A History of Britain: 1945 to Brexit

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ENVIRONMENT UNDER STRAIN

POPULATION

IN WRITING ON Britain in the late twentieth century and into the 2000s, the theme of the environment under strain principally referred, for much of the public, to green issues. This assessment reflected the extent to which these issues, and the related attitudes, both of which had developed from the 1960s, had been diffused more widely into the political community. In contrast, by the mid-2010s, there was, for many, a more specific and pointed concern, that of people, and more particularly their number. This concern related to anxieties about the consequences of both large-scale immigration and population aging due to higher life expectancy and, linked to that, of a future acceleration in the already-pronounced rise in population, with all the consequences that brought or allegedly brought or might bring, categories that people were often slipshod about in their comments. The population of the United Kingdom (UK) rose from 50.2 million in 1945 to 65.1 million in mid-2015, and such figures were regarded as reasonably accurate and, if anything, as an underestimate.

Trends and projections indicate a continuation of the present direction of change. Projections for 2016 by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a respected government body, suggest that, from 2014 to 2024, the population of England, by far the most populous part of the UK, is expected to rise by 4.1 million to 58.4 million, following the 4.2 million increase in the decade to 2014. By 2039, the population of England is currently due to reach 63.3 million. In this figure, immigration is projected to raise the English population by 3.6 percent, with another 3.9 percent rise occurring from natural change, the difference between births and deaths. Immigration is also a crucial factor in natural change, as women born overseas, but giving birth after migrating, had higher birth rates than women born in Britain. This trend is likely to continue.

Alongside birth rates and immigration, an aging population, due to higher life expectancy, is a key factor in the rise of the UK population. Indeed, over-65s are expected to be the fastest growing age group in all regions, with increases of more than 20 percent in most areas. Moreover, the number of local authority areas in which more than a quarter of residents are over sixty-five is expected to triple—from 28 to 84—between 2014 and 2024, with West Somerset having 36.5 percent of residents in that category, followed by North Norfolk, another predominantly rural area, with 34.6 percent, and the number of people in England over the age of ninety passing five hundred thousand in 2017, and reaching one million by 2034.

Regional differences in population figures and trends are projected by the ONS to be pronounced, with growth in Britain strongest in the South and East of England. The population in eastern England is due to jump by 8.9 percent from 2014 to 6.5 million by 2024, and that of South-East England by 8.1 percent to 9.5 million. London’s population, among whom the young are particularly prominent, is expected to grow by 13.7 percent by 2024, to reach 9.7 million, with the population of the London borough of Tower Hamlets, in crowded East London, a center of immigration, expected to grow by 25.1 percent. Of the nearly three million foreign-born Londoners in 2011, 40 percent were from Europe, 30 percent were from the Middle East and Asia, 20 percent from Africa, and 10 percent from America or the Caribbean.

The projected population figures for 2024 (and more generally) that are given by the ONS and other bodies may underestimate the situation as the 2014 Principal Projection published by the ONS assumed net migration at 185,000 a year after a few years, while the present level is 327,000 in the twelve months to the end of March 2016. This contrasts with government attempts in the 2010s to bring net immigration down to below one hundred thousand a year by the end of 2020, attempts that so far remain implausible. Figures released in October 2016 by the ONS suggested that by 2025, London’s population would be close to ten million.

Outside London, the town of Corby in Northamptonshire, with 16.7 percent, is expected to see the highest growth in England by 2024. It has benefited from industrial regeneration after the shock caused by the closure of the steelworks there in the 1980s. Conversely, some areas in northern England will probably see falls in population, notably the town of Barrow-in-Furness, the center of submarine manufacture, which is expected to see a 4.3 percent drop in population, with the northwestern towns of Blackpool and Blackburn also due to see falls. Two regions, the North-East and North-West (of England), will probably see decreases in the working-age population. Scotland does not have growth rates to match those of England, in part due to much less immigration, both current and historic, and also to considerable recent emigration, both to England and abroad. The October 2016 ONS figures suggested that of the eleven largest city regions, London had the largest percentage growth in 2011–15, followed by Bristol, the West Midlands, and Greater Manchester, in that order, with Glasgow, at 1 percent, having the lowest rate of growth, followed by Liverpool at 1.2 percent.

