Welsh Journals

BRITISH HISTORY AS 'A NEW SUBJECT': POLITICS, PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS1 DURING the election campaign for the European parliament which was fought in May 1994, the Prime Minister offered this version of the history of the country whose government he leads: This British nation has a monarchy founded by the Kings of Wessex over eleven hundred years ago, a Parliament and universities formed over seven hundred years ago, a language with its roots in the mists of time, and the richest vocabulary in the world. This is no recent historical invention: it is the cherished creation of generations, and as we work to build a new and better Europe, we must never forget the traditions and inheritance of our past. I never leave Britain without the spirit sinking just a little, and it always lifts the heart to set foot here once again.2 Albeit in less strident form, these rather idiosyncratic comments of John Major's echo those made by Lady Thatcher in Paris at the bicentennial of the French Revolution, when she spoke with more force than accuracy about Magna Carta and 1688.3 Taken together, their remarks suggest that when it comes to producing a contemporary account of Britain's past, the most unreconstructed and uncompromising form of Whig history which survives today is that preached from 10 Downing Street by Tory prime ministers. In more ways than one, it is a suggestive and significant irony. For their account is not only Whig history implausibly masquerading as Conservative propaganda. Notwithstanding their ritual invocation of the word 'Britain', it is also emphatically 'Little England' history. Both Thatcher and Major assert the essential Englishness of the United Kingdom, its separateness from the rest of Europe, the long and unbroken continuity of its 'British history has been described as both an 'unknown' and as a 'new' subject: J. G. A. Pocock, 'British History: A Plea For a New Subject', Journal of Modern History, XLVII (1975), 601-28; idem, 'The Limits and Divisions of British History: In Search of the Unknown Subject', American Historical Review, LXXXVII (1982), 1,311-36. 'The Times, 24 May 1994. It is worth quoting this riposte by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, who rightly took exception to 'some rather curious history': I'm not sure many parts of the United Kingdom regard their monarchy as being descended from Wessex, nor that it is very natural to cite our two seven-hundred-year old universities, together with our languages, as being worthy signs of our ancient separateness and ancient insularity For a substantial number of centuries, the universities operated almost exclusively, not in the indigenous language, but one which attempted a European universality. The Independent, 26 May 1994. For Britain as an 'invented nation', see P. Scott, Knowledge and Nation (Edinburgh, 1990), p. 168. 3M. Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993), p. 753.