United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain | |
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.svg) Flag
.svg) Royal coat of arms
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Motto: Dieu et mon droit God and my right | |
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Anthem: "God Save the King" | |
.svg) Location of the United Kingdom | |
| Capital and largest city |
London |
| Official languages | English |
| Regional and minority languages | Scots, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Cornish, Scottish Gaelic |
| Ethnic groups (2011) | |
| Religion |
Church of England (official in England) Church of Scotland (official in Scotland) |
| Demonym(s) | British |
| Government | Unitary constitutional monarchy |
• Monarch | George V |
| Clive Spencer (UB) | |
| Legislature | Parliament |
| House of Lords | |
| House of Commons | |
| Formation | |
| 1535 and 1542 | |
| 24 March 1603 | |
| 1 May 1707 | |
| 1 January 1801 | |
| 8 March 1975 | |
| Area | |
• Total | 209,331 km2 (80,823 sq mi) |
| Population | |
• 2021 estimate | 61,284,529 |
• 2020 census | 61,063,664 |
• Density | 292.76/km2 (758.2/sq mi) |
| GDP (PPP) | 2021 estimate |
• Total | $2.635 trillion (TBD) |
• Per capita | $43,003 (TBD) |
| GDP (nominal) | 2021 estimate |
• Total | $2.543 trillion (TBD) |
• Per capita | $41,494 (?) |
| Gini (2021) |
38.3 medium · TBD |
| HDI (2018) |
 0.974very high · TBD |
| Currency | Pound sterling (£) (GBP) |
| Time zone | UTC (Greenwich Mean Time, WET) |
• Summer (DST) | UTC+1 (UTC (British Summer Time, WEST)) |
| Date format | dd-mm-yyyy, mm.dd.yyyy AD |
| Driving side | left |
| Calling code | +44 |
| ISO 3166 code | GB |
| Internet TLD | .uk |
The United Kingdom of Great Britain, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK or U.K.), Great Britain (GB or G.B.), or simply Britain, is a sovereign country located off the northwestern coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain and many smaller islands, including the Hebrides and the Channel Islands. The country is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. The Irish Sea separates the two islands of Great Britain and Ireland. The total area of the United Kingdom is 121,658 square miles (315,093 square kilometers).
The United Kingdom is a unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The ceremonial head of state is the Monarch, while the head of government is the Prime Minister. Though constitutionally, the Monarch has executive control of the nation, said executive privileges are granted to the prime minister, who is the representative of the people. The national legislature is the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is divided into two houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, with the latter house being elected by the people. The national judiciary is the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom consists of three constituent countries: England, Scotland and Wales. Their capitals are London, Edinburgh and Cardiff, respectively. Apart from England, the countries have their own devolved governments, each with varying powers, but such power is delegated by the Queen of the United Kingdom and her government, which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution. The nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the United Kingdom proper, and are instead crown dependencies of the British government. The government is thus responsible for the defense and international representation of said crown dependencies. The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
There are nineteen British Overseas Territories, the most important of which is Hong Kong. These territories are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, encompassed almost a fifth of the world's landmass and was the largest empire in history. British influence can be observed in the language, culture and political systems of many of its former colonies, with the proliferation of the English language throughout the world being its most lasting impact on the world's culture, leading English to be the international language in business and diplomacy.
The United Kingdom became the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and thus the first industrialized power in the world. This industrialization, and the dominance of the Royal Navy throughout the oceans of the world caused by its separation from the European continent, allowed for the United Kingdom to become the foremost power of the 19th century and establish vast colonial holdings during the Scramble for Africa, possessing the largest empire it history at its peak by the 20th century. During the Great War, the United Kingdom was a major power and was one of the main members of the Triple Alliance alongside Germany in Europe, initially fighting against both the Landonist International and the Entente Impériale before fully committing to opposing the Entente alongside the Landintern as part of a combined allied coalition in 1933 after signing the Dublin Agreement. The UK exited the war as a great power, but the British Empire slowly declined throughout the 20th century with decolonization being done throughout the 1950s and 60s. During the Cold War, the UK was part of the Western Bloc in opposing the spread of communism and Landonism from the Eastern Bloc and was a leading member of the Western Bloc in Europe. In 1960, the UK joined the Northern Treaty Organization and is a founding member of the alliance.
The United Kingdom also faced economic hardship during the end of the 20th century, which was followed by a period of modest economic recovery in the early 21st century. Today the United Kingdom remains a great power as both a permanent Member of the League of Nations Security Council, a member of the European Community, and the leading member of the Commonwealth of Nations, a loose federation of former colonies. Other international affiliations include the World Trade Organization, the League of Nations, and International Monetary Fund among others. It maintains one of the largest and most advanced economies on Earth, and very high levels of human development with significant scientific, cultural, and military power.
Etymology and terminology
The Acts of Union 1707 declared that the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland were "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain. The term "United Kingdom" has been used occasionally as a description for the former kingdom of Great Britain, although the official name of the country was "Great Britain" from 1707 to 1800. The Acts of Union 1800 united the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the secession of Ireland and the Treaty of Belfast, the name was changed to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain".
Although the United Kingdom is a sovereign country, England, Scotland and Wales are also widely referred to as countries. The UK Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom. Some statistical summaries, such as those for the twelve NUTS 1 regions of the United Kingdom refer to Scotland and Wales as "regions".
The term "Great Britain" conventionally refers to the island of Great Britain, or politically to England, Scotland and Wales in combination. It is sometimes used as a loose synonym for the United Kingdom as a whole.
The term "Britain" is used both as a synonym for Great Britain, and as a synonym for the United Kingdom. Usage is mixed: the UK Government prefers to use the term "UK" rather than "Britain" or "British" on its own website (except when referring to embassies), while acknowledging that both terms refer to the United Kingdom and that elsewhere "British government" is used at least as frequently as "United Kingdom government". The UK Permanent Committee on Geographical Names recognises "United Kingdom", "UK" and "U.K." as shortened and abbreviated geopolitical terms for the United Kingdom of Great Britain in its toponymic guidelines, though it does not list "Britain".
The adjective "British" is commonly used to refer to matters relating to the United Kingdom and is used in law to refer to United Kingdom citizenship and matters to do with nationality. People of the United Kingdom use a number of different terms to describe their national identity and may identify themselves as being British, English, Scottish or Welsh; or as having a combination of different national identities. The official designation for a citizen of the United Kingdom is "British citizen".
History
Prior to the Treaty of Union
Settlement by anatomically modern humans of what was to become the United Kingdom occurred in waves beginning by about 30,000 years ago. By the end of the region's prehistoric period, the population is thought to have belonged, in the main, to a culture termed Insular Celtic, comprising Brittonic Britain and Gaelic Ireland.
Prior to the Roman conquest, Britain was home to about 30 indigenous tribes. The largest were the Belgae, the Brigantes, the Silures and the Iceni. Historian Edward Gibbon believed that Spain, Gaul and Britain were populated by "the same hardy race of savages", based on the similarity of their "manners and languages". The Roman conquest, beginning in 43 AD, and the 400-year rule of southern Britain, was followed by an invasion by Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers, reducing the Brittonic area mainly to what was to become Wales, Cornwall and, until the latter stages of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, the Hen Ogledd (northern England and parts of southern Scotland). Most of the region settled by the Anglo-Saxons became unified as the Kingdom of England in the 10th century. Meanwhile, Gaelic-speakers in north-west Britain (with connections to the north-east of Ireland and traditionally supposed to have migrated from there in the 5th century) united with the Picts to create the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.
In 1066, the Normans and their Breton allies invaded England from northern France. After conquering England, they seized large parts of Wales, conquered much of Ireland and were invited to settle in Scotland, bringing to each country feudalism on the Northern French model and Norman-French culture. The Anglo-Norman ruling class greatly influenced, but eventually assimilated with, each of the local cultures. Subsequent medieval English kings completed the conquest of Wales and made unsuccessful attempts to annex Scotland. Asserting its independence in the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath, Scotland maintained its independence thereafter, albeit in near-constant conflict with England.
The English monarchs, through inheritance of substantial territories in France and claims to the French crown, were also heavily involved in conflicts in France, most notably the Hundred Years War, while the Kings of Scots were in an alliance with the French during this period. Early modern Britain saw religious conflict resulting from the Reformation and the introduction of Protestant state churches in each country. Wales was fully incorporated into the Kingdom of England, and Ireland was constituted as a kingdom in personal union with the English crown. In the north, the lands of the independent Catholic Gaelic nobility were confiscated and given to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland.
In 1603, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in a personal union when James VI, King of Scots, inherited the crowns of England and Ireland and moved his court from Edinburgh to London; each country nevertheless remained a separate political entity and retained its separate political, legal, and religious institutions.
