Conventional long name	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Common name	the United Kingdom
Alt flag	A flag featuring both cross and saltire in red, white and blue
Image coat	Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom.svg
Alt coat	Coat of arms containing shield and crown in centre, flanked by lion and unicorn
Symbol type	Royal coat of arms
Alt map	Two islands to the north-west of continental Europe. Highlighted are the larger island and the north-eastern fifth of the smaller island to the west.
Map caption
National anthem	File:United States Navy Band - God Save the Queen.ogg"God Save the Queen"
Official languages	English
Regional languages	Irish, Ulster Scots, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Welsh, Cornish See also Languages of the United Kingdom.|group"note"}}

|ethnic_groups=92.1% White 4.0% South Asian 2.0% Black 1.2% Mixed 0.4% Chinese 0.4% Other |ethnic_groups_year=2001 See: UK ethnic groups list |demonym=British or Briton |capital=London |latd=51 |latm=30 |latNS=N |longd=0 |longm=7 |longEW=W |largest_city=London |government_type=Unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy |leader_title1=Monarch |leader_name1=Elizabeth II |leader_title2=Prime Minister |leader_name2= David Cameron MP |sovereignty_type=Formation |legislature=Parliament |upper_house=House of Lords |lower_house=House of Commons |state_religion=Anglicanism |sovereignty_note= |established_event1=Acts of Union 1707 |established_date1=1 May 1707 |established_event2=Acts of Union 1800 |established_date2=1 January 1801 |established_event3=Anglo-Irish Treaty |established_date3=12 April 1922 |accessionEUdate=1 January 1973 |religion=Anglican |EUseats = 78 |area_rank = 80th |area_magnitude = 1 E11 |area_km2 = 243610 |area_sq_mi = |percent_water = 1.34 |population_estimate = 62,262,000 |population_estimate_year = Mid-2010 |population_estimate_rank = 22nd |population_census = 58,789,194 |population_census_year = 2001 |population_density_km2 = 255.6 |population_density_sq_mi = 661.9 |population_density_rank = 51st |GDP_PPP_year=2010 |GDP_PPP=$2.173 trillion |GDP_PPP_rank=7th |GDP_PPP_per_capita=$34,920 |GDP_PPP_per_capita_rank=21st |GDP_nominal_year=2010 |GDP_nominal_rank=6th |GDP_nominal_per_capita=$36,120 |GDP_nominal_per_capita_rank=22nd |GDP_nominal=$2.247 trillion |HDI_year=2010 |HDI=0.849 |HDI_rank=26th |HDI_category=very high |Gini=41 |Gini_year=2008–09 |currency=Pound sterling |currency_code=GBP |country_code=GBR |time_zone=GMT |utc_offset=+0 |time_zone_DST=BST |date_format = dd/mm/yyyy (AD) |utc_offset_DST=+1 |drives_on=left |cctld=.uk |calling_code=44 }} The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.

The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved national administrations, each with varying powers, situated in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh; the capitals of Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland respectively. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies and fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.

The UK is a developed country and has the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and seventh-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It was the world's first industrialised country and the world's foremost power during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK remains a great power with leading economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence. It is a recognised nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks third or fourth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946; it is also a member state of the European Union, the Commonwealth of Nations, the G8, the G20, the OECD, the Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization, and NATO.

Etymology and terminology

The name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" was introduced in 1927 by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act to reflect the granting of independence to the Irish Free State in 1922, which left Northern Ireland as the only part of the island of Ireland still within the UK. Prior to this, the Acts of Union 1800, that led to the uniting the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, had given the new state the name of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Great Britain before 1801 is occasionally referred to as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain". However, Section 1 of both of the 1707 Acts of Union declare that England and Scotland are "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". The term ''united kingdom'' is found in informal use during the 18th century to describe the new state but only became official with the union with Ireland in 1801.

Although the United Kingdom, as a sovereign state, is a country, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are also referred to as countries, whether or not they are sovereign states or have devolved or other self-government. The British Prime Minister's website has used the phrase "countries within a country" to describe the United Kingdom. With regard to Northern Ireland, the descriptive name used "can be controversial, with the choice often revealing one's political preferences." Other terms used for Northern Ireland include "region" and "province".

The United Kingdom is often referred to as ''Britain''. British government sources frequently use the term as a short form for the United Kingdom, whilst media style guides generally allow its use but point out that the longer term ''Great Britain'' refers only to England, Scotland and Wales. However, some foreign usage, particularly in the United States, uses ''Great Britain'' as a loose synonym for the ''United Kingdom''. Also, the United Kingdom's Olympic team competes under the name "Great Britain" or "Team GB". ''GB'' and ''GBR'' are the standard country codes for the United Kingdom (see ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3) and are consequently commonly used by international organisations to refer to the United Kingdom.

The adjective ''British'' is commonly used to refer to matters relating to the United Kingdom. Although the term has no definite legal connotation, it is used in legislation to refer to United Kingdom citizenship. However, British people use a number of different terms to describe their national identity. Some may identify themselves as British only, or British ''and'' English, Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish. Others may identify themselves as only English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish and not British. In Northern Ireland, some describe themselves as only Irish.

