owned “TheNews of the World”’, a Sunday paper which has continued to give specialemphasis to scandals. But by 1990 its sales were only two-thirds of theirformer highest figure of eight million.
For a very long time the press hasbeen free from any governmental interference. There has been no censorship, nosubsidy. But for several decades it has seemed that some newspapers have abusedtheir freedom. In competing with one another to get stories to satisfy apublic taste for scandal, reporters and photographers have been tempted toharass individuals who have for one reason or another been involved, directlyor indirectly, in events which could excite public curiosity. Prominent peopleof all kinds, as well as obscure people who come into the news as victims ofcrimes or accidents, have been pursued into their homes for photographs andinterviews.
Local and Regional Papers.
Local morning papers have sufferedfrom the universal penetration of the London-based national press. Less than20 survive in the whole England, and their combined circulation is much lessthan that of “The Sun” alone. Among local daily papers those published in theevenings are much more important. Each of about 70 towns has one, selling onlywithin a radius of 50 to 100 kilometres. The two London evening papers, the“News” and “Standard”, together sold two million copies in 1980, but they couldnot survive, and merged into one, now called “The London Evening Standard”.
Most local daily papers belong to oneor other of the big press empires, which leave their local editors to decideeditorial policy. Mostly they try to avoid any appearance of regular partisanship,giving equal weight to each major political party. They give heavy weight tolocal news and defend local interests and local industries.
The total circulation of allprovincial daily newspapers, morning and evening together, is around eightmillion: about half as great as that of the national papers. In spite of this,some provincial papers are quite prosperous. They do not need their ownforeign correspondents; they receive massive local advertising, particularlyabout things for sale.
The truly local papers are weekly.They are not taken very seriously, being mostly bought for the usefulinformation contained in their advertisements. But for a foreign visitorwishing to learn something of the flavour of a local community, the weeklylocal paper can be useful. Some of these papers are now given away, not soldout but supported by the advertising.
The Weekly and Periodical Press.
Good English writing is often to befound in the weekly political and literary journals, all based in London, allwith nationwide circulations in the tens of thousands. “The Economist”, foundedin 1841, probably has no equal everywhere. It has a coloured cover and a fewphotographs inside, so that it looks like “Time”’, “Newsweek” or “Der Spiegel”,but its reports have more depth and breadth than any these. It covers worldaffairs, and even its American section is more informative about America thanits American equivalents. Although by no means “popular”, it is vigorous in itscomments, and deserves the respect in which it is generally held. “Spectator”is a weekly journal of opinion. It regularly contains well-written articles,often politically slanted. It devotes nearly half its space to literature andthe arts.
“The Times” has three weeklysupplements, all appeared and sold separately. The “Literary Supplement” isdevoted almost entirely to book reviews, and covers all kinds of new literature.It makes good use of academic contributors, and has at last, unlike “TheEconomist”, abandoned its old tradition of anonymous reviews. “New Scientist”4,published by the company which owns the “Daily Mirror”, has good and seriousarticles about scientific research, often written by academics yet useful forthe general reader.
One old British institution, thesatirical weekly “Punch”’, survives, more abrasive than in an earliergeneration yet finding it hard to keep the place it once had in a more securesocial system. Its attraction, particularly for one intellectual youth, hasbeen surpassed by a new rival, “Private Eye”, founded in 1962 by people who,not long before, had run a pupils’ magazine in Shrewsbury School. Itsscandalous material is admirably written on atrocious paper and its circulationrivals that of “The Economist”.
Glossy weekly or monthly illustratedmagazines cater either for women or for any of a thousand special interests.Almost all are based in London, with national circulations, and the women’smagazines sell millions of copies. These, along with commercial television, arethe great educators of demand for the new and better goods offered by themodern consumer society. In any big newsagent’s shop the long rows of brightlycovered magazines seem to go on for ever; beyond the large variety of appealsto women and teenage girls come those concerned with yachting, tennis, modelrailways, gardening and cars. For every activity there is a magazine, supportedmainly by its advertisers, and from time to time the police bring a pile ofpornographic magazines to local magistrates, who have the difficult task ofdeciding whether they are sufficiently offensive to be banned.
These specialist magazines are notcheap. They live off an infinite variety of taste, curiosity and interest.Their production, week by week and month by month, represents a fabulous amountof effort and of felled trees. Television has not killed the desire to read.
Radio and Television.