In the mid-17th century, all three kingdoms were involved in a series of connected wars (including the English Civil War) which led to the temporary overthrow of the monarchy, with the execution of King Charles I, and the establishment of the short-lived unitary republic of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. During the 17th and 18th centuries, British sailors were involved in acts of piracy (privateering), attacking and stealing from ships off the coast of Europe and the Caribbean.
Although the monarchy was restored, the Interregnum (along with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent Bill of Rights 1689, and the Claim of Right Act 1689) ensured that, unlike much of the rest of Europe, royal absolutism would not prevail, and a professed Catholic could never accede to the throne. The British constitution would develop on the basis of constitutional monarchy and the parliamentary system. With the founding of the Royal Society in 1660, science was greatly encouraged. During this period, particularly in England, the development of naval power and the interest in voyages of discovery led to the acquisition and settlement of overseas colonies, particularly in North America and the Caribbean.
Though previous attempts at uniting the two kingdoms within Great Britain in 1606, 1667, and 1689 had proved unsuccessful, the attempt initiated in 1705 led to the Treaty of Union of 1706 being agreed and ratified by both parliaments.
Kingdom of Great Britain
On 1 May 1707, the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed, the result of Acts of Union being passed by the parliaments of England and Scotland to ratify the 1706 Treaty of Union and so unite the two kingdoms.
In the 18th century, cabinet government developed under Robert Walpole, in practice the first prime minister (1721–1742). A series of Jacobite Uprisings sought to remove the Protestant House of Hanover from the British throne and restore the Catholic House of Stuart. The Jacobites were finally defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, after which the Scottish Highlanders were brutally suppressed. Some Jacobites managed to escape and find refuge in North America, specifically California, crowning Charles IV & I as King of Sierra. To this day, the Sierran Monarchy claims the British crown, a claim that the United Kingdom outright refuses to accept.
The British colonies in North America that broke away from Britain in the American War of Independence became the United States of America, recognised by Britain in 1783. British imperial ambition turned towards Asia, particularly to India.
Britain played a leading part in the Atlantic slave trade, mainly between 1662 and 1807 when British or British-colonial Slave ships transported nearly 3.3 million slaves from Africa. The slaves were taken to work on plantations in British possessions, principally in the Caribbean but also North America. Slavery coupled with the Caribbean sugar industry had a significant role in strengthening and developing the British economy in the 18th century. However, Parliament banned the trade in 1807, banned slavery in the British Empire in 1833, and Britain took a leading role in the movement to abolish slavery worldwide through the blockade of Africa and pressing other nations to end their trade with a series of treaties. The world's oldest international human rights organisation, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in London in 1839.
Union with Ireland and the Great War
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 established a global order led by the European powers, with Britain at the top and a rank of comparable powers following at various degrees (including Germany, France, Russia, the United Commonwealth, and Austria), wealthy secondary powers (like Sweden and the Netherlands), and a third rank of declining powers (Spain and Portugal). Britain had been able to achieve this position due its unique advantages: being an island, being in the Atlantic, and having a system of socioeconomic organization that produced the talent necessary for acquiring an empire. The English Channel separating the British Isles gave the country security that no other European state had. From the defeat of Philip II's Spanish Armada in 1588 until the development of the German Air Force by Wilhelm II in 1936, the English Channel ensured that Britain was not burdened with devoting massive resources to defending its home territory from its continental rivals, giving it enough security to focus its energies on building a maritime empire. France had to give up its holdings in North America and India to focus on threats in Europe to its east, while Germany from 1871 initially avoided colonial expansion because Otto von Bismarck believed it had to focus on dominating the continent to ensure its own security. This gave Britain the unique ability to interact with European continental politics on its own terms and with a minimal commitment. Even if the European situation developed against British interests, so long as the British Navy controlled the world's oceans, it could keep the country from being seriously threatened. A permanent regular army was not necessary, with the focus on the navy being much stronger, which was free to devote its entire attention to Britain's growing maritime commercial empire.
That was why from 1815 until the 1930s the British Empire found itself in a dominant position, having achieved naval supremacy, controlling the world's maritime trade, and acquiring territories overseas since the 16th century. A stable and relatively peaceful world order was maintained largely by British power (Pax Britannica). British naval vessels in the oceans suppressed pirates and slave traders, smaller European countries could maintain their colonies under the protection of the British fleet, the Anglo-American countries were largely spared from imperialism due to British dominance, and many small nations were able to preserve their independence because of Britain working to limit expansion of any other Great Power from becoming strong enough to challenge Britain's position. The City of London became the financial center of the world by 1830, being central for international financial transactions of any kind and the flow of global commerce. English political and legal traditions were being copied in many parts of the world. The Industrial Revolution gave Britain the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the cable, the telephone, and the factory system. Britain's technological advantage during the 19th century meant that British manufactured goods were exported abroad and raw materials were imported, vastly increasing its wealth, and much of that wealth flowed out of Britain as invested capital to increase the production of those raw materials in North America, Asia, and Africa.
These achievements were made possible by the English social system. Unlike in continental Europe, the landed oligarchy that emerged in England was not only loyal to the monarch, but to the rule of law, a tradition developed partly due to the lack of a professional standing army (the English Channel made it unnecessary) and because the sons of the gentry had to study law at the Inns of Court, gaining respect for its inviolability. This way the aristocratic oligarchy dominated the legal system and could make judgments in its own favor to strengthen its position at the expense of the peasants. This, combined with the lack of opportunity in English villages and counties, forced the young men of England's lower classes to make a living in the industrialized large cities or, increasingly in the 19th century, outside of Britain. The country had an aristocracy but not a nobility, as it was not based on birth, which meant that the lower class could hope of joining the ranks of the upper class through merit. The sons of the English ruling class, meanwhile, were educated in elitist and Spartan boarding schools, which instilled them with a sense of duty, respect for traditions, discipline, leadership, and the expectation of some form of civil or military service to be done in the future for the public good. These became the two sources of manpower that left England and created its empire.
Despite these circumstances, the empire met opposition from certain quarters of British politics, such as the "Little Englanders," headed by figures like William Ewart Gladstone. There was an anti-imperialist tradition in the Liberal Party, and a lesser one in the Conservative Party. It was on the decline by 1870 and lost significance after 1895. Initially this sentiment was overcome by the fact that private citizens and companies could make a large profit in the colonies, even if they were a drain on the government budget. But the motivations changed in the late 19th century. John Ruskin, an Oxford professor, gave lectures which became popular among the aristocracy, claiming that the English upper class was privileged to inherit a great tradition of education and philosophy, one that was unique in the world, and they had an obligation to spread this to the lower class of England as well as to the non-English masses of the world, through the Empire. Otherwise the tradition would be lost. Ruskin's lectures had a strong impact on figures such as Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Milner, Arnold Toynbee, and Albert Grey. Rhodes and Milner formed a secretive society, the Round Table movement, of British aristocrats who were determined to enact Ruskin's message, through turning the British Empire into an "imperial federation," bringing the Anglo-American countries back under its control, and ultimately, the entire habitable world. The Round Table group, also going by various other names, such as the Rhodes-Milner group or the "Cliveden set," would be a strong influence on British foreign and imperial policy, largely from behind the scenes, up until the 1940s.
Members of this group first proposed renaming the empire the "Commonwealth of Nations" and spent the period from the 1890s through the 1910s considering what form this federated British Empire would look like. The confederation of Canada in 1867 was used as an example of a self-governing colony that would be followed in other parts of the empire. "Dominion" was the title given to colonies that achieved self-governance within the British sphere. They also worked to organize Imperial Conferences held with the leaders of dominions once every several years to discuss the implementation of this federation. However, these efforts and the prestige of the British Empire were damaged during the Boer War (1899–1902). The ability of 40,000 Boer farmers in South Africa to hold back the power of the Empire undermined British confidence, leading Britain to sign an alliance with Japan in 1904 – the first bilateral alliance that Britain entered since the Napoleonic Wars and one of the early signs of the changing times. Germany's sympathy with the Boers and the beginning of a massive build up of the German Navy by 1900 increased tensions between the Germany and the British public. In reaction to these developments, the Committee on Imperial Defence was established in 1903, which was able to reform the military, creating an Imperial General Staff, and reorganize the colonial forces in a way that they could quickly be integrated into the regular British Army. These reforms were first put to the test when Britain rapidly deployed troops to intervene in the Continental Revolutionary War, though the intervention itself was unsuccessful in stopping the Landonists.
There were other cracks in the British system that began to emerge in the 1920s. The religious tensions between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland would lead to the Anglo-Irish War in 1918. Members of the Sinn Fein, the Irish republican independence movement, won the majority of Ireland's seats in the House of Commons, but instead of going to Westminster they declared their own parliament in Dublin. Attempts to arrest them led to violence, escalating into open civil war. British troops struggled to maintain order, and the new Continentalist Party of the United Commonwealth began smuggling weapons to the Irish republicans in 1922, in return for Britain's participation in the intervention against them a year earlier. Lionel Curtis, a Round Table member, advocated for Northern and Southern Ireland to each be granted Home Rule and be made autonomous parts of Great Britain, which became the basis for the Government of Ireland Act of 1920. But the Irish republican leaders were strongly anti-British and these proposals were rejected. The final armistice led to the independence of the Irish Free State in 1925, sovereign over both Northern and Southern Ireland, although tensions between the Protestant North and the Catholic South would continue.