History

Prior to 1707

Settlement by anatomically modern humans of what was to become the United Kingdom occurred in waves beginning by about 30,000 years ago. By the end of the region's prehistoric period, the population is thought to have belonged, in the main, to a culture termed Insular Celtic, comprising Brythonic Britain and Gaelic Ireland. The Roman conquest, beginning in 43 AD, and the 400-year rule of southern Britain, was followed by an invasion by Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers, reducing the Brythonic area mainly to what was to become Wales. The region settled by the Anglo-Saxons became unified as the Kingdom of England in the 10th century. Meanwhile, Gaelic-speakers in north west Britain (with connections to the north-east of Ireland and traditionally supposed to have migrated from there in the 5th century) united with the Picts to create the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.

In 1066, the Normans invaded England and after its conquest, seized large parts of Wales, conquered much of Ireland and settled in Scotland bringing to each country feudalism on the Northern French model and Norman-French culture. The Norman elites greatly influenced, but eventually assimilated with, each of the local cultures. Subsequent medieval English kings completed the conquest of Wales and made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to annex Scotland. Thereafter, Scotland maintained its independence, albeit in near-constant conflict with England. The English monarchs, through inheritance of substantial territories in France and claims to the French crown, were also heavily involved in conflicts in France, most notably the Hundred Years War.

The early modern period saw religious conflict resulting from the Reformation and the introduction of Protestant state churches in each country. Wales was fully incorporated into the Kingdom of England, and Ireland was constituted as a kingdom in personal union with the English crown. In what was to become Northern Ireland, the lands of the independent Catholic Gaelic nobility were confiscated and land given to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. In 1603, the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were united in a personal union when James VI, King of Scots, inherited the crowns of England and Ireland and moved his court from Edinburgh to London; each country nevertheless remained a separate political entity and retained its separate political institutions. In the mid-17th century, all three kingdoms were involved in a series of connected wars (including the English Civil War) which led to the temporary overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the short-lived unitary republic of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. Although the monarchy was restored, it ensured (with the Glorious Revolution of 1688) that, unlike much of the rest of Europe, royal absolutism would not prevail. The British constitution would develop on the basis of constitutional monarchy and the parliamentary system. During this period, particularly in England, the development of naval power (and the interest in voyages of discovery) led to the acquisition and settlement of overseas colonies, particularly in North America.

Since the Acts of Union of 1707

On May 1st, 1707, a new kingdom of Great Britain came into being, created by the political union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in accordance with the Treaty of Union that had been negotiated the previous year and ratified by the English and Scottish Parliaments passing Acts of Union.

In the 18th century, the country played an important role in developing Western ideas of the parliamentary system as well as making significant contributions to literature, the arts, and science. The British-led Industrial Revolution transformed the country and fuelled the growing British Empire. During this time Britain, like other great powers, was involved in colonial exploitation, including the Atlantic slave trade, although with the passing of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 the United Kingdom took a leading role in battling the trade in slaves. The colonies in North America had been the main focus of British colonial activity. However, with their loss following the American War of Independence, imperial ambition turned to other parts of the globe, particularly India.

In 1800, while the wars with France still raged, the Parliaments of Great Britain and of Ireland each passed an Act of Union, uniting the two kingdoms and creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which came into being on 1 January 1801. After the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), the United Kingdom emerged as the principal naval and economic power of the 19th century (with London the largest city in the world from about 1830 to 1930) and remained a foremost power into the mid-20th century. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the ''Pax Britannica''. It was also a period of rapid economic, colonial, and industrial growth. Britain was described as the "workshop of the world", and the British Empire grew to include India, large parts of Africa, and many other territories across the world. Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam. Domestically, there was a shift to free trade and laissez-faire policies and a very significant widening of the voting franchise. The country saw a huge population increase during the century, accompanied by rapid urbanization, resulting in significant social and economic stresses. By the end of the century, other states began to challenge Britain's industrial dominance.

The UK, along with Russia, France and (after 1917) the USA, was one of the major powers opposing the German Empire and its allies in World War I (1914–18). The UK armed forces grew to over five million people After the war the United Kingdom received the League of Nations mandate over former German and Ottoman colonies, and the British Empire had expanded to its greatest extent, covering a fifth of the world's land surface and a quarter of its population. However, the rise of Irish Nationalism and disputes within Ireland over the terms of Irish Home Rule led eventually to the partition of the island in 1921, with the Irish Free State becoming independent with Dominion status in 1922, and Northern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom. The Great Depression (1929–32) occurred at a time when the UK was still far from having recovered from the effects of the war, and led to hardship as well as political and social unrest.

The United Kingdom was one of the three main Allies of World War II. Following the defeat of its European allies in the first year of the war, the United Kingdom continued the fight against Germany, notably in the Battle of Britain and the Battle of the Atlantic. After the victory, the UK was one of the Big Three powers that met to plan the post-war world. The war left the United Kingdom financially damaged. However, Marshall Aid and loans from both the United States and Canada helped the UK on the road to recovery.

