"A Very British Transition" - A Post-Junta Britain TL

I suspect Irvine Welsh probably emigrated. He lived in Dublin for a while I believe and now lives in Chicago. Either that or he joined a resistance movement or got caught up in drugs (or both) and winded ended up dead. His anarchistic, republican views would not be welcome in TTL's UK.

Edit: Jinxed by the author, who should always have the final say.

Speaking of Queen, I wonder what happened to all the punk acts we know in OTL. I remember hearing a great story about an altercation between Sid Vicious and Freddie Mercury when they were recording in the same studio. Freddie Mercury had just been in the papers saying he wanted to 'bring the music of ballet to the masses, or something similar. Anyway, Sid Vicious put his head through the door and said 'have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?', to which Freddie Mercury replied 'aren't you Stanley Ferocious or something?' I never liked Queen personally while I'm a huge punk fan but whoever you think came off better it's a great story.
Punk absolutely played a large role in the various left resistance movements, as such it was hashly repressed by the Junta. The underground communist party would frequently put on secret fundraisers with big punk acts, lots of the folks who were involved in Rock Against Racism OTL like Billy Bragg would be involved in these "Rock for Freedom" gigs.
 

Pangur

Donor
Found this thread today and just caught up reading. Quite a good read, well done! There one part to this that does not make sense what so ever and that's Ireland, all of it.

2005 election results zero for Sinn Fein? After what has touched on thats really hard to believe
This starts in 1968 when the Civll rights movement was a thing in NI, so what happened there?
There are references to heavy violent ireland, Plausible to say the least of it. With a regime as described in London then an invasion on the south is way to likely
How are Irish community going to react to any of this - Johnson was JFK`s vice president, so he would be aware of the power of that group
I if we don't have an invasion, the ROI arming up is a certainty, how thats gets paid for is another matter
Did the ROI join the EEC in 1973 as per OTL ?
 
How was the coup viewed by the USSR?
What were the junta's relations with the Soviet Union and later on Russia like?
One of the driving forces behind the coup seems to have been the Wilson Government's perceived links to the Soviet Union. Was there any truth to this or did things turn into a witch hunt?
 
Found this thread today and just caught up reading. Quite a good read, well done! There one part to this that does not make sense what so ever and that's Ireland, all of it.

2005 election results zero for Sinn Fein? After what has touched on thats really hard to believe
This starts in 1968 when the Civll rights movement was a thing in NI, so what happened there?
There are references to heavy violent ireland, Plausible to say the least of it. With a regime as described in London then an invasion on the south is way to likely
How are Irish community going to react to any of this - Johnson was JFK`s vice president, so he would be aware of the power of that group
I if we don't have an invasion, the ROI arming up is a certainty, how thats gets paid for is another matter
Did the ROI join the EEC in 1973 as per OTL ?
Hi there, thanks for your kind words!

Sinn Fein did win seats, just not enough to get on the wikibox, they won 4 of Northern Ireland's 13 commons seats.

The civil rights movement was heavily repressed, generally leading to a stronger IRA/Sinn Fein and a more militant Irish population in general. The Republic did consider invasion, but the Junta was defacto backed by the states, had a much larger military and nuclear weapons. But Ireland's military is a lot stronger as there were frequent border tensions as refugees from the UK fled to the Republic. Ireland would host many leading British exiles, most notably Prime Minister in Exile Jim Callaghan.

The Irish community abroad were outraged as to be expected, but with both parties supporting the Junta there was nowhere really for them to go.

After the Junta accession negotiations for the UK, Ireland and Denmark. The EU wouldn't enlarge until the 80s, leading to a much smaller but integrated EU.
 

Pangur

Donor
Hi there, thanks for your kind words!

Sinn Fein did win seats, just not enough to get on the wikibox, they won 4 of Northern Ireland's 13 commons seats.