The Irish crisis was an omen of the larger crisis that would occur for Great Britain over the next two decades. The rise of Germany was initially perceived as a positive development, as it forced Britain's traditional rivals in the colonial game to move their attention back to the continent. Bismarck knew that Germany's dominance of the continent could best be achieved by several key points, of which among the most important was to not antagonize Britain by challenging its naval and colonial dominance. After Bismarck stepped down in 1890 and was replaced by Kaiser Wilhelm's puppet chancellors, they ignored Bismarck's warnings and undid much of his work. In the 1890s Germany expanded its African colonies to block British ambitions to build a Cape to Cairo Railway, joined the other powers in the division of China into spheres of influence, and began expanding its navy to be the second-largest after the British, through the naval bills of 1898, 1900, and 1902. Wilhelm also openly proclaimed his sympathy for the Boers during the South African War. All of these events alienated Germany from Britain and forced it to reconcile with France. As late as the 1890s there had been a real risk of France and Britain going to war over their colonial ambitions in Africa and Asia. But the rise of Wilhelmine Germany led to the acceptance by France of the fact that it would always prioritize the continental situation that was vital for its own security, while Britain depended on dominating the colonial sphere and maritime trade. Respecting each other's position, the two countries were able to form the Anglo-French Entente, ending centuries of rivalry between the two countries. Britain's treaty with Japan was allowed to lapse in 1924 due to its aggression in China threatening British interests, leading to a strengthening German-Japanese-Russian Triple Alliance. By 1928, the Entente Impériale came into existence with Britain and France as its core, and also including the Kingdom of Sierra, China, and the Ottoman Empire, which was becoming important as a source of oil to power the British Navy. Attempts to reconcile the two blocs failed, and a series of crises in the late 1920s and early 1930s would lead them down the road to 1932.
During the late 1920s the Round Table group had attempted to work behind the scenes to promote British-German reconciliation, as its members believed that Germany could be allowed to dominate Europe as long as it did not interfere with the British Empire, while also having the effect of keeping France in check. The Cliveden set, as it was called at the time, attempted to use its influence to run pro-German and anti-French propaganda in British newspapers. The Cliveden set represented a small faction in the British establishment among both Conservatives and Liberals that favored peace for their own geopolitical reasons, and it existed among a larger pacifist and idealist "peace at any cost" faction led by Ramsay MacDonald, which itself was increasingly outnumbered by a pro-war camp, headed by Winston Churchill and supported by the Conservative Party's base. Kaiser Wilhelm's belligerence made it almost impossible for the Cliveden set and the peace faction to continue to advocate for reconciliation. This belligerence culminated in the Austrian crisis of 1931–1932. Tensions rose between Germany and France in early 1932 over the growing German influence in Austria, which had been reduced to a rump state after losing much of the former Habsburg Empire in the Austro-Hungarian War a decade earlier. Germany's refusal to back down led France to begin mobilizing its army, which narrowed the window for a diplomatic resolution as it set off the prearranged mobilization timetables of every other power in Europe, given that military planning at the time depended on carefully calibrated and timed plans for a country's army to smash its neighbor. The outbreak of war in North America in April 1932, followed by Japan's sudden attack on British and other European colonies in Southeast Asia distracted the British public, and Germany took this opportunity to launch an attack on France, starting the Great War.
Germany made rapid gains in northern France before getting bogged down, giving Britain time to form a new volunteer army during the rest of 1932, before passing the Military Service Act 1933 when it became apparent there were not enough volunteers to enact conscription in Britain. France fell in May 1933 after a German breakthrough, leading to German dominance on much of the continent, even though fighting in the Balkans was still ongoing and socialist Italy entered the war against the Triple Alliance. After Britain's Royal Navy enacted the blockade of Germany, the Germans responded by using unrestricted submarine warfare against British merchant shipping. This nearly brought the United Kingdom to the brink of starvation, as the country relied on imports, and forced the British government to negotiate with the United Commonwealth as it was the only potential source of new food, recognizing the Continentalists and establishing diplomatic relations in exchange for food shipments to Britain. Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) visited Chicago and reached an agreement with Callahan to this effect. This was made possible because the United Commonwealth's foreign minister, Samson Zima, wanted to restore good relations with European countries and because the German submarine war also threatened Continental merchant shipping through the Atlantic to European socialist countries. The German Air Force's campaign of terror bombing and targeting of British factories in 1936 had only a limited effect, and the Royal Air Force was able to defeat the Luftwaffe in the air, which, combined with Continental food imports, left Britain at a stalemate with Germany by the start of 1938.
Despite the stalemate in Europe, the Great War ended as a disaster for British power and would be remembered as the beginning of the end of the Empire. So many resources had gone to defending the British Isles that His Majesty's Government was forced to chose between the home territory and the colonies. As a result, mismanagement in India had generated massive unrest and the British were forced to make promises of substantial political concessions to secure the support of the Indians in the Great War. While India played a substantial role in halting the Japanese advance in Southeast Asia, the Japanese blitzkrieg in 1932–1933 still led to the loss of Singapore, Malaya, Burma, and some of the other Pacific holdings. The political concessions promised to the Indian were granted in 1939, by the new Labour government and this would herald the rise of decreasing British control in India leading to Dominion status for India in 1947 and eventual complete patriation in 1965. The events in India would inspire independence movements in other parts of the Empire and eventually lead to the decolonisation and the end of the British Empire in the 1960s and 1970s.
While the United Kingdom had withstood the German assault against it in Europe at the expense of its empire, suffering the biggest defeats in British military history in the Far East, and mostly at the hands of a non-European power, Japan. This would have profound consequences not only for the world but for Britain's domestic situation as well.
Post-war period and the Cold War
Britain emerged from the war with its prestige damaged, having lost substantial territories, and its primary ally France having become a German vassal state. Prime Minister Winston Churchill resigned as he was the leading pro-war and anti-German figure in the country, and the Conservative Party lost power to the Labour Party in the immediate postwar election held in 1938, which were already delayed by two years. The British system has been described as a "Cabinet dictatorship," in which a small group of party leaders has control over nominations to constituencies and party funding, allowing it to discipline members and maintain control over the entire party. The Cabinet can thereby compel the House of Commons to vote a certain way by exercising party discipline over its members. The fact that Britain has no constitution and its system developed as a series of conventions means that the conventions are not part of the law and can be violated, which the group of elites in the Cabinet and the senior levels of the Conservative and Liberal (replaced by Labour after 1924) parties did so more frequently since the start of the 20th century. Bills passed by the Parliament often originated in the Cabinet from the internal clique at the top of the leading party. The Cabinet and the Commons are controlled by the party that held the majority of seats, but the other parts of the government – the House of Lords, the monarchy, and civil service – were traditionally dominated by Conservatives, giving them the potential power of obstructing a Labour cabinet. The lack of an actual constitution, no effective separation of powers, and internal control of political parties by a small elite at the leadership level instead of primary elections are the main differences between the Anglo-American parliamentary systems and the British one.
Aside from the Commons and the Cabinet, the other three branches of the British government are also controlled by a clique of elites. The civil service is recruited through competitive examinations that theoretically are open to everyone, but in practice they ask about material that was taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and other elite colleges, so those with an upper class background that could afford to pay tuition and had the right connections were the vast majority of those that passed the exams. The military officer corps had been recruited the same way, with two military academies (Sandhurst and Woolwich), which had a high tuition and no financial support to the cadets. The naval academy (Dartmouth) was in a similar situation, though the navy had a higher proportion of officers that were promoted from the rank and file than the army. Legal professionals in the Royal Courts of Justice also came out of an educational system that favors the wealthy oligarchy, so the court system is an extension of the upper class as well.
In Anglo-America it is common for economic interests to lobby political parties, whereas in Britain the aristocracy is directly represented in Parliament by the Conservative Party – controlled by the people from a select group of families who went to the same expensive schools and also controlled the army, the civil service, and the empire; who had the money to fund their own campaigns to run for Parliament. The party leadership was chosen through family connections as well as social and educational background. The Liberal and Labour parties had a different origin and developed after trade unions provided a source of funding from the 1890s, and so their leadership was formed by those who rose up through tough trade-union politics and occasional "rogue" members of the upper class. The control of both parties by the small clique at the top, instead of having primary elections, meant that the public had no control over the choice of candidates. The Labour Party arose in the 1920s in part due to the economic hardships caused by the Great Depression and the realization by the public that the Conservatives and Liberals both represented the rich. It was more democratic than its predecessor, though its working-class basis meant it had less funds for campaigning. The changes brought about by the Great War accelerated this trend of creating a real alternative in British politics to the Conservatives. They had been seen as having brought Britain into the war and were responsible for the resulting loss of the empire, as well as the economic and human casualties. In the 1938 general election, the Conservatives lost to a Labour government for the first time since 1928. The first Labour cabinet had been obstructed by the difficulties that came with the Great Depression and the Conservative domination of the other branches of government, but these factors had been largely removed by the disaster of the Great War.