The Labour government in the immediate post-war years initiated a radical programme of changes having a significant impact on British society for the following decades. Domestically, major industries and public utilities were nationalized, a Welfare State was established, and a comprehensive publicly-funded healthcare system, the National Health Service, was created. In response to the rise of local nationalism, the Labour government's own ideological sympathies and Britain's now diminished economic position, a policy of decolonisation was initiated with the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. Over the next three decades most territories of the Empire gained independence and became sovereign members of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Although the new post-war limits of Britain's political role were illustrated by the Suez Crisis of 1956, the UK nevertheless became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and was the third country to develop a nuclear weapons arsenal (with its first atomic bomb test in 1952). The international spread of the English language also ensured the continuing international influence of its literature and culture, while from the 1960s its popular culture also found influence abroad. As a result of a shortage of workers in the 1950s, the British Government encouraged immigration from Commonwealth countries, thereby transforming Britain into a multi-ethnic society in the following decades. In 1973, the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community (EEC), and when the EEC became the European Union (EU) in 1992, the UK was one of its 12 founding members. From the late 1960s Northern Ireland suffered communal and paramilitary violence (sometimes affecting elsewhere in the UK and also the Republic of Ireland) conventionally known as the Troubles. It is usually considered to have ended with the Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement of 1998.

Following a period of global economic slowdown and industrial strife in the 1970s, the Conservative Government of the 1980s initiated a radical policy of deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labour markets, the sale of state-owned companies (privatisation), and the withdrawal of subsidies to others. Aided, from 1984, by the inflow of substantial North Sea oil revenues, the UK experienced a period of significant economic growth. Around the end of the 20th century there were major changes to the governance of the UK with the establishment of devolved national administrations for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales following pre-legislative referendums, and the statutory incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Domestic controversy surrounded some of Britain's overseas military deployments in the first decade of the 21st century, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Geography

The total area of the United Kingdom is approximately . The country occupies the major part of the British Isles archipelago and includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern one-sixth of the island of Ireland and some smaller surrounding islands. It lies between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea with the south-east coast coming within of the coast of northern France, from which it is separated by the English Channel. As of 1993 10% of the UK was forested, 46% used for pastures and 25% used for agriculture. The Royal Greenwich Observatory in London is the defining point of the Prime Meridian.

The United Kingdom lies between latitudes 49° to 61° N, and longitudes 9° W to 2° E. Northern Ireland shares a land boundary with the Republic of Ireland. The coastline of Great Britain is long. It is connected to continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel, which at ( underwater) is the longest underwater tunnel in the world.

England accounts for just over half of the total area of the UK, covering . Most of the country consists of lowland terrain, with mountainous terrain north-west of the Tees-Exe line; including the Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District, the Pennines and limestone hills of the Peak District, Exmoor and Dartmoor. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber. England's highest mountain is Scafell Pike () in the Lake District. Its principal rivers are the Severn, Thames, Humber, Tees, Tyne, Tweed, Avon, Exe and Mersey.

Scotland accounts for just under a third of the total area of the UK, covering and including nearly eight hundred islands, predominantly west and north of the mainland; notably the Hebrides, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands. The topography of Scotland is distinguished by the Highland Boundary Fault a geological rock fracture which traverses Scotland from Arran in the west to Stonehaven in the east. The faultline separates two distinctively different regions; namely the Highlands to the north and west and the lowlands to the south and east. The more rugged Highland region contains the majority of Scotland's mountainous land, including Ben Nevis which at is the highest point in the British Isles. Lowland areas, especially the narrow waist of land between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth known as the Central Belt, are flatter and home to most of the population including Glasgow, Scotland's largest city, and Edinburgh, its capital and political centre.

Wales accounts for less than a tenth of the total area of the UK, covering . Wales is mostly mountainous, though South Wales is less mountainous than North and mid Wales. The main population and industrial areas are in South Wales, consisting of the coastal cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, and the South Wales Valleys to their north. The highest mountains in Wales are in Snowdonia and include Snowdon () which, at , is the highest peak in Wales. The 14, or possibly 15, Welsh mountains over 3,000 feet (914 m) high are known collectively as the Welsh 3000s. Wales has over 1,200 km (750 miles) of coastline. There are several islands off the Welsh mainland, the largest of which is Anglesey (''Ynys Môn'') in the northwest.

Northern Ireland accounts for just and is mostly hilly. It includes Lough Neagh which, at , is the largest lake in the British Isles by area. The highest peak in Northern Ireland is Slieve Donard in the Mourne Mountains at .

Climate

The United Kingdom has a temperate climate, with plentiful rainfall all year round. The temperature varies with the seasons seldom dropping below or rising above . The prevailing wind is from the south-west and bears frequent spells of mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean, although the eastern parts are mostly sheltered from this wind as the majority of the rain falls over the western regions the eastern parts are therefore the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream, bring mild winters; especially in the west where winters are wet and even moreso over high ground. Summers are warmest in the south-east of England, being closest to the European mainland, and coolest in the north. Snowfall can occur in winter and early spring, though it rarely settles to great depth away from high ground.

Administrative divisions

Each country of the United Kingdom has its own system of administrative and geographic demarcation, which often has origins that pre-date the formation of the United Kingdom itself. Consequently there is "no common stratum of administrative unit encompassing the United Kingdom". Until the 19th century there was little change to those arrangements, but there has since been a constant evolution of role and function. Change did not occur in a uniform manner and the devolution of power over local government to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland means that future changes are unlikely to be uniform either.