The civil rights movement was heavily repressed, generally leading to a stronger IRA/Sinn Fein and a more militant Irish population in general. The Republic did consider invasion, but the Junta was defacto backed by the states, had a much larger military and nuclear weapons. But Ireland's military is a lot stronger as there were frequent border tensions as refugees from the UK fled to the Republic. Ireland would host many leading British exiles, most notably Prime Minister in Exile Jim Callaghan.

The Irish community abroad were outraged as to be expected, but with both parties supporting the Junta there was nowhere really for them to go.

After the Junta accession negotiations for the UK, Ireland and Denmark. The EU wouldn't enlarge until the 80s, leading to a much smaller but integrated EU.
Thanks,

I have meant an invasion the other way, UK of ROI
 
How was the coup viewed by the USSR?
What were the junta's relations with the Soviet Union and later on Russia like?
One of the driving forces behind the coup seems to have been the Wilson Government's perceived links to the Soviet Union. Was there any truth to this or did things turn into a witch hunt?
The USSR condemned the coup publicly but privately it was a great propaganda win, now the west had its own version of the tanks rolling into Budapest. Whilst anti-left coups had happened these were mostly in South America, couping the world's fifth largest economy was a lot harder to hide.

Later relations were very poor as the Junta was founded on anti-communist ideals, however as the Soviet Union fell to Putinist Russia relations cooled somewhat, with both nations being pariah states ostracised by the EU.

Whether Wilson genuinely had links to the Soviet Union is disputed to this day. The Wilson of this TL was more left wing than OTL, more of an old Bevanite. Whilst he was suspicious of the US he was still a patriot. There is very little evidence that Wilson was a KGB asset, but some of his policies such as withdrawing British troops from abroad and distancing himself from the US would benefit the Soviets. He was definetly a lot more Salvador Allende rather than Kim Philby.
 
Chapter 27: On That Bombshell
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Britain's nuclear weapon stock was prohibitively expensive, and almost entirely controlled by the Americans

“Junta Britain’s foreign and defence policy followed the US lead. After 9/11 UK defence strategy was judged to need expeditionary forces to intervene against terrorist groups alongside US forces. Even when terror, not communism became the main challenge to the West, Britain’s identity as a ‘nuclear weapon state’ was asserted through a discourse that constructs Britain standing alone against the Soviets/Russia. Dangerous and indecipherable ‘others’ that threaten, or could threaten, the UK with nuclear weapons. The construction of these enemy images is a political process. The Junta refused to acknowledge the absence of a direct strategic threat to British security for a decade after the fall of the soviets. The validity of these enemy images in the context of UK rationales for a nuclear capability was debatable even before the end of the Cold War. Even so, they remained an important ally of in the perceived necessity of a British nuclear capability”
- Relinquishing nuclear weapons: identities, networks and the British bomb, Lecture by Nick Ritchie, University of York (2010)

The word “rogue nuclear state” is tossed around a lot these days. When tanks rolled through Whitehall and political prisoners were locked up it caused a bit of a headache for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, only just signed earlier this year and spearheaded by a British delegation. Sitting bang in the centre of Europe was a nation in great deal of political turmoil, and carrying over a hundred nuclear warheads. It wasn’t a brilliant start for world peace. With the support of the United States Britain held onto her nuclear weapons, but as her economy weakened this nuclear arsenal became more and more dependent on the United States, less of an independent deterrent and more of an oversized US launch pad.

Britain’s economy was in no state to maintain these warheads before the Junta fell, and it certainly wasn’t now. Under the Confidence and Supply agreement with the Socialist Alternative the Johnson Government had promised to scrap its nuclear weapons. South Africa ten years earlier had gone through a similar period of transition, and ending its nuclear arsenal produced a huge amount of goodwill entering the international stage. The Johnson administration hoped to do the same. All the old arguments for keeping nuclear bombs were no longer relevant, Britain had lost her seat on the UN Security Council and the Soviets weren’t going to be crossing the Channel anytime soon. It was time, Johnson argued, to ditch the bomb.