With such massive disparities between the upper and working classes in Britain, the defining feature of British politics from the 19th century to the Great War was the struggle for a fairer distribution of wealth and power. This included both bringing the working class up and leveling the advantages of the upper class. A general pattern developed of the Liberal or Labour parties challenging this system while the Conservatives resisted these efforts. The former received the backing of the rising trade unions while the latter was supported by the wealthy financiers in the City of London. The alienation of the Liberal Party from the public, due to the desire of many Liberals that came out of the lower class to be "accepted" by the upper class, which made it ineffective, led to the rise of the Labour Party as a more radical outgrowth of the interests of the British working class. From the late 1920s to the late 1940s, monopolized industries were forced to cooperate with unions to create a situation with less output, making British manufacturing less competitive compared to German, Anglo-American, or Japanese, but where the worker had a high wage and the protection of employment. Conservatives agreed to make these concessions in large part because they were frightened by the Revolutions of 1917–1923 and by the rare mutiny of sailors of the Atlantic Fleet in 1931. This trend would only accelerated after the historic Labour victory in 1938, leading to the nationalization of many British industries by Prime Minister Dennis Glynne-Jones, including the Bank of England, and the creation of the National Health Service as a system of universal healthcare. The benefits that were enjoyed by unionized workers began to be expanded to all members of the working class after 1938 in the form of a welfare state. Another effect of this was the decline of Britain's position as the center of the global economy, as British industry lagged behind those elsewhere and London took a secondary role to Berlin, Tokyo, Paris, New York and Porciúncula as a center for international finance. Only the creation of the Bank of International Settlements as "the central bank of the central banks," with the Bank of England having a leading role in it, served to maintain a semblance of British leadership in the arena of international finance, though from 1950 it rapidly lost its influence to the German Reichsbank.
The Conservative errors in foreign and domestic policy in the two decades since the 1920s paved the way for the Labour government of the late 1940s and its accompanying socioeconomic changes. While profound changes were underway on the domestic front, in foreign policy Britain began to adapt to its new place as no longer being the premier power of Europe and the world. Both Conservative and Labour leaders felt isolated from the Continent now that it was under German hegemony and refused to participate in the Mitteleuropa system that was being set up to ensure continued German dominance, while paying lip service to the idea of European cooperation. British leaders emphasized the connection between Britain and the English-speaking world, the Commonwealth and the Anglo-American allies. However, both the members of the Commonwealth and the Anglo-American bloc were less inclined to give Britain any kind of leading role, especially given the decline of its power, and increasingly Britain found itself taking a back seat in decision-making within these alliances. From 1938 to 1953 the Conservatives used their influence on the British government to attempt to hold on to what was left of the Empire and it increasingly aggravated relations with Britain's allies. Maintaining operational Royal Navy fleets in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and the Pacific, along with over 100 Royal Air Force squadrons, and a total of 1.3 million uniformed servicemen was becoming very difficult with the rising costs of the welfare state as well as Britain's wartime debts to Anglo-America. The loss of imperial territories also made it harder to justify to British voters. The Egyptian revolution of 1952, overthrowing the pro-British monarchy in Egypt and bringing to power the Arab nationalist Gamal Abdel Nasser, threatened Britain's control over the Suez Canal and the Middle East, which was both symbolic of British power as well as being an important source of oil. In this Britain was able to cooperate with France, which also had an interest in defending its last remaining colonies in North Africa.
Only the Irish Missile Crisis in 1953, during which the United Commonwealth's Amelia Crawford placed atomic bombs in Ireland to counter a perceived threat to its socialist allies in Europe, had the effect of overcoming the recent antagonism and strengthened Britain's alliance with Sierra. Britain had brief period of stable relations with the United Commonwealth after their cooperation during Great War I, but the British government overestimated the residual effect of the pro-British sentiment that had previously existed among the upper class of the American Commonwealth and the Federalist Party leaders before the Revolution. The Irish Missile Crisis forced Britain to take a side in the early stages of the developing Cold War, and it firmly took the side of the capitalist "big three" in North America – Sierra, Superior, and Manitoba.
21st century
Geography, climate and environment
The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately 209,331 square kilometres (80,823 sq mi). The country occupies the major part of the British Isles archipelago and includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland and some smaller surrounding islands. It lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea with the southeast coast coming within 22 miles (35 km) of the coast of northern France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. In 1993 10 per cent of the UK was forested, 46 per cent used for pastures and 25 per cent cultivated for agriculture. The Royal Greenwich Observatory in London was chosen as the defining point of the Prime Meridian in 1884, although due to more accurate modern measurement the meridian actually lies 100 metres to the east of the observatory.
The United Kingdom lies between latitudes 49° and 61° N, and longitudes 9° W and 2° E. The coastline of Great Britain is 11,073 miles (17,820 km) long. It is connected to continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel, which at 31 miles (50 km) (24 miles (38 km) underwater) is the longest underwater tunnel in the world.
England accounts for just over half (53 per cent) of the total area of the UK, covering 130,395 square kilometres (50,350 sq mi). Most of the country consists of lowland terrain, with more upland and some mountainous terrain northwest of the Tees-Exe line; including the Lake District, the Pennines, Exmoor and Dartmoor. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber. England's highest mountain is Scafell Pike (978 metres (3,209 ft)) in the Lake District.
Scotland accounts for just under one-third (32 per cent) of the total area of the UK, covering 78,772 square kilometres (30,410 sq mi). This includes nearly 800 islands, predominantly west and north of the mainland; notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands. Scotland is the most mountainous country in the UK and its topography is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault – a geological rock fracture – which traverses Scotland from Arran in the west to Stonehaven in the east. The fault separates two distinctively different regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the Lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous land, including Ben Nevis which at 1,345 metres (4,413 ft) is the highest point in the British Isles. Lowland areas – especially the narrow waist of land between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth known as the Central Belt – are flatter and home to most of the population including Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, and Edinburgh, its capital and political centre, although upland and mountainous terrain lies within the Southern Uplands.
Wales accounts for less than one-tenth (9 per cent) of the total area of the UK, covering 20,779 square kilometres (8,020 sq mi). Wales is mostly mountainous, though South Wales is less mountainous than North and mid Wales. The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the coastal cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, and the South Wales Valleys to their north. The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia and include Snowdon (Welsh: Yr Wyddfa) which, at 1,085 metres (3,560 ft), is the highest peak in Wales. Wales has over 2,704 kilometres (1,680 miles) of coastline. Several islands lie off the Welsh mainland, the largest of which is Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in the north-west.
The UK contains four terrestrial ecoregions: Celtic broadleaf forests, English Lowlands beech forests, North Atlantic moist mixed forests, and Caledon conifer forests. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 1.65/10, ranking it 161th globally out of 172 countries.
Climate
Most of the United Kingdom has a temperate climate, with generally cool temperatures and plentiful rainfall all year round. The temperature varies with the seasons seldom dropping below 0 °C (32 °F) or rising above 30 °C (86 °F). Some parts, away from the coast, of upland England, Wales, and most of Scotland, experience a subpolar oceanic climate (Cfc). Higher elevations in Scotland experience a continental subarctic climate (Dfc) and the mountains experience a tundra climate (ET). The prevailing wind is from the southwest and bears frequent spells of mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean, although the eastern parts are mostly sheltered from this wind since the majority of the rain falls over the western regions the eastern parts are therefore the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream, bring mild winters; especially in the west where winters are wet and even more so over high ground. Summers are warmest in the southeast of England and coolest in the north. Heavy snowfall can occur in winter and early spring on high ground, and occasionally settles to great depth away from the hills.
United Kingdom is ranked 4 out of 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index. A law has been passed that UK greenhouse gas emissions will be net zero by 2050.
Politics
Government
The United Kingdom is a unitary state under a constitutional monarchy. King George V is the monarch and head of state of the UK, as well as 14 other independent countries. These 15 countries are sometimes referred to as "Commonwealth realms". The monarch has "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn". The Constitution of the United Kingdom is uncodified and consists mostly of a collection of disparate written sources, including statutes, judge-made case law and international treaties, together with constitutional conventions. The UK Parliament can carry out constitutional reform by passing acts of parliament, and thus has the political power to change or abolish almost any written or unwritten element of the constitution. No sitting parliament can pass laws that future parliaments cannot change.
