$Unique_ID{bob00491} $Pretitle{} $Title{United Kingdom England} $Subtitle{} $Author{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC} $Affiliation{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC} $Subject{west england london areas east north midlands south industries government} $Date{1990} $Log{} Title: United Kingdom Book: Britain and its People: An Outline Author: Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC Affiliation: Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC Date: 1990 England England is predominantly a lowland country. There are upland regions in the north (the Pennine Chain, the Cumbrian mountains and the Yorkshire moorlands) and in the south west in Devon and Cornwall. For the most part, however, the country is undulating or flat and, in the south, crossed by low ranges of hills, including the Cotswolds and the Kent and Sussex Downs. The greatest concentrations of population are in the London and Thames estuary areas, the West Yorkshire and north-west industrial cities, the Midlands conurbation around Birmingham, the north-east conurbations on the rivers Tyne and Tees, and along the Channel coast. The Church of England, which was separated from the Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, is the Established Church in England; the Sovereign must always be a member of the Church and appoints its two archbishops and 42 other diocesan bishops. The English language is descended from the German tongue spoken by the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries, subsequently being influenced by Latin and Norse vocabulary, and then transformed with the settlement by the Normans from France. English is spoken throughout Britain and in many other countries. A recent study suggests that it is used as an official language in over 60 countries, more than any other international language. Government England has no government minister or department exclusively responsible for its central administration of domestic affairs, in contrast to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Instead, responsibility is shared among a number of government departments, whose responsibilities in some cases also cover aspects of affairs in Wales and Scotland. There are 523 Members of Parliament for England in the House of Commons, and arrangements are made for the discussion of regional affairs. Of the two major political parties, the Conservatives find their support chiefly in suburban and rural areas and have a large majority of the parliamentary seats in the southern half of England and in East Anglia, while the Labour Party derives its main support from urban industrialised areas. As at August 1989 England had 357 Conservative Members of Parliament, 155 Labour, 7 Social and Liberal Democrat, 3 Social Democrat and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Local government is administered through a two-tier system of counties subdivided into districts, except in London, where local government is the responsibility of 32 borough councils and the Corporation of the City of London. Eight 'standard' regions in England are delimited principally for statistical purposes: South East, East Anglia, South West, West Midlands, East Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, North West and North. They play no part in local government and frequently do not coincide with the regional units of adopted by central government departments. The legal system of England comprises on the one hand a historic body of conventions, known as 'common law' and 'equity', and on the other, parliamentary and European Community legislation. Common law stems from the work of the king's judges after the Norman Conquest of 1066, who sought to bring together into a single body of legal principles the various local customs of the Anglo-Saxons. Great reliance was placed on precedent, and the practice of reporting on cases began in the thirteenth century. Equity law derives from the practice of petitioning the king's Chancellor in cases not covered by common law. The English legal system is therefore distinct from many of those of Western Europe which have codes deriving from Roman law. The Habeas Corpus Act 1679 is a fundamental statute forbidding imprisonment without trial. The Economy Up to the eighteenth century the English economy was mainly agrarian and the chief manufacture was wool cloth. London as the capital city, and a major port and mercantile centre, and the textile areas (East Anglia, south-western England and West Yorkshire) were the most populous and prosperous regions. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, rapid growth took place in the Midlands, the north west, West Yorkshire and the north east, where the coalfields and iron ore deposits permitted Britain to become the first industrialised nation, basing its wealth on coalmining, on the manufacture of iron and steel, heavy machinery and textiles, on shipbuilding and on trade. London enhanced its position with the growing strength of the economy but East Anglia and the West Country, remote from areas of industrial development, were affected by agricultural depression, and entered a period of relative decline. In the twentieth century a second period of industrialisation, based on new sources of energy, new manufacturing industries and new forms of transport, has continued to change the broad pattern of regional and industrial development in England. In the 1920s and 1930s the northern industrial centres saw their traditional industries weakened owing to fluctuations in world trade and competition from other industrialising countries and, in some cases, from substitute products. London, its surrounding counties and the West Midlands generally benefited from the newer, more mobile, industries. These included chemicals (such as pharmaceuticals, dyes, plastics and artificial fibres), electrical and electronic engineering, vehicle manufacture, aircraft building, instrument engineering, aluminium