The organisation of local government in England is complex, with the distribution of functions varying according to the local arrangements. Legislation concerning local government in England is decided by the UK parliament and the Government of the United Kingdom, as England does not have a devolved parliament. The upper-tier subdivisions of England are the nine Government office regions or European Union government office regions. One region, Greater London, has had a directly elected assembly and mayor since 2000 following popular support for the proposal in a referendum. It was intended that other regions would also be given their own elected regional assemblies but the rejection of a proposed assembly in the North East region, by a referendum in 2004, stopped this idea in its tracks. Below the region level England has either county councils and district councils or unitary authorities and London which consists of 32 London boroughs. Councillors are elected by the first-past-the-post system in single-member wards or by the multi-member plurality system in multi-member wards.

Local government in Scotland is divided on a basis of 32 council areas, with wide variation in both size and population. The cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are separate council areas as is the Highland Council which includes a third of Scotland's area but just over 200,000 people. The power invested in local authorities is administered by elected councillors, of which there are currently 1,222 and are each paid a part-time salary. Elections are conducted by single transferable vote in multi-member wards that elect either three or four councillors. Each council elects a Provost, or Convenor, to chair meetings of the council and to act as a figurehead for the area. Councillors are subject to a code of conduct enforced by the Standards Commission for Scotland. The representative association of Scotland's local authorities is the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).

Local government in Wales consists of 22 unitary authorities. These include the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport which are unitary authorities in their own right. Elections are held every four years under the first-past-the-post system. The most recent elections were held in May 2008. The Welsh Local Government Association represents the interests of local authorities in Wales.

Local government in Northern Ireland has, since 1973, been organised into 26 district councils, each elected by single transferable vote. Their powers are limited to services such as collecting waste, controlling dogs, and maintaining parks and cemeteries. On 13 March 2008 the executive agreed on proposals to create 11 new councils and replace the present system. The next local elections were postponed until 2011 to facilitate this.

Dependencies

The United Kingdom has sovereignty over seventeen territories which do not form part of the United Kingdom itself: 14 British Overseas Territories and three Crown Dependencies.

The fourteen British Overseas Territories are: Anguilla; Bermuda; the British Antarctic Territory; the British Indian Ocean Territory; the British Virgin Islands; the Cayman Islands; the Falkland Islands; Gibraltar; Montserrat; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; the Turks and Caicos Islands; the Pitcairn Islands; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and the Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus. British claims in Antarctica are not universally recognised. Collectively Britain's overseas territories encompass an approximate land area of and a population of approximately 260,000 people. They are the remnants of the British Empire and several have specifically voted to remain British territories.

The Crown Dependencies are British possessions of the Crown, as opposed to overseas territories of the UK. They comprise the Channel Island Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. Being independently administered jurisdictions they do not form part of the United Kingdom or of the European Union, although the UK government manages their foreign affairs and defence and the UK Parliament has the authority to legislate on their behalf. The power to pass legislation affecting the islands ultimately rests with their own respective legislative assemblies, with the assent of the Crown (Privy Council or, in the case of the Isle of Man, in certain circumstances the Lieutenant-Governor). Since 2005 each Crown dependency has had a Chief Minister as its head of government.

Politics

The United Kingdom is a unitary state under a constitutional monarchy. Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state of the UK as well as of fifteen other independent Commonwealth countries. The United Kingdom has an uncodified constitution, as do only three other countries in the world. The Constitution of the United Kingdom thus consists mostly of a collection of disparate written sources, including statutes, judge-made case law and international treaties, together with constitutional conventions. As there is no technical difference between ordinary statutes and "constitutional law" the UK Parliament can perform "constitutional reform" simply by passing Acts of Parliament and thus has the political power to change or abolish almost any written or unwritten element of the constitution. However, no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.

Government

The UK has a parliamentary government based on the Westminster system that has been emulated around the world—a legacy of the British Empire. The parliament of the United Kingdom that meets in the Palace of Westminster has two houses; an elected House of Commons and an appointed House of Lords. Any bill passed requires Royal Assent to become law. It is the ultimate legislative authority in the United Kingdom since the devolved parliament in Scotland as well as the devolved assemblies in Northern Ireland and Wales are not sovereign bodies and could, theoretically, be abolished by the UK parliament.

The position of prime minister, the UK's head of government, belongs to the member of parliament who can obtain the confidence of a majority in the House of Commons, usually the current leader of the largest political party in that chamber. The prime minister and cabinet are formally appointed by the monarch to form Her Majesty's Government, though the prime minister chooses the cabinet and, by convention, HM The Queen respects the prime minister's choices.

The cabinet is traditionally drawn from members of the Prime Minister's party in both legislative houses, and mostly from the House of Commons, to which they are responsible. Executive power is exercised by the prime minister and cabinet, all of whom are sworn into the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, and become Ministers of the Crown. The Rt. Hon. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, has been Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service since 11 May 2010. For elections to the House of Commons, the UK is currently divided into 650 constituencies with each electing a single member of parliament by simple plurality. General elections are called by the monarch when the prime minister so advises. The Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 require that a new election must be called within five years of the previous general election.