It wasn’t just Britain’s nuclear arsenal that was unwieldy, Britain’s military spending had reached nearly 5% of its GDP and over a 100 billion dollars, more than Russia and Australia combined. With Britain’s budget bloated and dark economic times on the horizon cuts had to be made. Chancellor Simon Hughes proposed reducing overall spending to just 3% of GDP, bringing Britain in line with countries like India and South Korea. On nuclear weapons Johnson found an unlikely ally in Defence Secretary Charles Gunthrie. A hardliner within the military, many had expected Gunthrie to kick off at ditching the bomb, but Gunthrie was a realist and knew the British Military couldn’t survive in its current state. Trident made up over 6% of the UK’s total defence budget. Gunthrie hoped by supporting an end to nuclear weapons, he could use his political capital to reduce cuts to conventional forces.

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The military hoped to protect itself by cooperating and negotiating with the government

“The more nuclear material in circulation, the greater the risk that it falls into the wrong hands. And while governments, no matter how distasteful, are usually capable of being deterred, groups such as al-Qaeda or SNLA, are not. Cold War calculations have been replaced by asymmetrical warfare and suicide missions. At a time when many countries, including Iran and Syria, may be developing a nuclear weapons programme, Britain must set an example. Bringing Britain back into the Non-Proliferation Treaty will reduce the nuclear threat. Achieving real progress in reducing the nuclear weapons threat is the responsibility of all nuclear powers, not the US and Russia. Progress towards a dramatic reduction in the world’s nuclear weapons is possible. The ultimate aspiration should be to have a world free of nuclear weapons. It will take time, but with political will and improvements in monitoring, the goal is achievable. We must act before it is too late, and we can begin by supporting the campaign here at home for a non-nuclear weapons world.”
- Rosie Boycott’s Speech to the House of Commons (2007)

National on the other hand were outraged, Collins pointed to the military cuts as a politically motivated“vendetta” against the armed forces, arguing losing Britain’s nuclear umbrella would leave the island nation defenceless. Collin’s declarations weren’t backed up by the usually so political military apparatus, at other times when the Government went after the military, they would send a General onto the BBC’s Politics Show to set the record straight, now the army men were keeping silent, Gunthrie had kept them in line. Instead behind the scenes Guthrie negotiated with Hughes a compromise. In return for backing Trident scrapping, the Military would see a 35% cut to spending, rather than a 60% cut.

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Chancellor Simon Hughes was a committed unilateralist

With the support of the Alternative and various separatist parties, Hughes’ cuts to the military and the scrapping of Trident passed Parliament. Foreign Secretary Rosie Boycott flew out to Geneva to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and Britain became the fourth country in history to surrender their nuclear weapons. Britain received praise from around the world. UN Secretary General Shashi Tharoor welcomed Britain’s decision as a “victory for peace everywhere” and called on other nuclear states, most notably the US and Russia, to follow Britain’s example.

It was a victory for Johnson but an even greater victory for Gunthrie, the old hardliner had shown himself as a much better political negotiator than many had given him credit for. He kept the UK military’s bloated budget mostly intact, and he had prevented a direct showdown with the forces of government. Gunthrie knew the military was on thin ice after the spying scandal, and that the army establishment couldn’t survive a direct confrontation with the Johnson administration, instead choosing to bide his time. The old Field Marshall hadn’t forgotten the first rule of war, know when to pick your battles.

“We need to be more thoughtful, more strategic and more coordinated in the way we advance our interests and protect our national security. The difficult legacy we have inherited has necessitated tough decisions to get our military back on track. Our national security depends on our economic security and vice versa. So bringing the defence budget back to balance is a vital part of how we protect this country’s national security. Even so, defence budgets will meet the NATO 2% target throughout the next four years. We expect to continue with the third largest military budget in the world. We are proud of everyone who works on our behalf to keep us safe at home and to protect our interests overseas. As a nation we owe them an immense debt of gratitude. They are a fundamental part of our sense of national identity. And it is vital for the security of future generations that these capabilities are retained.” - Foreword by Alan Johnson, The Strategic Defence and Security Review (2007)

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Johnson still didn't trust the military and the feeling was mutual
 
What's the status of the Welsh language ITTL? (Sorry if this has already been answered.)

