Six men whose fate shook all England were the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They were arrested and then deported to Australia in 1834. No one could have guessed that when the Tolpuddle parish constable tapped George Loveless on the shoulder and demanded that he accompany him to Dorchester he was Starting a case that was to shake […]

On February 21, 1868, the president and secretary of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council sent out a letter calling trades councils all over Britain to a congress. This was the birth of the Trades Union Congress (TUC). That first congress represented 118,000 workers. Delegates discussed the “probability of an attempt being made during the […]

Before World War Two public relations — except in fashion or show business — was regarded with suspicion in Britain. The war made it, like advertising, respectable and Whitehall found public relations officers very convenient for explaining unpopular actions. Hundreds of public relations men are steadily employed by large corporations, keeping newspapers and television informed […]

In Britain, as opposed to America, businessmen have inherited a distrust of advertising and a feeling that, if what they make is good enough, there will be no need to boast about it. They have regarded advertising as a useful luxury, not an essential tool. However many industries in Britain have been built on advertising […]

Though the City is commonly referred to as “the one square mile’’ that is yet another case of British understatement: it actually is one square mile plus 37 acres. By night it almost resembles the tiny walled village on the Thames that it was centuries ago. Its narrow streets and counting-house halls are-‘empty, and save […]

In the 19th century the Diplomatic Service was recruited almost exclusively from the landed aristocracy. Up to 1918, what is now known as the Foreign Service was divided into two separate organisations: the Foreign Office, corlsisting of Civil servants at Whitehall, and the larger Diplomatic Service — the embassy staffs abroad, from ambassadors downward. To […]

In Britain the result of the election usually becomes clear early on Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon the new Prime Minister is calling at the Palace and moving into Downing Street. The fact that many Cabinet Ministers now live “above the shop’’ makes the transition more fierce, for overnight they lose not only their […]

The most important job of the political parties is to provide Cabinet ministers. For whatever Parliament may do, it is on these twenty men that the week-to-week running of the country depends. The Cabinet has no legal existence, beyond the powers of the ministers of the Crown. It is merely a Committee, whose very existence […]

Each session of Parliament is usually opened in the House of Lords by the Queen (King), who is attended by heralds, officers of the Court and,mempbers of the Diplomatic Corps. The Commons are “summbned’’ to the Chamber by Black Rod (the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, whose title derives from the black staff with […]

The Lords and Commons began to meget, separately some five centuries ago and the Commons were allotted St Stephen’s Chapel of the Palace of Westminster, built on a marshy island in the Thames. MPs sat in the,choir stalls facing each other, with the Speaker’s, chair on a dais’‘in front of the altar. Some MPs sat […]