The UK is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. The Parliament of the United Kingdom is sovereign. It is made up of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Crown. The main business of parliament takes place in the two houses, but royal assent is required for a bill to become an act of parliament (law).
For general elections (elections to the House of Commons), the UK is divided into 650 constituencies, each of which is represented by a member of Parliament (MP). MPs hold office for up to five years and are always up for reelection in general elections. The Conservative Party, Labour Party and Scottish National Party are, respectively, the current first, second and third largest parties (by number of MPs) in the House of Commons.
The prime minister is the head of government in the United Kingdom. Nearly all prime ministers have served as First Lord of the Treasury and all prime ministers have continuously served as First Lord of the Treasury since 1905, Minister for the Civil Service since 1968 and Minister for the Union since 2019. In modern times, the prime minister is, by constitutional convention, an MP. The prime minister is appointed by the monarch and their appointment is governed by constitutional conventions. However, they are normally the leader of the political party with the most seats in the House of Commons and hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons.
The prime minister not only has statutory functions (alongside other ministers), but is the monarch's principal adviser and it is for them to advise the monarch on the exercise of the royal prerogative in relation to government. In particular, the prime minister recommends the appointment of ministers and chairs the Cabinet.
Devolved governments
Scotland and Wales each have their own government or executive, led by a first minister and a devolved unicameral legislature. England, the largest country of the United Kingdom, has no devolved executive or legislature and is administered and legislated for directly by the UK's government and parliament on all issues. This situation has given rise to the so-called West Lothian question, which concerns the fact that members of parliament from Scotland and Wales can vote, sometimes decisively, on matters that affect only England. The 2013 McKay Commission on this recommended that laws affecting only England should need support from a majority of English members of parliament.
The Scottish Government and Parliament have wide-ranging powers over any matter that has not been specifically reserved to the UK Parliament, including education, healthcare, Scots law and local government. Their power over economic issues is significantly constrained by an act of the UK parliament passed in 2020. In 2012, the UK and Scottish governments signed the Edinburgh Agreement setting out the terms for a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, which was defeated 55.3 per cent to 44.7 per cent – resulting in Scotland remaining a devolved part of the United Kingdom.
The UK does not have a codified constitution and constitutional matters are not among the powers devolved to Scotland or Wales. Under the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, the UK Parliament could, in theory, therefore, abolish the Scottish Parliament or Senedd. In practice, it would be politically difficult for the UK Parliament to abolish devolution to the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd, given the political entrenchment created by referendum decisions. The UK Parliament restricts the three devolved parliaments' legislative competence in economic areas through an Act passed in 2020.
Administrative divisions
The geographical division of the United Kingdom into counties or shires began in England and Scotland in the early Middle Ages and was complete throughout Great Britain and Ireland by the early Modern Period. Administrative arrangements were developed separately in each country of the United Kingdom, with origins which often predated the formation of the United Kingdom. Modern local government by elected councils, partly based on the ancient counties, was introduced separately: in England and Wales in a 1888 act, Scotland in a 1889 act and Ireland in a 1898 act, meaning there is no consistent system of administrative or geographic demarcation across the United Kingdom. Until the 19th century there was little change to those arrangements, but there has since been a constant evolution of role and function.
The organisation of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to local arrangements. The upper-tier subdivisions of England are the nine regions, now used primarily for statistical purposes. One region, Greater London, has had a directly elected assembly and mayor since 2000 following popular support for the proposal in a referendum. It was intended that other regions would also be given their own elected regional assemblies, but a proposed assembly in the North East region was rejected by a referendum in 2004. Since 2011, ten combined authorities have been established in England. Eight of these have elected mayors, the first elections for which took place on 4 May 2017. Below the regional tier, some parts of England have county councils and district councils and others have unitary authorities, while London consists of 32 London boroughs and the City of London. Councillors are elected by the first-past-the-post system in single-member wards or by the multi-member plurality system in multi-member wards.
For local government purposes, Scotland is divided into 32 council areas, with wide variation in both size and population. The cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are separate council areas, as is the Highland Council, which includes a third of Scotland's area but only just over 200,000 people. Local councils are made up of elected councillors, of whom there are 1,223; they are paid a part-time salary. Elections are conducted by single transferable vote in multi-member wards that elect either three or four councillors. Each council elects a Provost, or Convenor, to chair meetings of the council and to act as a figurehead for the area.
Local government in Wales consists of 22 unitary authorities. All unitary authorities are led by a leader and cabinet elected by the council itself. These include the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, which are unitary authorities in their own right. Elections are held every four years under the first-past-the-post system.
Dependencies
The United Kingdom has responsibility for 15 territories that do not form part of the United Kingdom itself: 14 British Overseas Territories and three Crown Dependencies.
The 12 British Overseas Territories are remnants of the British Empire: Anguilla; Bermuda; the British Antarctic Territory; the British Indian Ocean Territory; the British Virgin Islands; the Cayman Islands; Montserrat; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; the Turks and Caicos Islands; the Pitcairn Islands; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and Akrotiri and Dhekelia on the island of Cyprus. British claims in Antarctica have limited international recognition. Collectively Britain's overseas territories encompass an approximate land area of 480,000 square nautical miles (640,000 sq mi; 1,600,000 km2), with a total population of approximately 250,000. The overseas territories also give the UK the world's fifth largest exclusive economic zone at 6,805,586 km2 (2,627,651 sq mi). A 1999 UK government white paper stated that: "[The] Overseas Territories are British for as long as they wish to remain British. Britain has willingly granted independence where it has been requested; and we will continue to do so where this is an option." Self-determination is also enshrined in the constitutions of several overseas territories and three have specifically voted to remain under British sovereignty (Bermuda in 1995, Gibraltar in 2002 and the Falkland Islands in 2013).
The Crown dependencies are possessions of the Crown, as opposed to overseas territories of the UK. They comprise three independently administered jurisdictions: the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel, and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. By mutual agreement, the British Government manages the islands' foreign affairs and defence and the UK Parliament has the authority to legislate on their behalf. Internationally, they are regarded as "territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible". The power to pass legislation affecting the islands ultimately rests with their own respective legislative assemblies, with the assent of the Crown (Privy Council or, in the case of the Isle of Man, in certain circumstances the Lieutenant-Governor). Since 2005 each Crown dependency has had a Chief Minister as its head of government.
Law and criminal justice
The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system as Article 19 of the 1706 Treaty of Union provided for the continuation of Scotland's separate legal system. Today the UK has two distinct systems of law: English law and Scots law. A new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom came into being in October 2009 to replace the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, including the same members as the Supreme Court, is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the British Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies.
English law, which applies in England and Wales, is based on common-law principles. The essence of common law is that, subject to statute, the law is developed by judges in courts, applying statute, precedent and common sense to the facts before them to give explanatory judgements of the relevant legal principles, which are reported and binding in future similar cases (stare decisis). The courts of England and Wales are headed by the Senior Courts of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases). The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land for both criminal and civil appeal cases in England and Wales and any decision it makes is binding on every other court in the same jurisdiction, often having a persuasive effect in other jurisdictions.
Scots law is a hybrid system based on both common-law and civil-law principles. The chief courts are the Court of Session, for civil cases, and the High Court of Justiciary, for criminal cases. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases under Scots law. Sheriff courts deal with most civil and criminal cases including conducting criminal trials with a jury, known as sheriff solemn court, or with a sheriff and no jury, known as sheriff summary Court. The Scots legal system is unique in having three possible verdicts for a criminal trial: "guilty", "not guilty" and "not proven". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" result in an acquittal.
Crime in England and Wales increased in the period between 1981 and 1995, though since that peak there has been an overall fall of 66 per cent in recorded crime from 1995 to 2015, according to crime statistics. The prison population of England and Wales has increased to 86,000, giving England and Wales the highest rate of incarceration in Western Europe at 148 per 100,000. Her Majesty's Prison Service, which reports to the Ministry of Justice, manages most of the prisons within England and Wales. The murder rate in England and Wales has stabilised in the first half of the 2010s with a murder rate around 1 per 100,000 which is half the peak in 2002 and similar to the rate in the 1980s Crime in Scotland fell slightly in 2014–2015 to its lowest level in 39 years in with 59 killings for a murder rate of 1.1 per 100,000. Scotland's prisons are overcrowded but the prison population is shrinking.
Foreign relations
The UK is a permanent member of the League of Nations Security Council, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Commonwealth of Nations, the European Community, and the Council of Europe. The UK is said to have a "Special Relationship" with the Kingdom of Sierra; the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance is considered to be the oldest binding military alliance in the world. The UK is also closely linked with the Republic of Ireland; the two countries share a Common Travel Area and co-operate through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and the British-Irish Council. Britain's global presence and influence is further amplified through its trading relations, foreign investments, official development assistance and military engagements.