The UK's three major political parties are the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. During the 2010 general election these three parties won 622 out of 650 seats available in the House of Commons; 621 seats at the 2010 general election and 1 more at the delayed by-election in Thirsk and Malton. Most of the remaining seats were won by minor parties that only contest elections in one part of the UK: the Scottish National Party (Scotland only); Plaid Cymru (Wales only); and the Democratic Unionist Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party, Ulster Unionist Party, and Sinn Féin (Northern Ireland only, though Sinn Féin also contests elections in the Republic of Ireland). In accordance with party policy no elected Sinn Féin member of parliament has ever attended the House of Commons to speak on behalf of their constituents – this is because members of parliament are required to take an oath of allegiance to the monarch. The current five Sinn Féin MPs have however, since 2002, made use of the offices and other facilities available at Westminster. For elections to the European Parliament the UK currently has 72 MEPs, elected in 12 multi-member constituencies.

Devolved national administrations

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own government or executive, led by a First Minister, and a devolved unicameral legislature. England, the largest country of the United Kingdom, has no devolved executive or legislature and is administered and legislated for directly by the UK government and parliament on all issues. This situation has given rise to the so-called West Lothian question which concerns the fact that MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can vote, sometimes decisively, on matters affecting England that are handled by devolved legislatures for their own constituencies.

The Scottish Government and Parliament have wide ranging powers over any matter that has not been specifically 'reserved' to the UK parliament, including education, healthcare, Scots law and local government. Following its victory at the 2007 elections the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) formed a minority government with its leader, Alex Salmond, becoming First Minister of Scotland. The pro-union parties responded to the electoral success of the SNP by creating a Commission on Scottish Devolution which reported in 2009 and recommended that additional powers should be devolved, including control of half the income tax raised in Scotland. At the 2011 elections the SNP won re-election and achieved an overall majority in the Scottish parliament.

The Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales have more limited powers than those devolved to Scotland,. Following the passing of the Government of Wales Act 2006 the assembly was able to legislate in devolved areas through Assembly Measures once permission to legislate on that specific matter had been granted by Westminster through a Legislative Competence Order; but since May 2011 the Assembly has been able to legislate on devolved matters through Acts of the Assembly, which require no prior consent. The current Welsh Government was formed after the 2011 elections, and is a minority Labour administration lead by Carwyn Jones, who had been First Minister of a Labour/Plaid Cymru administration since December 2009.

The Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have powers closer to those already devolved to Scotland. The Northern Ireland Executive is led by a diarchy, currently First Minister Peter Robinson (Democratic Unionist Party) and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness (Sinn Féin).

Law and criminal justice

The United Kingdom does not have a single legal system as Article 19 of the 1706 Treaty of Union provided for the continuation of Scotland's separate legal system Today the UK has three distinct systems of law; English law, Northern Ireland law and Scots law. Recent constitutional changes saw a new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom come into being in October 2009 to replace the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, including the same members as the Supreme Court, is the highest court of appeal for several independent Commonwealth countries, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown Dependencies. Both English law, which applies in England and Wales, and Northern Ireland law are based on common-law principles. The essence of common law is that, subject to statute, the law is developed by judges in courts, applying statute, precedent and common sense to the facts before them to give explanatory judgements of the relevant legal principles, which are reported and binding in future similar cases (''stare decisis''). The courts of England and Wales are headed by the Senior Courts of England and Wales, consisting of the Court of Appeal, the High Court of Justice (for civil cases) and the Crown Court (for criminal cases). The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land for both criminal and civil appeal cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and any decision it makes is binding on every other court in the same jurisdiction, often having a persuasive effect in other jurisdictions.

Scots law applies in Scotland, a hybrid system based on both common-law and civil-law principles. The chief courts are the Court of Session, for civil cases, and the High Court of Justiciary, for criminal cases. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom serves as the highest court of appeal for civil cases under Scots law. Sheriff courts deal with most civil and criminal cases including conducting criminal trials with a jury, known as sheriff solemn court, or with a sheriff and no jury, known as sheriff summary Court. The Scots legal system is unique in having three possible verdicts for a criminal trial: "guilty", "not guilty" and "''not proven''". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" result in an acquittal with no possibility of retrial.

Crime in England and Wales increased in the period between 1981 and 1995, though since that peak there has been an overall fall of 48% in crime from 1995 to 2007/08, according to crime statistics. The prison population of England and Wales has almost doubled over the same period, to over 80,000, giving England and Wales the highest rate of incarceration in Western Europe at 147 per 100,000. Her Majesty's Prison Service, which reports to the Ministry of Justice, manages most of the prisons within England and Wales. Crime in Scotland fell to its lowest recorded level for 32 years in 2009/10, falling by ten percent. At the same time Scotland's prison population, at over 8,000, is hitting record levels and is well above design capacity. The Scottish Prison Service, which reports to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, manages Scotland's prisons. In 2006 a report by the Surveillance Studies Network found that the UK had the highest level of mass surveillance among industrialised western nations.

Foreign relations

The United Kingdom is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, G7, G8, G20, NATO, the OECD, the WTO, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, and is a member state of the European Union. The UK has a "Special Relationship" with the United States and a close partnership with France – the "Entente cordiale" – and shares nuclear weapons technology with both countries. Other close allies include other European Union and NATO members, Commonwealth nations, and Japan. Britain's global presence and influence is further amplified through its trading relations, foreign investments, official development assistance and armed forces.

