Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0049/00491.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 18KB | 301 lines

$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).