How many TV channels exist in the UK? Does ITV still exist, for instance?
 
What's the status of the Welsh language ITTL? (Sorry if this has already been answered.)

How many TV channels exist in the UK? Does ITV still exist, for instance?
The Welsh language is a lot weaker than OTL. The Junta mandated only English be taught in schools. Less than 10% of Welsh people can speak the language.

There are less channels than OTL as British TV is a lot less developed. The main ones like BBC and ITV still exist but channels like Sky and Dave don't.
 
Loved the latest update! I really love the world-building you do.

You might enjoy this book review by Colin Kidd, I read it in last month's London Review of Books. The internal politics of OTL IRA feels very relevant to the world you're trying to create.

 
Britain had lost her seat on the UN Security Council
Did not US declare a veto to save UK seat? Who took the seat instead UK? India is a good possibility but this is out of question as a not written (but fundamental) UN rule is that permanent member cannot express the Secretary General and Tharoor is Indian. Maybe EU?
 
Could just have 4 permanent seats and the rest temporary? Divided Germany can't take a seat, it's probably too early for the EU to take a seat...
 
We don’t know when the seat was revoked, it seems strange US giving green light to the coup in the Sixties and then agreeing to revoke the UK seat shortly after, especially during the Cold War era. It could be revoked in 1990s, similarly to US giving up defending South Africa after the end of the Cold War. In this case EU could take the seat. Other options are more difficult: Japan is a defeated WWII nation and China would veto it, Germany is a defeated nation and divided for long time, South Africa is excluded due apartheid, Middle East powers are excluded due multiple vetos, South Korea is divided, Indonesia, Argentina and Mexico are too poor. There are Canada, Australia and maybe Brazil but they sound hard.
 
Honestly, given the support Junta Britain had from Uncle Sam from the day of the coup until the Junta stepped down, I have to wonder if it is reasonable to say Britain lost her US Security Council permanent seat and veto at all--it does seem to me that there would never be a time when the USA would not insist on keeping it.

What I could see happening maybe is an agreement by the USA to suspend UK status on the Security Council on conditional terms. Like King Arthur it is once and future, sleeping but not dead. The deal would be agreed to in the 1990s, when the USSR had collapsed but before 9/11 when it seemed the "end of history" had been reached, by the Clinton administration. (I suspect this is something the President could do without Congress, as it does not involve new treaties, just administering the USA's role in the Security Council, which is a matter of instructions to the Presidentially appointed Ambassador to the UN. The Republicans would be screaming bloody murder about denying the Junta the effective power to veto--at the exact same time as they also sneer at the UN and mutter endlessly about abandoning it completely. But perhaps Clinton could score some cheap points with the American left, such as it is (Clinton would not be catering to them so much as moderates actually) who deplore the Junta--real leftists would be pointing out how serviceable the Junta has actually been and rolling their eyes at the hypocrisy of it all, actually. The compromise with American rightists (and to an extent European ones) would be that Britain retains its charter right, but it is in suspension at the moment.

This would require some retconning, but I think it would serve the basic narrative well. The accord government is provisionally penciled in as having its Security Council seat restored--as soon as certain conditions are met including a fixed cooling off period to see if the new UK regime is at all stable and sustainable or if it will be recaptured by the Junta (or by radical leftists). This is infuriating to British leftist radicals, but the notion of the UN SC having these permanent veto holding members is contrary to their ideals. It is infuriating to the British right, as was having their right suspended by Clinton essentially, but restoring their seat is a carrot being held out that makes more pragmatic or moderate rightists consider they are on their good behavior and must try to rein in their more extreme allies on the right, while also giving the center enough support to keep the far left in check.