Military

The United Kingdom fields one of the most technologically advanced and best trained armed forces in the world and as of 2008 maintained at least 20 military deployments around the globe. According to various sources, including the Ministry of Defence, the UK has the third- or fourth-highest military expenditure in the world, despite only having the 25th largest military in terms of manpower. Total defence spending currently accounts for 2.5% of total national GDP. The British Army, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy are collectively known as the British Armed Forces and officially as HM Armed Forces. The three forces are managed by the Ministry of Defence and controlled by the Defence Council, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence.

The UK maintains the largest air force and navy in the EU and second-largest in NATO. The Royal Navy is a blue-water navy, currently one of only three (with the French Navy and the United States Navy). The Ministry of Defence signed contracts worth £3.2bn to build two new supercarrier-sized aircraft carriers on 3 July 2008. In early 2009 the British Army had a reported strength of 105,750, the Royal Air Force had 43,300 personnel and the Navy 38,160. The United Kingdom Special Forces, such as the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service, provide troops trained for quick, mobile, military responses in counter-terrorism, land, maritime and amphibious operations, often where secrecy or covert tactics are required. There are reserve forces supporting the active military. These include the Territorial Army, the Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve and the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. Active and reserve duty military personnel total approximately 404,090.

The British Armed Forces are charged with protecting the UK and its overseas territories, promoting the UK's global security interests and supporting international peacekeeping efforts. They are active and regular participants in NATO, including the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, as well as the Five Power Defence Arrangements, RIMPAC and other worldwide coalition operations. Overseas garrisons and facilities are maintained in Ascension Island, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Diego Garcia, the Falkland Islands, Germany, Gibraltar, Kenya and Qatar.

Despite the United Kingdom's military capabilities, recent defence policy has a stated assumption that "the most demanding operations" will be undertaken as part of a coalition. Setting aside the intervention in Sierra Leone their operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq may all be taken as precedent. The last war in which the British military fought alone was the Falklands War of 1982, in which they were victorious.

Economy

The UK has a partially regulated market economy. Based on market exchange rates the UK is today the sixth-largest economy in the world and the third-largest in Europe after Germany and France, having fallen behind France for the first time in over a decade in 2008. HM Treasury, led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is responsible for developing and executing the British government's public finance policy and economic policy. The Bank of England is the UK's central bank and is responsible for issuing the nation's currency, the pound sterling. Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland retain the right to issue their own notes, subject to retaining enough Bank of England notes in reserve to cover their issue. Pound sterling is the world's third-largest reserve currency (after the U.S. Dollar and the Euro). Since 1997 the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has been responsible for setting interest rates at the level necessary to achieve the overall inflation target for the economy that is set by the Chancellor each year.

In the final quarter of 2008 the UK economy officially entered recession for the first time since 1991. Unemployment increased from 5.2% in May 2008 to 7.6% in May 2009 and by January 2011 the unemployment rate among 18 to 24-year-olds had risen from 11.9% to 20.3%, the highest since current records began in 1992. Total UK government debt rose from 44.5% of GDP in December 2007 to 76.1% of GDP in December 2010.

The UK service sector makes up around 73% of GDP. London is one of the three "command centres" of the global economy (alongside New York City and Tokyo), is the world's largest financial centre alongside New York, and has the largest city GDP in Europe. Edinburgh is also one of the largest financial centres in Europe. Tourism is very important to the British economy and, with over 27 million tourists arriving in 2004, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world and London has the most international visitors of any city in the world. The creative industries accounted for 7% GVA in 2005 and grew at an average of 6% per annum between 1997 and 2005.

The Industrial Revolution started in the UK with an initial concentration on the textile industry, followed by other heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, and Steelmaking. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the UK to dominate international trade in the 19th century. As other nations industrialised, coupled with economic decline after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its competitive advantage and heavy industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. Manufacturing remains a significant part of the economy but accounted for only one-sixth of national output in 2003.

The automotive industry is a significant part of the UK manufacturing sector and employs over 800,000 people, with a turnover of some £52 billion, generating £26.6 billion of exports. The aerospace industry of the UK is the second- or third-largest national aerospace industry depending upon the method of measurement and has an annual turnover of around £20 billion. The pharmaceutical industry plays an important role in the UK economy and the country has the third highest share of global pharmaceutical R&D; expenditures (after the United States and Japan).

The poverty line in the UK is commonly defined as being 60% of the median household income. In 2007–2008 13.5 million people, or 22% of the population, lived below this line. This is a higher level of relative poverty than all but four other EU members. In the same year 4.0 million children, 31% of the total, lived in households below the poverty line after housing costs were taken into account. This is a decrease of 400,000 children since 1998–1999. The UK imports 40% of its food supplies.

Science and technology

England and Scotland were leading centres of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th century and the United Kingdom led the Industrial Revolution from the 18th century, and has continued to produce scientists and engineers credited with important advances. Major theorists from the 17th and 18th centuries include Isaac Newton, whose laws of motion and illumination of gravity have been seen as a keystone of modern science, from the 19th century Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution by natural selection was fundamental to the development of modern biology, and James Clerk Maxwell, who formulated classical electromagnetic theory, and more recently Stephen Hawking, who has advanced major theories in the fields of cosmology, quantum gravity and the investigation of black holes. Major scientific discoveries from the 18th century include hydrogen by Henry Cavendish, from the 20th century penicillin by Alexander Fleming, and the structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others. Major engineering projects and applications by people from the UK in the 18th century include the steam locomotive, developed by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian, from the 19th century the electric motor by Michael Faraday, the incandescent light bulb by Joseph Swan, and the first practical telephone, patented by Alexander Graham Bell, and in the 20th century the world's first working television system by John Logie Baird and others, the jet engine by Frank Whittle, the basis of the modern computer by Alan Turing, and the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee.

