The Best of British?
In the final poem of his third book of Odes, the Roman poet Horace boldly claims to have been “princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos deduxisse modos” — the first to have translated Greek poetry to Italian metre. Whatever the accuracy of his boast, there can be little doubt that the marriage was a successful one, producing the “Golden Age” of Latin literature which still delights 2000 years later.
Not all cultural fusions are so successful, however. Many, for example, doubt that the wholesale importation of the American narrative on race is particularly apt for Britain, pointing to differences both historic and contemporary. While that is a subject of debate though, we have blithely adopted the American term, “The Greatest Generation”, to describe those who fought in the War, without further thought. It first entered popular usage across the Atlantic in the late 1990’s, following the publication of a book of the same name by the journalist Tom Brokaw, detailing the experiences of the generation of Americans who fought for freedom in Europe and Asia. It was not meant to have wider applicability.
Use of the term here became current with the release of a BBC documentary of the name in 2015 and spiked during the pandemic as the nation reached back into its limited historical imagination and decided that Covid was like the War, aided, no doubt, by the profile accorded to the Queen and Captain Sir Tom Moore. By the funeral of Prince Philip, it had come to seem almost de rigeur.
But is it a harmony like that produced by Greek verse and the Latin language or is it, like the racial narrative, an attempt to take a concept and fit it to rather different facts?
The War generation here obviously share with their American comrades the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. However, there are important differences. Britain was forced into a war out of defensive necessity — Germany, if it conquered the continent, would have been well placed to mount an invasion of the homeland, while Japan posed a direct threat to the Asian colonies. Even after Pearl Harbor, America faced no similar challenge. It chose to fight but did not have the same pressing, existential need.
Equally, Britain fought with a conscript Army. National Service for all males aged between 20 and 22 had been introduced in May 1939 and was extended by the National Services (Armed Forces) Act, passed on the day war was declared, to cover all men between the ages of 18 and 41. By contrast, 60% of the American forces in the war were volunteers. We may feel that there is a difference between a conscript army, fighting a war of necessity and a largely volunteer force, fighting a war of choice.
“If you want a happy ending,” Orson Welles said, “that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” Extending our consideration to the post-war period does no disservice to the Americans. They built the interstate network of highways, they constructed suburbia which, though now derided as a shallow façade hiding pill-popping, alcoholism and frustrated ambition, provided the masses with access to a standard of living unparalleled in human history. They passed the Civil Rights Act. They put a man on the moon.
By contrast, the next chapters of the British story were less successful. Years of bombing and the cost of waging the conflict left both the country’s infrastructure and finances in ruins. It also had to cope with an Empire which was beginning to dissolve. It decided that the way forward was the “social control of economic forces in the interest of the great mass of individuals.” as had been urged by the American Progressive John Dewey in the aftermath of the First World War. Labour’s manifesto in the 1945 election, with its promises of nationalisation and central planning, formed the political paradigm for the next 30 years.
Thus, while the American government had some limited involvement in the economy, its British counterpart felt the need to own entities such as removal companies and hotels. At no point during the post-war years did the government here account for a smaller percentage of GDP than Washington’s and it was usually about 10% higher, notwithstanding America’s involvement in Vietnam.
This may have worked for a while — the sixties were, after all, “swinging” — but ultimately, the man from Whitehall did not know best. Britain’s post-war policies eroded its competitiveness, with the stagnation of the seventies leaving the country the “sick man of Europe”. The narrative arc of Denis Healey, one of the heroes of Anzio, who was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for the loan that staved off national bankruptcy, is a reversal worthy of the Greek tragedies he studied at Balliol. His generation may have won the war, but they lost the peace.
Equally, the Americans do not, bluntly, have many generations to choose from. The obvious alternative, the group who ended slavery, are compromised by the fact that half were on the wrong side. An older country, Britain has more candidates for greatness, even if we stipulate fighting to defeat tyranny on the continent as a condition for consideration.
Take, for example, the generation which fought Napoleon. Not content with marshalling allied forces to defeat the Emperor and establishing a peace which lasted 50 years, their missionary zeal led them to seek to end slavery internationally. The West Africa Squadron, founded in 1807, continued for 53 years, freeing an estimated 150,000 slaves and accounting for half of all money spent on the Navy. At home, the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, with the first railway opening in 1825, the same time as construction started on the Thames Tunnel, the world’s first under a navigable body of water. Progress in sectors such as textiles, iron and steel and engineering led exports to triple between 1809 and 1839. Nor were social considerations ignored, with the Factory Acts seeking to impose minimum working standards, the Reform Act extending the franchise and Catholic Emancipation removing the last legal forms of sectarianism.
Or think of the generation born between 1630 and 1655. They laid the foundation for the Royal Navy’s command of the oceans and, in the person of the Duke of Marlborough, put an end to Louis XIV’s plans to dominate Europe but these are almost the least of their achievements. Forming the core of the early Royal Society, not only did they make break-through discoveries in mathematics and physics, they also institutionalized the scientific method, driving all subsequent progress. Faced with the need to re-build London after the Great Fire, they produced St Paul’s, whereas their 20th century successors left us the South Bank Centre. John Locke, as the “Father of Liberalism”, provided the philosophical underpinnings for the 1689 Bill of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence. The world we live in today is the world they built.
A supporter of the war generation might concede that previous periods saw a greater concentration of individual genius, but argue that the achievements of his favoured cohort were a mass phenomenon, involving the whole of society. We should, however, note that whatever the brilliance of Nelson, he would have been nothing without the Jack Tars crewing his ships, nor would Wren have produced much without the builders he employed. Since we do not see WWII as merely an achievement of Eisenhower and Montgomery, we should not treat previous generations that way.
Nor is it even clear that such criticism is fair. The total mobilisation of society was simply not possible in earlier states. The earliest possible example is France, a historically more authoritarian state, whose levee en masse during the Revolutionary Wars allowed it to deploy 1.5mn men across the services. Against this, however, the Allies together were able to field 1mn during the Hundred Days Campaign. That Britain did not need to mobilise society to defeat Napoleon does not tell us that it could not have done so, or that the population would have reacted differently to their 20th century descendants
That we should wish to celebrate the war generation is understandable. After all, most of us know some of its members and their defeat of fascism was a truly great achievement. However, as we seek to “Build Back Better”, we should be wary of, as some wish, following their peacetime prescriptions. If it did not work last time, why will it work now? We have other options.