Military
Her Majesty's Armed Forces consist of three professional service branches: the Royal Navy and Royal Marines (forming the Naval Service), the British Army and the Royal Air Force. The armed forces of the United Kingdom are managed by the Ministry of Defence and controlled by the Defence Council, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The Commander-in-Chief is the British monarch, to whom members of the forces swear an oath of allegiance. The Armed Forces are charged with protecting the UK and its overseas territories, promoting the UK's global security interests and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. They are active and regular participants in NATO, including the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, the Five Power Defence Arrangements, RIMPAC and other worldwide coalition operations. Overseas garrisons and facilities are maintained in Ascension Island, Bahrain, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Diego Garcia, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya, Oman, Qatar and Singapore.
The British armed forces played a key role in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. By emerging victorious from conflicts, Britain has often been able to decisively influence world events. Since the end of the British Empire, the UK has remained a major military power. Following the end of the Cold War, defence policy has a stated assumption that "the most demanding operations" will be undertaken as part of a coalition.
According to sources which include the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the UK has either the fourth- or the fifth-highest military expenditure. Total defence spending amounts to 2.0 per cent of national GDP.
Economy
Overview
The UK has a partially regulated market economy. Based on market exchange rates, the UK is today the fifth-largest economy in the world and the second-largest in Europe after Germany. HM Treasury, led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and economic policy. The Bank of England is the UK's central bank and is responsible for issuing notes and coins in the nation's currency, the pound sterling. Banks in Scotland retain the right to issue their own notes, subject to retaining enough Bank of England notes in reserve to cover their issue. The pound sterling is the world's fourth-largest reserve currency (after the Sierran dollar, German Mark, and Japanese Yen). Since 1997 the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has been responsible for setting interest rates at the level necessary to achieve the overall inflation target for the economy that is set by the Chancellor each year.
The UK service sector makes up around 79 per cent of GDP. London is one of the world's largest financial centres, ranking 2nd in the world, behind New York City, in the Global Financial Centres Index in 2020. London also has the largest city GDP in Europe. Edinburgh ranks 17th in the world, and 6th in Western Europe in the Global Financial Centres Index in 2020. Tourism is very important to the British economy; with over 27 million tourists arriving in 2004, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world and London has the most international visitors of any city in the world. The creative industries accounted for 7 per cent GVA in 2005 and grew at an average of 6 per cent per annum between 1997 and 2005.
The Industrial Revolution started in the UK with an initial concentration on the textile industry, followed by other heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining and steelmaking. British merchants, shippers and bankers developed overwhelming advantage over those of other nations allowing the UK to dominate international trade in the 19th century. As other nations industrialised, coupled with economic decline after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its competitive advantage and heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. Manufacturing remains a significant part of the economy but accounted for only 16.7 per cent of national output in 2003.
The automotive industry employs around 800,000 people, with a turnover in 2015 of £70 billion, generating £34.6 billion of exports (11.8 per cent of the UK's total export goods). In 2015, the UK produced around 1.6 million passenger vehicles and 94,500 commercial vehicles. The UK is a major centre for engine manufacturing: in 2015 around 2.4 million engines were produced. The UK motorsport industry employs around 41,000 people, comprises around 4,500 companies and has an annual turnover of around £6 billion.
The aerospace industry of the UK is the second- or third-largest national aerospace industry in the world depending upon the method of measurement and has an annual turnover of around £30 billion.
BAE Systems plays a critical role in some of the world's biggest defence aerospace projects. In the UK, the company makes large sections of the Typhoon Eurofighter and assembles the aircraft for the Royal Air Force. It is also a principal subcontractor on the F35 Joint Strike Fighter – the world's largest single defence project – for which it designs and manufactures a range of components. It also manufactures the Hawk, the world's most successful jet training aircraft. Airbus UK also manufactures the wings for the A400 m military transporter. Rolls-Royce is the world's second-largest aero-engine manufacturer. Its engines power more than 30 types of commercial aircraft and it has more than 30,000 engines in service in the civil and defence sectors.
The UK space industry was worth £9.1bn in 2011 and employed 29,000 people. It is growing at a rate of 7.5 per cent annually, according to its umbrella organisation, the UK Space Agency. In 2013, the British Government pledged £60 m to the Skylon project: this investment will provide support at a "crucial stage" to allow a full-scale prototype of the SABRE engine to be built.
The pharmaceutical industry plays an important role in the UK economy and the country has the third-highest share of global pharmaceutical R&D expenditures.
Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanised and efficient by European standards, producing about 60 per cent of food needs with less than 1.6 per cent of the labour force (535,000 workers). Around two-thirds of production is devoted to livestock, one-third to arable crops. The UK retains a significant, though much reduced fishing industry. It is also rich in a number of natural resources including coal, petroleum, natural gas, tin, limestone, iron ore, salt, clay, chalk, gypsum, lead, silica and an abundance of arable land.
Science and technology
England and Scotland were leading centres of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th century. The United Kingdom led the Industrial Revolution from the 18th century, and has continued to produce scientists and engineers credited with important advances. Major theorists from the 17th and 18th centuries include Isaac Newton, whose laws of motion and illumination of gravity have been seen as a keystone of modern science; from the 19th century Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution by natural selection was fundamental to the development of modern biology, and James Clerk Maxwell, who formulated classical electromagnetic theory; and more recently Stephen Hawking, who advanced major theories in the fields of cosmology, quantum gravity and the investigation of black holes.
Major scientific discoveries from the 18th century include hydrogen by Henry Cavendish; from the 20th century penicillin by Alexander Fleming, and the structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others. Famous British engineers and inventors of the Industrial Revolution include James Watt, George Stephenson, Richard Arkwright, Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Other major engineering projects and applications by people from the UK include the steam locomotive, developed by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian; from the 19th century the electric motor by Michael Faraday, the first computer designed by Charles Babbage, the first commercial electrical telegraph by William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, the incandescent light bulb by Joseph Swan, and the first practical telephone, patented by Alexander Graham Bell; and in the 20th century the world's first working television system by John Logie Baird and others, the jet engine by Frank Whittle, the basis of the modern computer by Alan Turing, and the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee.
Scientific research and development remains important in British universities, with many establishing science parks to facilitate production and co-operation with industry. Between 2004 and 2008 the UK produced 7 per cent of the world's scientific research papers and had an 8 per cent share of scientific citations, the third and second-highest in the world (after the United States and China, respectively). Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. The United Kingdom was ranked 4th in the Global Innovation Index 2020 and 2021, up from 5th in 2019.
Transport
A radial road network totals 29,145 miles (46,904 km) of main roads, 2,173 miles (3,497 km) of motorways and 213,750 miles (344,000 km) of paved roads. The M25, encircling London, is the largest and busiest bypass in the world. In 2009 there were a total of 34 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain.
The rail network in the UK is the oldest such network in the world. The system consists of five high-speed main lines (the West Coast, East Coast, Midland, Great Western and Great Eastern), which radiate from London to the rest of the country, augmented by regional rail lines and dense commuter networks within the major cities. High Speed 1 is operationally separate from the rest of the network. The world's first passenger railway running on steam was the Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. Just under five years later the world's first intercity railway was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, designed by George Stephenson. The network grew rapidly as a patchwork of hundreds of separate companies during the Victorian era.
The UK has a railway network of 10,072 miles (16,209 km). The British Rail network was privatised between 1994 and 1997, which was followed by a rapid rise in passenger numbers. The UK was ranked eighth among national European rail systems in the 2017 European Railway Performance Index assessing intensity of use, quality of service and safety. Network Rail owns and manages most of the fixed assets (tracks, signals etc.). HS2, a new high-speed railway line, is estimated to cost £56 billion. Crossrail, under construction in London, is Europe's largest construction project with a £15 billion projected cost.
In the year from October 2009 to September 2010 UK airports handled a total of 211.4 million passengers. In that period the three largest airports were London Heathrow Airport (65.6 million passengers), Gatwick Airport (31.5 million passengers) and London Stansted Airport (18.9 million passengers). London Heathrow Airport, located 15 miles (24 km) west of the capital, has the most international passenger traffic of any airport in the world and is the hub for the UK flag carrier British Airways, as well as Virgin Atlantic.
Energy
In 2006, the UK was the world's ninth-largest consumer of energy and the 15th-largest producer. The UK is home to a number of large energy companies, including two of the six oil and gas "supermajors" – BP and Shell.
In 2013, the UK produced 914 thousand barrels per day (bbl/d) of oil and consumed 1,507 thousand bbl/d. Production is now in decline and the UK has been a net importer of oil since 2005. In 2010 the UK had around 3.1 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves.
In 2009, the UK was the 13th-largest producer of natural gas in the world and the largest producer in the EC. Production is now in decline and the UK has been a net importer of natural gas since 2004.