Because Britain is not yet settled and the stipulated "cooling off" minimum time span has not yet elapsed, Britain has no effective SC power at the moment, just as in the canon narrative so far. It remains to be seen whether it would be activated later or not.

Realistically, the idea of the 5 veto powers was probably derived in part from Churchill's concept of the post-war order. According to his post-war memoirs of the war years, he proposed a two-tier system, in which just the Big Three would have special power at the level of the global UN organization, but each of these powers--USSR, USA, UK/Commonwealth (I am not sure if Churchill would either propose or settle for a dispersed Commonwealth system giving such dominions as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa real power presumably in proportion to population on a Commonwealth council of some kind shared with the UK itself. I presume even if he were prepared to accept such a compromise he'd prefer to make London's Parliament supreme--since Parliament technically includes the House of Lords, and Lords could be created for the Dominions, there would already be a bit of Commonwealth devolution that way I guess; I imagine Churchill would support beefing up new or revived powers for the Lords). Each superpower, with Britain presumed to continue as such, would be the supreme hegemon in a regional organization--the USA presiding over the Western hemisphere (that is, the New World, since parts of the Old World are technically in that hemisphere, including most of Great Britain, being mostly west of Greenwich Observatory!), and the UK and USSR spheres of interest having been vaguely indicated at Yalta and prior conferences, and finalized post-war. Each would be charged with seeing to it war did not actually break out in their designated bailiwick, and the ability of the global organization to interfere within these spheres would be limited severely, the global system being viewed as a clearinghouse for inter-zone relations.

Subsequently, the USA advocated for China to be included, and wartime developments led to France being granted an equal status as well. Churchill's subdivided spheres of influences lower tier organizations went by the board of course.

In practical terms, a veto is a veto even if none of the other four powers concur, so the Soviet veto initially was set against all four others, "China" being defined as KMT run Nationalist China which after 1949 was able to control only Taiwan, but retained the UN seat with the PRC excluded from the UN completely until the early 1970s, and Britain and France, when push came to shove, pretty much perforce aligned with the USA as well. Eventually switching recognition from RoC to PRC turned the SC into something more like Churchill's vision of actual great powers meeting as peers, though without the collegial cooperation Churchill hoped the Soviets might possibly offer (though he had little illusions they likely would). This still leaves Britain and France free to take fourth and fifth positions on paper, but in practice they are unlikely to oppose the USA in any grave matter anyway. Nor do numbers of SC members on one side or another of some issue matter; a veto cannot be overridden. (The Soviets withdrew their ambassador to the UN in protest of some unrelated issue when the Korean War went hot, which is why the other four members were present without Soviet check to ram through a unanimous SC resolution to support the southern Republic of Korea and make the anti-Northern alliance technically a UN mandate. Since then the Soviets and their Russian successors have been careful not to be absent from SC proceedings!) Therefore it would not make any practical difference if one of five SC veto wielding permanent members were suspended temporarily, if that one was part of the Western bloc anyway. USA and France are quite sufficient.

The alternatives to this suggestion of mine of conditionally suspending Britain's SC seat and conditionally restoring it again would be
1) abolish the whole SC veto system, which might enable the UN to operate more effectively in theory but would be likely to result in the USA and other major powers withdrawing support from it, which would probably crash it into total irrelevance--though there is a TL to be written perhaps, of some crisis resulting in the great powers repudiating the UN but then sufficiently many of the lesser powers pull together and reorganize it and fund it to have serious weight in the world versus these great powers. This is a non-starter in a TL attempting to hew as close to OTL global conditions as this one does, and pretty fanciful in almost any context.
2) permanently delete the British seat and roll forward with just 4 standing members; I think this is what the author is assuming. Functionally speaking France is a reasonable stand in for "European Community" representative anyway, and with Russia and China being two of the other three corners versus the USA, it is quite possible France, especially if they either feel morally bound or undertake formal obligations to represent the larger EC as a whole, might wind up at loggerheads with Uncle Sam. And still, if Washington is standing all alone with all three other members and the vast majority of the General Council and Secretary General all disapproving, tough noogies, the single Yankee veto still stands. The USA might wind up being expelled, or preempting this by unilaterally withdrawing.
3) other comments here assume the British seat can be transferred to some other world power.