The modern UK plays a leading part in the aerospace industry, with companies including Rolls-Royce playing a leading role in the aero-engine market; BAE Systems acting as Britain's largest and the Pentagon's sixth largest defence supplier, and large companies including GKN acting as major suppliers to the Airbus project. Two British-based companies, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, ranked in the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world by sales in 2009, and UK companies have discovered and developed more leading medicines than any other country apart from the US. The UK remains a leading centre of automotive design and production, particularly of engines, and has around 2,600 component manufacturers. Scientific research and development remains important in British universities, with many establishing science parks to facilitate production and co-operation with industry. Between 2004 and 2008 the UK produced 7% of the world's scientific research papers and had an 8% share of scientific citations, the third and second highest in the world (after the United States and China, and the United States, respectively). Scientific journals produced in the UK include ''Nature'', the ''British Medical Journal'' and ''The Lancet''.

Transport

A radial road network totals of main roads, of motorways and of paved roads. In 2009 there were a total of 34 million licensed vehicles in Great Britain. The National Rail network of 10,072 route miles (16,116 km) in Great Britain and 189 route miles (303 route km) in Northern Ireland carries over 18,000 passenger and 1,000 freight trains daily. Plans are now being considered to build new high-speed railway lines by 2025.

In the year from October 2009 to September 2010 UK airports handled a total of 211.4 million passengers. In that period the three largest airports were London Heathrow Airport (65.6 million passengers), Gatwick Airport (31.5 million passengers) and London Stansted Airport (18.9 million passengers). London Heathrow Airport, located west of the capital, has the most international passenger traffic of any airport in the world and is the hub for the UK flag carrier British Airways, as well as BMI and Virgin Atlantic.

Energy

In 2006 the UK was the world's ninth-largest consumer of energy and the 15th largest producer. In 2007 the UK had a total energy output of 9.5 quadrillion Btus, of which the composition was oil (38%), natural gas (36%), coal (13%), nuclear (11%) and other renewables (2%). In 2009 the UK produced 1.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of oil and consumed 1.7 million bbl/d. Production is now in decline and the UK has been a net importer of oil since 2005. As of 2010 the UK has around 3.1 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, the largest of any EU member state.

In 2009 the UK was the 13th largest producer of natural gas in the world and the largest producer in the EU. Production is now in decline and the UK has been a net importer of natural gas since 2004. In 2009 the UK produced 19.7 million tons of coal and consumed 60.2 million tons. In 2005 it had proven recoverable coal reserves of 171 million tons. It has been estimated that identified onshore areas have the potential to produce between 7 billion tonnes and 16 billion tonnes of coal through underground coal gasification (UCG). Based on current UK coal consumption, these volumes represent reserves that could last the UK between 200 and 400 years. The UK is home to a number of large energy companies, including two of the six oil and gas "supermajors" – BP and Royal Dutch Shell – and BG Group.

Demographics

A Census occurs simultaneously in all parts of the UK every ten years. The Office for National Statistics is responsible for collecting data for England and Wales with the General Register Office for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency each being responsible for censuses in their respective countries. In the 2001 census the total population of the United Kingdom was 58,789,194, the third largest in the European Union, the fifth largest in the Commonwealth and the twenty-first largest in the world. By mid-2009 this was estimated to have grown to 61,792,000. In 2008 natural population growth overtook net migration as the main contributor to population growth for the first time since 1998. Between 2001 and 2008 the population increased by an average annual rate of 0.5 per cent. This compares to 0.3 per cent per year in the period 1991 to 2001 and 0.2 per cent in the decade 1981 to 1991. Published in 2008 the mid-2007 population estimates revealed that, for the first time, the UK was home to more people of pensionable age than children under the age of 16. It has been estimated that the number of people aged 100 or over will rise steeply to reach over 626,000 by 2080.

England's population in mid-2008 was estimated to be 51.44 million. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with 383 people resident per square kilometre in mid-2003, with a particular concentration in London and the south east. The mid-2008 estimates put Scotland's population at 5.17 million, Wales at 2.99 million and Northern Ireland at 1.78 million, with much lower population densities than England. Compared to England's the corresponding figures were for Wales, for Northern Ireland and just for Scotland in mid-2003. In percentage terms Northern Ireland has had the fastest growing population of any country of the UK in each of the four years to mid-2008.

In 2008 the average total fertility rate (TFR) across the UK was 1.96 children per woman. Whilst a rising birth rate is contributing to current population growth it remains considerably below the 'baby boom' peak of 2.95 children per woman in 1964, below the replacement rate of 2.1, but higher than the 2001 record low of 1.63. Scotland had the lowest fertility at only 1.8 children per woman, while Northern Ireland had the highest at 2.11 children in 2008.