Since the 1970s 98% of Britishhouseholds have had television sets able to receive four channels, two put outby the BBC, two by commercial companies. Commercial satellite and cable TVbegan to grow significantly in 1989-1990, and by 1991 the two main companiesoperating in Britain had joined together as British Sky Broadcasting. By 1991about one household in ten had the equipment to receive this material.
Every household with TV must by lawpay for a licence, which costs about the same for a year as a popular newspaperevery day.
Unlike the press, mass broadcastinghas been subject to some state control from its early days. One agreed purposehas been to ensure that news, comment and discussion should be balanced andimpartial, free of influence by government or advertisers. From 1926 firstradio, then TV as well, were entrusted to the BBC, which still has a board ofgovernors appointed by the government. The BBC’s monopoly was ended in 1954,when an independent board was appointed by the Home Secretary to give licencesto broadcast (“franchises”) to commercial TV companies financed by advertising,and called in general independent television (ITV). These franchises have beengiven only for a few years at a time, then renewed subject to variousconditions.
In 1990 Parliament passed a long andcomplex new Broadcasting Act which made big changes in the arrangements forcommercial TV and radio. The old Independent Broadcasting Authority, which hadgiven, franchises to the existing TV and radio companies, was abolished. In itsplace, for TV alone, a new Independent Television Commission was set up in1991, with the task of awarding future franchises, early in the 1990s, eitherto the existing companies or to new rivals which were prepared to pay a higherprice. The Commission also took over responsibility for licensing cableprogramme services, including those satellite TV channels which are carried oncable networks. The new law did not change the status of the BBC, but it didhave the purpose of increasing competition, both among broadcasters and amongproducers. It envisaged that a new commercial TV channel, TVS, would start inthe early 1990s.
The general nature of the four TVchannels functioning in 1991, seems likely to continue, with BBC1 and ITVproducing a broadly similar mixture of programmes in competition with eachother. ITV has a complex structure. Its main news is run by one company,Independent Television News, its early morning TV— a.m. by another. There areabout a dozen regional companies which broadcast in their regions for most eachday, with up to ten minutes of advertisements in each hour, between programmesor as interruptions at intervals of twenty or thirty minutes. These regionalcompanies produce some programmes of local interest and some which they sell toother regions, so that for much of each day the same material is put out allthrough the country. Some of BBCl’s programmes are similarly produced by its regionalstations. BBC2 and the independent Channel 4 (which has its own company) areboth used partly for special interest programmes and for such things ascomplete operas.
By international standards it couldreasonably be claimed that the four regular channels together provide anabove-average service, with the balance giving something to please most tastesand preferences. Some quiz-shows and “soap operas”’, or long-running sagas,attract large numbers of viewers and to some extent the BBC competes forsuccess in this respect. But minority preferences are not overlooked. In Walesthere are Welsh-language programmes for the few who want them. There are foreignlanguage lessons for the general pubic, as well as the special programmes forschools and the Open University2. BBC news has always kept areputation for objectivity, and the independent news service is of similarquality.
Television is probably the mostimportant single factor in the continuous contest for the public’s favourbetween the political parties. Parties and candidates cannot buy advertisingtime. At intervals each channel provides time for each of the three mainpolitical parties for party-political broadcasts, and during an electioncampaign a great deal of time is provided for parties’ election, always on anequal basis.
Minor parties get time, based partlyon the number of their candidates. In Wales and Scotland the nationalistparties get TV time on the same basis as the three others. Studios and transmittersmust be provided free of charge. But often a party prefers to film a broadcastoutside the studio at its own expense, for greater impact.
BBC TV Europe broadcasts some of itsown programmes by satellite, and from 1991 BBC TV International began to selland distribute its World Service TV news in English and some other languages.
The BBC’s Radio 4 is the main generalinterest radio service, with some items run by regional studios. Radio 3 is forminority interests, including music, “2” for light entertainment, “1” for popmusic and “5” for sport, education and children’s programmes. There are alsoseveral dozens local BBC radio stations, covering the whole country. The worldwide radio service has been established for long time, and is the activity ofthe BBC to receive a government subsidy.
The BBC runs several dozens of localradio stations, which compete with independent commercial rivals, financed byadvertisements. All provide a mixture of local news and comment, with someentertainment matter, mainly pop music, in between. In the 1990s there shouldbe one or more new commercial radio stations broadcasting nationwide, includingone “non-pop” station, possibly for continuous broadcasts of classical music.