Certainly the Islamic world might well feel badly shortchanged under the current set up and lobby for one of their nations to get the seat--but which one? On strictly Islamic terms Saudi Arabia would appear to have the inside track, but of course many of the stronger Islamic nations--Turkey, Iran, probably Pakistan, Egypt, and Indonesia--would reject that claim. So that's a deadlock nor do any of the other major Islamic nations have any sort of compelling claim. If all agreed on a single Caliph who seemed to fairly balance the claims of the diverse major Muslim nations, that might work--except the UN is not going to recognize a religious official divorced from representation of one nation-state. If Ataturk had settled for a stringently restricted Sultanate with real power going to a parliament equivalent to the OTL republic (which I gather he controlled as a strongman) then today maybe a Caliph named by the Ottoman Sultanate might in future be nominated so as to balance the interests of most Islamic nations, but surely Shi'ite Iran would dissent since the whole Sunni/Shi'ite split is a dispute about which persons were the historic rightly guided Caliphs anyway. Without PODs going back a hundred years or more, or something really revolutionary happening in the future, an Islamic nation on the permanent SC is a pipe dream unless some such nation muscles its way into superpower status in general.

Realistically there is no nation in the world that can claim the sorts of far-reaching power the USA can still project, though perhaps our ability to retain that status is in doubt in the near future. No other nation seems close to claiming the same sort of power; the PRC which is already seated seems closest to it. India is recently striving for greater hard power, but like the USA I have the impression it is happening at the expense of eroding her soft power, so that an Indian claim to an SC seat would have been stronger in the Cold War era as leader and most meaningfully nonaligned member of the "nonaligned bloc."

India also might somewhat perversely claim some sort of vague claim on the British slot due to her forced marriage under the British Raj but that seems pretty silly.

For reasons similar to why a collectively appointed Islamic bloc seat is preposterous, I can't see any movement to grant the Commonwealth collectively the power to fill the formerly British seat. This might actually work to be sure, with Canada, Australia and New Zealand presiding over a bloc of smaller poorer former colonies that have not yet repudiated their Commonwealth membership to work out a genuinely multinational and balanced procedure to name and instruct such a generic Commonwealth ambassador, but the simple fact we would not have one person representing one nation would torpedo any acceptance I fear.

There is no precedent for handing over one of these seats to a different nation. The switch from Taipei to Beijing was technically, according to claims of both Chinese governments at the time, a matter of switching recognition of which government actually spoke for China. China as an abstract nation never lost its seat.

There is no compelling candidate to be the "new Britain" or even predictably the "new China."

Having offered as IMHO the most sensible options as being either that Britain's SC veto holding membership was never in doubt or abeyance despite offended liberal sensibilities (really, this seems the most probable if somewhat appalling outcome) versus compromising with a "suspended membership" which is admittedly also unprecedented, I suppose the least crazy third option is to just assert the UN agreed to eliminate the fifth seat completely.
 
I think that UK's SC seat might have been given to Australia, just like the G7 seat. I might be wrong, but it would make sense, and could even potentially avoid American veto.
 