and rubber manufacture and manufacture of a wide range of consumer goods, including processed food, drink and tobacco products as well as durables. In the second half of the century economic trends and population growth have tended to favour smaller towns and rural areas, particularly those in parts of southern England and East Anglia. Employment in service industries accounts for an increasing share of total employment, expansion being particularly marked in financial and business services. New businesses in the service sector are being created at a rapid rate, and this growth is linked to a marked rise in self-employment. New forms of service activity have been developing; for example, the growth of computer services and information systems such as viewdata and teletext. London is one of the world's leading centres of banking, insurance and other financial services. Decentralisation of some office services from the capital and improvements in road systems such as the M4 and M25 motorways have led to an expansion in the service sector and high technology industries in the surrounding regions; there has been an increase in retailing activity with the trend towards large shopping developments on the outskirts of towns, designed for shoppers with cars. All the national newspapers have recently moved their editorial and printing facilities from their traditional Fleet Street base to other parts of London (such as the Docklands) or other areas of the country, on the introduction of new computer-based technology. London and the neighbouring counties account for much advertising and market research activity, half of central government services and a significant proportion of non-food wholesale distribution in England. After London and the South East (where 77 per cent of employees are engaged in the service sector), the South West has the next most important concentration of service industries. East Anglia has been the fastest-growing English region in both population and employment since the 1960s. Although largely agricultural, high-technology industry has in recent years developed throughout the region. One significant example is the Cambridge Science Park, containing a number of science-based companies and research organisations with close collaborative links with the University. Food processing, diesel engines, electronics and instrument engineering are the strongest industries. Other particular growth points have been Peterborough and the east coast ports, which benefit from their relative proximity to the northern European Community countries and from recent improvements to the road and rail network. The service sector has been growing in Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich. Greater London and the industrial cities of the West Midlands, the North West, Yorkshire and Humberside and the North continue to represent the largest concentrations of manufacturing industry. London is an important area for products of all kinds, including food and drink (especially brewing), instrument engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, clothing, furniture and printing. Of importance in the surrounding south-eastern counties are oil refining (along the Thames and near Southampton), pharmaceuticals, pumps, valves and compressors, instrument engineering, micro-electronics and computer hardware and software (particularly along the 'M4 corridor' in Berkshire, in Hertfordshire, and around Chelmsford), motor vehicles, aerospace, building materials, timber, paper and plastics products. There is diversity, too, in the North West, with significant activity in food processing (especially grain milling, bread, flour, confectionery and biscuits), chemicals, textile machinery, insulated wires and cables, computers, motor vehicles, aerospace, clothing, glass making (with the world's largest flat glass maker, Pilkington in St Helens), paper and rubber products. Lancashire is the centre of the cotton and allied textile industries. The characteristic manufactures of the West Midlands are metals (steel tubes, iron castings and non-ferrous metals), machine tools, electrical engineering, motor vehicles, carpets, pottery (with about 70 per cent of Britain's ceramics industry located in Staffordshire) and rubber production. Of the other regions, Yorkshire and Humberside has important shares of cocoa, chocolate and confectionery production, iron and steel, machine tools, textile machinery, woollen and worsted goods (producing about two-thirds of Britain's wool textiles), carpets, clothing and glass containers. The North has general chemicals, iron and steel, process plant, marine engineering, and clothing; the East Midlands has steel tubes, iron castings, about two-thirds of Britain's hosiery and knitted goods industry, and footwear; and the South West has food and drink processing, aerospace, a range of engineering industries and paper products. A number of industrial areas (in the North, the North West, Yorkshire and Humberside and the West Midlands) which suffered as a result of the decline in traditional manufacturing employment are benefiting from the Government's regional industrial policy, which aims to reduce regional disparities in employment opportunities by making investment incentives available in the areas of greatest need, especially those which have been dependent on declining industries. Policies to encourage enterprise have been intensified under the Enterprise Initiative, launched in 1988 and aimed particularly at small- and medium-sized businesses. Its objective is to increase competitiveness in connection with the establishment of the single European market in 1992, and to expand opportunities for wealth creation. In agriculture, the number of mixed holdings has been falling, as part of a general tendency towards greater specialisation. Dairying is most common in the west of England, where the wetter climate encourages the growth of good grass; sheep and cattle are reared in the hilly and