Coal production played a key role in the UK economy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the mid-1970s, 130 million tonnes of coal were produced annually, not falling below 100 million tonnes until the early 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s the industry was scaled back considerably. In 2011, the UK produced 18.3 million tonnes of coal. In 2005 it had proven recoverable coal reserves of 171 million tons. The UK Coal Authority has stated there is a potential to produce between 7 billion tonnes and 16 billion tonnes of coal through underground coal gasification (UCG) or 'fracking', and that, based on current UK coal consumption, such reserves could last between 200 and 400 years. Environmental and social concerns have been raised over chemicals getting into the water table and minor earthquakes damaging homes.
In the late 1990s, nuclear power plants contributed around 25 per cent of total annual electricity generation in the UK, but this has gradually declined as old plants have been shut down and ageing-related problems affect plant availability. In 2012, the UK had 16 reactors normally generating about 19 per cent of its electricity. All but one of the reactors will be retired by 2023. Unlike Germany and Japan, the UK intends to build a new generation of nuclear plants from about 2018.
The total of all renewable electricity sources provided for 38.9 per cent of the electricity generated in the United Kingdom in the third quarter of 2019, producing 28.8TWh of electricity. The UK is one of the best sites in Europe for wind energy, and wind power production is its fastest-growing supply, in 2019 it generated almost 20 per cent of the UK's total electricity.
Water supply and sanitation
Access to improved water supply and sanitation in the UK is universal. It is estimated that 96.7 per cent of households are connected to the sewer network. According to the Environment Agency, total water abstraction for public water supply in the UK was 16,406 megalitres per day in 2007.
In England and Wales water and sewerage services are provided by 10 private regional water and sewerage companies and 13 mostly smaller private "water only" companies. In Scotland, water and sewerage services are provided by a single public company, Scottish Water.
Demographics
A census is taken simultaneously in all parts of the UK every 10 years. In the 2011 census the total population of the United Kingdom was 63,181,775. It is the fourth-largest in Europe (after Russia, Germany and France), the fifth-largest in the Commonwealth and the 22nd-largest in the world. In mid-2014 and mid-2015 net long-term international migration contributed more to population growth. In mid-2012 and mid-2013 natural change contributed the most to population growth. Between 2001 and 2011 the population increased by an average annual rate of approximately 0.7 per cent. This compares to 0.3 per cent per year in the period 1991 to 2001 and 0.2 per cent in the decade 1981 to 1991. The 2011 census also showed that, over the previous 100 years, the proportion of the population aged 0–14 fell from 31 per cent to 18 per cent, and the proportion of people aged 65 and over rose from 5 to 16 per cent. In 2018 the median age of the UK population was 41.7 years.
England's population in 2011 was 53 million, representing some 84 per cent of the UK total. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with 420 people resident per square kilometre in mid-2015, with a particular concentration in London and the south-east. The 2011 census put Scotland's population at 5.3 million and Wales at 3.06 million.
In 2017 the average total fertility rate (TFR) across the UK was 1.74 children born per woman. While a rising birth rate is contributing to population growth, it remains considerably below the baby boom peak of 2.95 children per woman in 1964, or the high of 6.02 children born per woman in 1815, below the replacement rate of 2.1, but higher than the 2001 record low of 1.63. In 2011, 47.3 per cent of births in the UK were to unmarried women. The Office for National Statistics published a bulletin in 2015 showing that, out of the UK population aged 16 and over, 1.7 per cent identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (2.0 per cent of males and 1.5 per cent of females); 4.5 per cent of respondents responded with "other", "I don't know", or did not respond. The number of transgender people in the UK was estimated to be between 65,000 and 300,000 by research between 2001 and 2008.
Ethnic groups
Historically, indigenous British people were thought to be descended from the various ethnic groups that settled there before the 12th century: the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norse and the Normans. Welsh people could be the oldest ethnic group in the UK. A 2006 genetic study shows that more than 50 per cent of England's gene pool contains Germanic Y chromosomes. Another 2005 genetic analysis indicates that "about 75 per cent of the traceable ancestors of the modern British population had arrived in the British isles by about 6,200 years ago, at the start of the British Neolithic or Stone Age", and that the British broadly share a common ancestry with the Basque people.
The UK has a history of non-white immigration with Liverpool having the oldest Black population in the country dating back to at least the 1730s during the period of the African slave trade. During this period it is estimated the Afro-Caribbean population of Great Britain was 10,000 to 15,000 which later declined due to the abolition of slavery. The UK also has the oldest Chinese community in Europe, dating to the arrival of Chinese seamen in the 19th century. In 1950 there were probably fewer than 20,000 non-white residents in Britain, almost all born overseas. In 1951 there were an estimated 94,500 people living in Britain who had been born in South Asia, China, Africa and the Caribbean, just under 0.2 per cent of the UK population. By 1961 this number had more than quadrupled to 384,000, just over 0.7 per cent of the United Kingdom population.
Languages
The UK's de facto official language is English. It is estimated that 95 per cent of the UK's population are monolingual English speakers. 5.5 per cent of the population are estimated to speak languages brought to the UK as a result of relatively recent immigration. South Asian languages are the largest grouping which includes Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Sylheti, Hindi and Gujarati. According to the 2011 census, Polish has become the second-largest language spoken in England and has 546,000 speakers. In 2019, some three quarters of a million people spoke little or no English.
Three indigenous Celtic languages are spoken in the UK: Welsh, Irish and Scottish Gaelic. Cornish, which became extinct as a first language in the late 18th century, is subject to revival efforts and has a small group of second language speakers. In the 2011 Census, approximately one-fifth (19 per cent) of the population of Wales said they could speak Welsh, an increase from the 1991 Census (18 per cent). In addition, it is estimated that about 200,000 Welsh speakers live in England. Over 92,000 people in Scotland (just under 2 per cent of the population) had some Gaelic language ability, including 72 per cent of those living in the Outer Hebrides. The number of children being taught either Welsh or Scottish Gaelic is increasing. Among emigrant-descended populations some Scottish Gaelic is still spoken in Canada (principally Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island), and Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina.
Scots, a language descended from early northern Middle English, has limited recognition without specific commitments to protection and promotion.
As of April 2020, there are said to be around 151,000 users of British Sign Language (BSL), a sign language used by deaf people, in the UK.
Religion
Forms of Christianity have dominated religious life in what is now the United Kingdom for over 1,400 years. Although a majority of citizens still identify with Christianity in many surveys, regular church attendance has fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, while immigration and demographic change have contributed to the growth of other faiths, most notably Islam. This has led some commentators to variously describe the UK as a multi-faith, secularised, or post-Christian society.
In the 2001 census 71.6 per cent of all respondents indicated that they were Christians, with the next largest faiths being Islam (2.8 per cent), Hinduism (1.0 per cent), Sikhism (0.6 per cent), Judaism (0.5 per cent), Buddhism (0.3 per cent) and all other religions (0.3 per cent). 15 per cent of respondents stated that they had no religion, with a further 7 per cent not stating a religious preference. A Tearfund survey in 2007 showed only one in 10 Britons actually attend church weekly. Between the 2001 and 2011 census there was a decrease in the number of people who identified as Christian by 12 per cent, whilst the percentage of those reporting no religious affiliation doubled. This contrasted with growth in the other main religious group categories, with the number of Muslims increasing by the most substantial margin to a total of about 5 per cent. The Muslim population has increased from 1.6 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2011, making it the second-largest religious group in the United Kingdom.
Migration
The United Kingdom has experienced successive waves of migration. The Great Famine in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, resulted in perhaps a million people migrating to Great Britain. Throughout the 19th century a small population of 28,644 German immigrants built up in England and Wales. London held around half of this population, and other small communities existed in Manchester, Bradford and elsewhere. The German immigrant community was the largest group until 1891, when it became second to Russian Jews. After 1881, Russian Jews suffered bitter persecutions and 2,000,000 left the Russian Empire by 1914. Around 120,000 settled permanently in Britain, becoming the largest ethnic minority from outside the British Isles; this population had increased to 370,000 by 1938.
Education
Education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, with each country having a separate education system.
Considering the three systems together, about 38 per cent of the United Kingdom population has a university or college degree, which is the highest percentage in Europe, and among the highest percentages in the world. The United Kingdom trails only the United States in terms of representation on lists of top 100 universities.
A government commission's report in 2014 found that privately educated people comprise 7 per cent of the general population of the UK but much larger percentages of the top professions, the most extreme case quoted being 71 per cent of senior judges.
In 2018, more than 57,000 children were being homeschooled in the United Kingdom.
England
Whilst education in England is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education, the day-to-day administration and funding of state schools is the responsibility of local authorities. Universally free of charge state education was introduced piecemeal between 1870 and 1944. Education is now mandatory from ages 5 to 16, and in England youngsters must stay in education or training until they are 18. In 2011, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) rated 13–14-year-old pupils in England and Wales 10th in the world for maths and 9th for science. The majority of children are educated in state-sector schools, a small proportion of which select on the grounds of academic ability. Two of the top 10 performing schools in terms of GCSE results in 2006 were state-run grammar schools. In 2010, over half of places at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge were taken by students from state schools, while the proportion of children in England attending private schools is around 7 per cent, which rises to 18 per cent of those over 16.