Thanks everyone for your feedback on the Security Council, my apologies for not making it clearer, I'm going to respond to all the UN comments in one post if thats ok. The vastly oversimplified situation with the UK and the Security Council is as follows:
  • Directly after the Junta the Soviet bloc tried to have Britain removed from the Security Council but this was vetoed by the States.
  • The States would continue to support Britain's place on the Security Council across the Cold War, despite protests at home and abroad, as well as Britain's growing irrelevance
  • With the end of the Cold War in the 90s, the Americans no longer saw Britain's inclusion on the Security Council as worth the capital spent, and agreed to a compromise where Britain's membership was suspended until democracy was restored. The idea being a democratic Britain would be able to return to it's old seat on the Security Council
  • Nearly 20 years later Britain becomes a democracy and the Johnson administration is petitioning to have it's seat returned to them.
  • This has become increasingly controversial considering Britain is an unstable economic backwater. It is no longer a major economy, with its GDP being in line with Italy or Spain, it's military is outdated and heavily reliant on the states, it has a comparatively tiny population compared to India or Brazil, and it has lost of most of it's international standing and soft power as the Commonwealth has turned against the UK.
  • Under the EU's Treaty of Vienna, due to be ratified in 2007, member state Security Council seats are to come under the jurisdiction of the EU as a body. Britain agreed to transfer it's Security Council seat by joining the EU.
  • As you can imagine, other major players are agitating for the seat to go to another player. Japan is the leading candidate, as well as Brazil and India. Britain is arguably less internationally influential than Japan, they argue Britain would be represented by the future EU seat and that if Britain returns to the SC, the EU would be granted two Security Council seats.
  • This has led to a bit of a scrap within the UN and Britain is unlikely to reclaim it's seat before handing it over to the EU anyway. Now the main debate is whether to continue the SC as a four permanent member body, or hand the likely vacant fifth seat to Japan, Brazil or India. The EU of course would very much like two seats but this is unlikely to happen
Thats the general gist. I hope to explore this in future chapters and would love to hear any thoughts readers have!
 
Chapter 28: We Don’t Need No Education
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The "Reid Curriculum" would split the British public

“Britain's parliament opened debate this week on an education bill that drops support for religious studies. The Church of England has denounced it, saying it would diminish parents' rights. At a rally organized by the Church of England and the National Party, thousands turned out last weekend to protest the bill. Some demonstrators seemed confused about exactly what the changes would be. Amid chants of "Johnson resign," Ana Robinson, a young teacher, claimed, "They want to get rid of the religion course." In fact, the proposed "Giving Students a Chance" White Paper retains the rule that all public schools offer religion classes. It also would continue to subsidize church schools and safeguard bishops' right to select headteachers.”
- British churches mount opposition to education reform, Renwick McLean, The New York Times (2007)

Britain’s education system was a mess. After years of underfunding, political interference in the curriculum and downright neglect, schools weren’t fit for purpose. There was a huge disparity between the wealthy private schools, grammar schools and languishing comprehensives, as well as a huge demographic gap, a white male student from the South of England was more than twice as likely to go to university than a black female student from the North or Scotland. Schools still practised 80s style gender roles, with women learning sewing and cooking whilst boys learned engineering. Student cadet forces were mandatory, with students wasting precious class time marching around their playground or polishing boots. The arts were particularly underfunded, with subjects like drama and music reserved only for the privileged few who could afford private school, Britain’s culture had been strangled.

Inner city schools were particularly bad, with most students either ending up in the army, a paramilitary, or one of Britain’s numerous organised crime gangs. Civil Assistance, The Red Brigades and the SNLA found ample recruits amongst inner city school dropouts. Britain’s education, once the best in the world, had fallen down the international league tables below even other former dictatorships such as Latvia and the Czech Republic. Britain’s universities too no longer held the great esteem of old, with no international students or lecturers and academic freedom silenced, Oxford and Cambridge had gone from being in the top five best universities in the world, to not even making the top hundred, falling far below nearby rivals like Ireland’s Dublin University or the Dutch TU Delft, who were poaching newly free British students by the thousands

Johnson had come to power promising to reform Britain’s education system, but this had proven politically difficult. His first appointee had been left wing firebrand Glenda Jackson, but she had frequently clashed with both the Department for Education establishment and Johnson himself, she had failed to get much done and was demoted to Agriculture Secretary. Her successor, Rosie Boycott, had moved away from Jackson’s more radical instincts, but she was still blocked by Civil Servants due to her strong support for equalising women’s treatment in the classroom, just as Boycott was beginning to get somewhere Tony Blair took a wad of cash on camera and she found herself in the Foreign Office.