A plethora of figures may confuse or, indeed, become tedious. The overall impression, however, is clear, and the figures tend to provide different aspects of it, as well as to help explain aspects of the situation and the trend. Moreover, looking at the figures in detail highlights important chronological and regional variations and reveals their significance. There is no sign that this situation will change. In addition, population trends provide a key product of, and focus for, developments across a range of spheres, including, crucially, economic shifts, migration, and social welfare policies. The implications of population changes for land use, resource pressures, housing, transport, and public services, notably education, health, and social care, are immense. At the same time, population is a key—arguably, the most significant—source of pressure on the environment.

NIMBYISM

Each interpretation of environmental crisis, and every discussion of future trends, focused wider issues, but also reflected the sense that Britain itself was under pressure. In reality, that has always been the case. Britain has been an inhabited landscape for thousands of years and, throughout that period, has been affected by major changes in land use, as well as by successive waves of immigration. It would be extraordinary if these processes should cease, although population growth nearly stopped in the 1970s and 1980s, before immigration took off again in the years of Tony Blair’s prime ministership (1997–2007). Nevertheless, the often vociferous aspiration for continuity and for opposition to change, on the part of many, generally tells us more about (some) attitudes than about practicalities. This aspiration is particularly expressed in terms of nimbyism, or not in my backyard, an opposition to development in the particular areas of those concerned.

The charge of nimbyism was regularly thrown at those who opposed change and usually in order to claim or suggest that they were privileged and selfish people who were unwilling to share the fruits of their privilege. This charge had a basis in fact and notably so in terms of opposition to new housing in rural areas or to social housing (housing for the poor) in affluent urban neighborhoods and also, in the mid-2010s, to fracking for natural gas. Strong opposition to the expansion of Heathrow Airport in the 2010s, especially in West London, was seen in these terms by critics.

Thus, nimbyism served a critical agenda suggesting that hostility to development represented class interest. This agenda was particularly present in the 1960s and 1980s as, respectively, Labour and Conservative governments sought to push through change. It was also more generally the case as far as local government was concerned and, notably, its often pronounced hostility to interests and views that opposed its development plans. An aspect of nimbyism was provided by what David Willetts, a modernizing, one nation, Conservative minister in the early 2010s, referred to as bring backery, by which imaginative use of the language he meant a conservative yearning for the past.

In reality, this placing of nimbyism, while well founded in part, also totally failed to capture the range of opposition to developments, and the extent to which much of it was well merited. The UK was not, as often presented, a battlefield of reform versus self-interest, nor of merit versus tradition, but instead, a far more complex tension of motives and causes; and nimbyism was frequently an aspect of local democracy as in opposition in Lancashire to fracking in the mid-2010s. Moreover, the extent and pace of change in the years since 1945 have been great. Linked to these, confidence about their processes and consequences has been generally limited. This has been more particularly the case after postwar optimism about a brave new world ebbed in the 1970s and 1980s, and in many respects, was shattered.

Nimbyism also had a pronounced regional dynamic. It was particularly notable in the South and Midlands of England, although its consequences can be UK-wide, as with the surcharge for flood protection on buildings’ insurance policies. There is a connection between nimbyism and the major population growth after 1980 in southern England. In its turn, this growth, and the major restrictions placed on it in terms of planning permission, had a major and lasting impact on house prices. Nimbyism therefore played a role in the misguided increased building on floodplains in the crowded South.