moorland areas of northern and south-western England; and arable farming, pig and poultry farming and horticulture are concentrated in the east and south. Horticulture is also important in the West Midlands. Forestry is mainly found in the North, South East and South West regions. The principal fishing ports are on the east coast and in the South West. England has plentiful energy resources in its coalfields and has access to offshore oil and gas reserves. About 61 per cent of Britain's deep-mined coal is produced in the Midlands and Yorkshire coalfields, the latter being the most productive in the country. The world's first large-scale nuclear power station was established at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956, while substantial investment in reprocessing capacity is being undertaken nearby. Other nuclear power stations are on coastal sites, including seven around the coasts of southern England. Important mineral deposits in England include aggregates for the construction industry (sand, gravel and crushed rock), industrial minerals (including clay, salt from the North West and china clay from Cornwall), tin ore, also from Cornwall, and iron ore from the East Midlands and Humberside. Water resources include the Kielder Reservoir (Northumberland), one of Europe's largest artificial lakes. A motorway network has been constructed in England since the 1950s and comprises four long-distance arterial routes linking London and the cities of the Midlands, the North and North West and the South West, the London orbital route, and over 30 shorter motorways. In 1989 the Government announced that the motorway and trunk road programme was to be more than doubled to 12,000 million Pounds; a number of motorways are to be widened to accommodate the increasing levels of road traffic. Considerable investment is in progress in the railways, both to improve inter-city services and to provide new rolling-stock for local services. In 1986 the British and French governments jointly announced their decision to facilitate the construction of a fixed link across the Channel in the form of twin single-track rail tunnels to carry through rail services, linking Britain directly with the European rail system, and a drive-on, drive-off vehicle shuttle service using specially designed shuttle trains. Construction began in 1988 and services through the tunnel are planned to start in 1993. In March 1989 British Rail announced its proposed route for a new railway line, designed for high-speed trains, to link the Channel Tunnel with London. The major airports are Heathrow (the busiest international airport in the world) and Gatwick, both serving London, and Manchester, Luton and Birmingham. Construction has begun of a new passenger terminal in connection with the first phase of the development of Stansted as London's third airport. Tourism, catering and the leisure industries have expanded considerably in recent years. Over half of expenditure by overseas visitors in Britain takes place in London, although areas outside London, encouraged by government policies to expand tourism in the regions, are becoming increasingly popular with overseas tourists, while the South West is the most popular region for domestic tourism. Each region has its own particular attraction for tourists. For example, a number of areas, including Northumberland and Cumbria (whose peaks include Scafell, England's highest point, at 978 m, 3,210 ft), have hills and lakes which attract walkers, climbers and riders. Cultural and Social Life Cultural life in England takes so many forms that a brief summary can only attempt to suggest its variety. Among London's main cultural features are over 100 theatres, including some 50 in the 'West End', together with fringe and suburban theatres; about a dozen major centres for music concerts, ballet and opera; four major art galleries; a dozen major museums (with over 80 smaller galleries and museums); and over 140 West End, local and independent cinemas. Much the same broad range of cultural interests is reflected in many other cities and towns. The Museums Association lists some 1,600 art galleries, museums and similar institutions in the rest of England. There are many tourist attractions in England: of those charging admission Madam Tussaud's (an exhibition in London of waxworks of famous people), Alton Towers (near Cheadle in Staffordshire), and the Tower of London received most visitors in 1988 (over 2 million each); of those with free admission Blackpool Pleasure Beach (6.5 million visitors), the British Museum in London and Albert Dock in Liverpool (over 3.5 million each), were the most popular. Social clubs and working men's clubs, non-profit-making clubs which attract well-known entertainers, are found in most cities and towns. In addition, many rural or outdoor recreations are strongly supported and there is active interest in numerous games and sports, many of which were devised in Britain. The English love of gardens and landscapes is associated with a tradition of sightseeing visits to the many country houses, gardens and unspoilt rural and coastal areas. There are seven national parks, six forest parks, 34 designated 'areas of outstanding natural beauty', ten environmentally sensitive areas, about 197 country parks approved by the Countryside Commission, over 6,000 conservation areas, 800 km (500 miles) of designated heritage coastline and about 2,000 historic buildings and over 2,000 gardens listed by the English Tourist Board. Newer developments include the opening of safari and wildlife parks and of 'theme' parks devoted, for example, to maritime history, which offer a diversity of entertainments as well. Many regions and towns have associations with the great English writers and artists, such as William Shakespeare (Stratford-upon-Avon), William Wordsworth (the Lake District), Arnold Bennett (Stoke-on-Trent), the Bront#e sisters (Yorkshire), Thomas hardy (Dorset) and John Constable (Essex).