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Going from Glenda Jackson to John Reid was quite the political shift

“Teachers, whose morale was at a low ebb after the endless diktats they had endured at the hands of the Junta had good cause to feel positive. The hopes of millions rested on Alan Johnson's shoulders. In some areas of education, the SDP did make a real and positive difference. There were some early reversals of Junta policy: allowing girls to take "boys subjects", for example. Schools benefited from an increased budget as the SDP endeavoured to compensate for years of neglect. Exam results improved, too: the proportion of pupils getting five good GCSEs including rose from 39.5 percent in 2004 to 43.5 percent in 2012.”
- Education in Transition Britain, Derek Gillard (2018)

The third Education Secretary of the last two years was John Reid, born on a Council Estate in Lanarkshire, Reid had been an SNLA fighter in his youth, before leaving the organisation in the early 80s, he had moderated over his lifetime and now found himself strictly on the SDP’s right-wing. Reid was particularly focused on improving outcomes, especially in his native Scotland where years of repression had crushed Scottish schools. After several months of untangling the various papers left to him back Jackson and Boycott, he was ready to present his paper education white paper “Giving Students a Chance”.

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Increasing school drop-out rates in Scotland and the North fed organised crime

Many of the reforms were to be expected, desegregating subjects based on gender, and ending mandatory cadet training, new subjects in the arts and further funding for struggling schools, things all but the most hardliner Mountbattenites could accept. There were aspects that were more controversial however. The first was the removal of religion as a mandatory subject, instead replacing it with Civics. Civics would teach students critical thinking, democratic ideals and human values. Religious organisations were outraged at the removal of religion from the curriculum. The Church of England was especially upset, whilst state education had languished the Church had stepped in to take its place, nearly 30% of total British schools were administered by a religious authority, doubling to over 60% for primary schools. Many in the Church saw this as a direct attack on the institution that saved British education. National described the removal of religion as a “totalitarian act” which robbed schools and parents of the freedom to choose their own curriculum.

Then there were the history textbooks. History in British schools had a strongly Mountbattenist bend, Harold Wilson was a communist spy who Mountbatten and the Junta had bravely stopped. Even after the Junta liberalised in the 80s and 90s the history curriculum continued to venerate Mountbatten. Reid’s history would aim for a more “balanced approach” it would teach both sides of the coup and paint a less propagandist picture of the Junta years. This was a departure from Jackson's plans for history lessons; she had wanted the Junta to be painted as unambiguously wrong in their actions. Reid’s curriculum would also condemn violence on both sides, including that of resistance fighters during the Junta years, ironic considering Reid’s past as an SNLA fighter. This did not endear the curriculum to the Socialist Alternative, many of whom’s paramilitary heroes would be portrayed as villains. Another Parliamentary showdown was about to begin.

“Although it presented different views on the fall of the Wilson Government, The Reid curriculum presented the 1960s as a period when the political centre was overwhelmed by extremists on left and right. The failure of mutual respect, the absence of a “democratic culture,” led to military intervention. By privileging the memory of democratic failure while silencing the memory of authoritarianism, the curriculum prioritised the values of tolerance and stability over freedom. This brought at least short-term benefits for the process of democratic change. Relative silence on political violence of all kinds rested on the useful assumption that “all of us were guilty.” The textbooks thus “wiped the slate clean” and made possible the negotiated transition to liberal democracy” - The British Junta History Debates, Lecture by Alistair Thomson, Monash University (2009)

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The old curriculum had protected Mountbatten's legacy
 
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