ENVIRONMENT

In discussing the environment, and indeed other issues, we have to distinguish between change and crisis. Furthermore, we have to accept the dependence of the latter on perception and, more specifically, on clashing perceptions. The intensity of change is in part a matter of perception. We also need to distinguish between issues specific to Britain and, what is far more common, the British manifestations of wider, often global, trends—for example, climate change and rising population. None of these points minimize the extent of change in Britain. Climate change has been held responsible for a range of developments, including the greater numbers of sharks and jellyfish in British waters, the latter especially notable in 2016.

As humans are not the sole species, it is valuable to appreciate the extent to which it is often not the human environment that is most under strain but instead, those of animals and plants. In both instances (and each encompasses a broad range of cases), there were many issues posed by the nature of sharing territory. The usual approach would be to comment on the advance of humans at the expense of other animals, notably birds and butterflies, and to focus, in particular, on the destruction of animal habitats, such as hedgerows, copses (small woods), and ponds.

These changes are indeed occurring, as they have long done. In particular, the loss of habitats for plant and animal species is a long-established process.¹ However, at present, change is frequently at an unprecedented rate. At the same time, the process is far more complex. Consider Exeter, a growing city of 140,000 people, the historic county town of Devon, where I have lived since 1996. To urban dwellers there, and the overwhelming majority of the British population live in cities or towns, the situation is not one of the retreat of animals but, rather, one in which some animals adapt to living with humans and not always in a fashion that appeals to humans. The quest for garbage is a key issue. The city, like many others, including many inland cities, echoes to the sound of seagulls, who have no natural predators and who are protected by law. The seagulls have moved inland as there is now fewer fish in the sea and less fishing at sea to produce food. Trash bags and takeaway food remains discarded in the streets now provide key sources of food for seagulls, foxes, squirrels, and badgers.

Badgers and foxes have moved into the cities, often following the railway tracks into the inner cities. Both have taken up residence near me. Foxes have become a common sight in the cities, including in London. These wild animals that have no natural predators attack other animals that humans prefer, notably domestic pets and small birds. Domestic rabbits and cats are killed by foxes, and sometimes by seagulls, and the latter have also killed dogs and tortoises. Indeed, like foxes, they appear to be losing their fear of humans. There is an increasing number of attacks on humans by seagulls.

There are also periodic panics in popular newspapers when foxes attack young children, although they do so less frequently than dogs that are pets. Indeed, attacks of the latter type have been increasing, and that despite the 1999 Dangerous Dogs Act, under which particular breeds were prohibited. In 2016, a group of squirrels biting a child in Cornwall caused alarm. Less seriously, deer eat flowers in suburban as well as rural gardens. Indeed, without natural predators, the number of deer in Britain is allegedly at a historic high. Bats and squirrels nest in houses, the latter eating through electric wires.

These are simply conspicuous instances of a wider process. Trash is also attractive to smaller creatures, such as snails and woodlice. Warm environments, for example hospitals, attract cockroaches and mice. The rat population is rising rapidly, benefiting from less attention being paid to animal infestation, and also from the extent that traditional poisons are no longer so effective, or are prohibited, an issue that also affects dealing with moles.

The rat situation appears to have deteriorated markedly, not least as water companies are devoting less of an effort to pest control. There are frequent comments on the proximity of rats to humans and various statistics, all unsettling, about how close rats are living to the average human. This is also the case with mice. Both mice and rats can regularly be observed on the platforms of London Underground stations. Can be, in this case, also means that I have seen them, as I have also seen a large rat walking down the pavement at midday in the scenic town of Wells.² In houses that lack cats, mice and squirrel infestation is often a problem, and pest controllers, or burglar alarm engineers dealing with malfunctions, often first ask householders if they have cats. Mice, rats, and other animals have adapted to opportunities in other respects than those offered by trash or eating through cables. For example, the hot water outflows of washing machines provide a means of entry into houses. As a result, glass fragments are added to the plaster in which these outflows are located. Animals also carry disease. In 2016, it was claimed that one-third of dogs carried ticks, while deer are held responsible for the spread of Lyme disease.