Health
Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter and each country has its own system of private and publicly funded health care. Public healthcare is provided to all UK permanent residents and is mostly free at the point of need, being paid for from general taxation. The World Health Organization, in 2000, ranked the provision of healthcare in the United Kingdom as fifteenth best in Europe and eighteenth in the world. Since 1979 expenditure on healthcare has been increased significantly. The UK spends around 8.4 per cent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, which is 0.5 percentage points below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average.
Regulatory bodies are organised on a UK-wide basis such as the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and non-governmental-based, such as the Royal Colleges. Political and operational responsibility for healthcare lies with four national executives; healthcare in England is the responsibility of the UK Government; healthcare in Scotland is the responsibility of the Scottish Government; and healthcare in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh Government. Each National Health Service has different policies and priorities, resulting in contrasts.
Culture
The culture of the United Kingdom has been influenced by many factors including: the nation's island status; its history as a western liberal democracy and a major power; as well as being a political union of four countries with each preserving elements of distinctive traditions, customs and symbolism. As a result of the British Empire, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, The Kingdom of Sierra; a common culture coined today as the Anglosphere. The substantial cultural influence of the United Kingdom has led it to be described as a "cultural superpower". A global opinion poll for the BBC saw the United Kingdom ranked the third most positively viewed nation in the world (behind Germany and Canada) in 2013 and 2014.
Literature
"British literature" refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Most British literature is in the English language. In 2005, some 206,000 books were published in the United Kingdom and in 2006 it was the largest publisher of books in the world.
The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. The 20th-century English crime writer Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time.
Twelve of the top 25 of 100 novels by British writers chosen by a BBC poll of global critics were written by women; these included works by George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Doris Lessing and Zadie Smith.
Scotland's contributions include Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes), Sir Walter Scott, J. M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson and the poet Robert Burns. More recently Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance, with grimmer works from Ian Rankin and Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, was UNESCO's first worldwide City of Literature.
Britain's oldest known poem, Y Gododdin, was composed most likely in the late 6th century. It was written in Cumbric or Old Welsh and contains the earliest known reference to King Arthur. The Arthurian legend was further developed by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (fl. 1320–1370) is regarded as one of the greatest European poets of his age. Daniel Owen is credited as the first Welsh-language novelist, publishing Rhys Lewis in 1885. The best-known of the Anglo-Welsh poets are Dylan Thomas and R. S. Thomas, the latter nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Leading Welsh novelists of the twentieth century include Richard Llewellyn and Kate Roberts.
Irish writers, living at a time when all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, include Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and George Bernard Shaw.
There have been a number of authors whose origins were from outside the United Kingdom but who moved to the UK. These include Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sir Salman Rushdie and Ezra Pound.
Music
Various styles of music have become popular in the UK, including the indigenous folk music of England, Scotland, and Wales. Historically, there has been exceptional Renaissance music from the Tudor period, with masses, madrigals and lute music by Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and John Dowland. After the Stuart Restoration, an English tradition of dramatic masques, anthems and airs became established, led by Henry Purcell, followed by Thomas Arne and others. The German-born composer George Frideric Handel became a naturalised British citizen in 1727, when he composed the anthem Zadok the Priest for the coronation of George II; it became the traditional ceremonial music for anointing all future monarchs. Handel's many oratorios, such as his famous Messiah, were written in the English language. Ceremonial music is also performed to mark Remembrance Sunday across the UK, including the Traditional Music played at the Cenotaph. In the second half of the 19th century, as Arthur Sullivan and his librettist W. S. Gilbert wrote their popular Savoy operas, Edward Elgar's wide range of music rivalled that of his contemporaries on the continent. Increasingly, however, composers became inspired by the English countryside and its folk music, notably Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, a pioneer of modern British opera. Among the many post-war composers, some of the most notable have made their own personal choice of musical identity: Peter Maxwell Davies (Orkney), Harrison Birtwistle (mythological), and John Tavener (religious).
Visual art
The history of British visual art forms part of western art history. Major British artists include: the Romantics William Blake, John Constable, Samuel Palmer and J.M.W. Turner; the portrait painters Sir Joshua Reynolds and Lucian Freud; the landscape artists Thomas Gainsborough and L. S. Lowry; the pioneer of the Arts and Crafts Movement William Morris; the figurative painter Francis Bacon; the Pop artists Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and David Hockney; the pioneers of Conceptual art movement Art & Language; the collaborative duo Gilbert and George; the abstract artist Howard Hodgkin; and the sculptors Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Henry Moore. During the late 1980s and 1990s the Saatchi Gallery in London helped to bring to public attention a group of multi-genre artists who would become known as the "Young British Artists": Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood and the Chapman Brothers are among the better-known members of this loosely affiliated movement.
The Royal Academy in London is a key organisation for the promotion of the visual arts in the United Kingdom. Major schools of art in the UK include: the six-school University of the Arts London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; Goldsmiths, University of London; the Slade School of Fine Art (part of University College London); the Glasgow School of Art; the Royal College of Art; and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (part of the University of Oxford). The Courtauld Institute of Art is a leading centre for the teaching of the history of art. Important art galleries in the United Kingdom include the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year).
Cinema
The United Kingdom has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema. The British directors Alfred Hitchcock, whose film Vertigo is considered by some critics as the best film of all time, and David Lean are among the most critically acclaimed of all time. Many British actors have achieved international fame and critical success. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in the United Kingdom. Ealing Studios has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world.
In 2009, British films grossed around $2 billion worldwide and achieved a market share of around 7 per cent globally and 17 per cent in the United Kingdom. UK box-office takings totalled £944 million in 2009, with around 173 million admissions. The annual British Academy Film Awards are hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Cuisine
British cuisine developed from various influences reflective of its land, settlements, arrivals of new settlers and immigrants, trade and colonialism. Celtic agriculture and animal breeding produced a wide variety of foodstuffs for indigenous Celts and Britons. Anglo-Saxon England developed meat and savoury herb stewing techniques before the practice became common in Europe. The Norman conquest introduced exotic spices into England in the Middle Ages. The British Empire facilitated a knowledge of Indian cuisine with its "strong, penetrating spices and herbs". British cuisine has absorbed the cultural influence of those who have settled in Britain, producing many hybrid dishes, such as the Anglo-Indian chicken tikka masala. Vegan and vegetarian diets have increased in Britain in recent years. In 2021, a survey found that 8% of British respondents eat a plant-based diet and 36% of respondents have a favourable view of plant-based diets.
Media
The BBC, founded in 1922, is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and Internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates numerous television and radio stations in the UK and abroad and its domestic services are funded by the television licence. Other major players in the UK media include EMI Group plc, Granada plc, Carlton Communications, The Rank Group, Trident Holdings, Associated Communications, and Rediffusion Communications. London dominates the media sector in the UK: national newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, although Manchester is also a significant national media centre. Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Cardiff, are important centres of newspaper and broadcasting production in Scotland and Wales, respectively. The UK publishing sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people. In 2015, the UK published 2,710 book titles per million inhabitants, more than any other country, much of this being exported to other Anglophone countries.
In 2009, it was estimated that individuals viewed a mean of 3.75 hours of television per day and 2.81 hours of radio. In that year the main BBC public service broadcasting channels accounted for an estimated 28.4 per cent of all television viewing; the three main independent channels accounted for 29.5 per cent and the increasingly important other satellite and digital channels for the remaining 42.1 per cent. Sales of newspapers have fallen since the 1970s and in 2010 41 per cent of people reported reading a daily national newspaper. In 2010, 82.5 per cent of the UK population were Internet users, the highest proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of users in that year.
Philosophy
The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of 'British Empiricism', a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid, and 'Scottish Philosophy', sometimes referred to as the 'Scottish School of Common Sense'. The most famous philosophers of British Empiricism are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume; while Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid and William Hamilton were major exponents of the Scottish "common sense" school. Two Britons are also notable for the ethical theory of utilitarianism, a moral philosophy first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill in his short work Utilitarianism.
Sport
Association football, tennis, table tennis, badminton, rugby union, rugby league, rugby sevens, golf, boxing, netball, water polo, field hockey, billiards, darts, rowing, rounders and cricket originated or were substantially developed in the UK, with the rules and codes of many modern sports invented and codified in the late 19th century Victorian Britain. In 2012, the President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, stated, "This great, sports-loving country is widely recognised as the birthplace of modern sport. It was here that the concepts of sportsmanship and fair play were first codified into clear rules and regulations. It was here that sport was included as an educational tool in the school curriculum".
Symbols
See also
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This page uses material from the Wikipedia page United Kingdom, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
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