Ethnic groups

style="width:140px;"	Ethnic group !! Population !! % of total*
White British	50,366,497	85.67%
White Other (United Kingdom Census)	White (other)	3,096,169
British Indian	Indian	1,053,411
British Pakistanis	Pakistani	977,285
Irish Briton	White Irish	691,232
British Mixed	Mixed race	677,117
British African-Caribbean community	Black Caribbean
Black British	Black African	485,277
British Bangladeshi	Bangladeshi	283,063
British Asian	Other Asian (non-Chinese)	247,644
British Chinese	Chinese	247,403
Other ethnic group (United Kingdom Census)	Other	230,615
Black British	Black (others)	97,585

Historically, indigenous British people were thought to be descended from the various ethnic groups that settled there before the 11th century: the Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norse and the Normans. Recent genetic studies have shown that more than 50 percent of England's gene pool contains Germanic Y chromosomes, though other recent genetic analysis indicates that "about 75 per cent of the traceable ancestors of the modern British population had arrived in the British isles by about 6,200 years ago, at the start of the British Neolithic or Stone Age", and that the British broadly share a common ancestry with the Basque people.

The UK has a history of small-scale non-white immigration, with Liverpool having the oldest Black population in the country dating back to at least the 1730s, and the oldest Chinese community in Europe, dating to the arrival of Chinese seamen in the 19th century. In 1950 there were probably less than 20,000 non-white residents in Britain, almost all born overseas.

Since 1945 substantial immigration from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia has been a legacy of ties forged by the British Empire. Migration from new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe since 2004 has resulted in growth in these population groups but, as of 2008, the trend is reversing and many of these migrants are returning home, leaving the size of these groups unknown. As of 2001 92.1% of the population identified themselves as White, leaving 7.9% of the UK population identifying themselves as mixed race or of an ethnic minority.

Ethnic diversity varies significantly across the UK. 30.4% of London's population and 37.4% of Leicester's was estimated to be non-white as of June 2005, whereas less than 5% of the populations of North East England, Wales and the South West were from ethnic minorities according to the 2001 census. As of 2011, 26.5% of primary and 22.2% of secondary pupils at state schools in England are members of an ethnic minority.

Languages

The UK's official language is English, a West Germanic language descended from Old English which features a large number of borrowings from Old Norse, Norman French and Latin. The English language has spread across the world, largely because of the British Empire, and has become the international language of business as well as the most widely taught second language.

Scots, a language descended from early northern Middle English, is recognised at European level, as is its regional variant in the northern counties of Ireland, Ulster Scots. There are also four Celtic languages in use in the UK: Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Cornish. In the 2001 Census over a fifth (21%) of the population of Wales said they could speak Welsh, an increase from the 1991 Census (18%). In addition it is estimated that about 200,000 Welsh speakers live in England.

The 2001 census in Northern Ireland showed that 167,487 (10.4%) people "had some knowledge of Irish" (see Irish language in Northern Ireland), almost exclusively in the Catholic/nationalist population. Over 92,000 people in Scotland (just under 2% of the population) had some Gaelic language ability, including 72% of those living in the Outer Hebrides. The number of schoolchildren being taught in Welsh, Gaelic and Irish is increasing. Welsh and Scottish Gaelic are also spoken by small groups around the globe with some Gaelic still spoken in Nova Scotia, Canada (especially Cape Breton Island), and Welsh in Patagonia, Argentina.

Across the United Kingdom it is generally compulsory for pupils to study a second language to some extent: up to the age of 14 in England, and up to age 16 in Scotland. French and German are the two most commonly taught second languages in England and Scotland. In Wales, all pupils up to age 16 are either taught in Welsh or taught Welsh as a second language.

Religion

Forms of Christianity have dominated religious life in what is now the United Kingdom for over 1,400 years. Although a majority of citizens still identify with Christianity in many surveys, regular church attendance has fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, while immigration and demographic change have contributed to the growth of other faiths, most notably Islam. This has led some commentators to variously describe the UK as a multi-faith, secularised, or post-Christian society. In the 2001 census 71.6% of all respondents indicated that they were Christians, with the next largest faiths (by number of adherents) being Islam (2.8%), Hinduism (1.0%), Sikhism (0.6%), Judaism (0.5%), Buddhism (0.3%) and all other religions (0.3%). 15% of respondents stated that they had no religion, with a further 7% not stating a religious preference. A Tearfund survey in 2007 showed only one in ten Britons actually attend church weekly.

The (Anglican) Church of England is the established church in England. It retains a representation in the UK Parliament and the British monarch is its Supreme Governor. In Scotland the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is recognised as the national church. It is not subject to state control, and the British monarch is an ordinary member, required to swear an oath to "maintain and preserve the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government" upon his or her accession. The Church in Wales was disestablished in 1920, and there is no established church in Northern Ireland. Although there are no UK-wide data in the 2001 census on adherence to individual Christian denominations, Ceri Peach has estimated that 62% of Christians are Anglican, 13.5% Roman Catholic, 6% Presbyterian, 3.4% Methodist with small numbers of other Protestant denominations and the Orthodox church.

Migration

The United Kingdom has experienced successive waves of migration. The Great Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants. Over 120,000 Polish veterans settled in Britain after World War II, unable to return home. In the 20th century there was significant immigration from the British Empire, driven largely by post-World War II labour shortages. Many of these migrants came from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.

The proportion of foreign-born people in the UK remains slightly below that of some other European countries, although immigration is now contributing to a rising population, accounting for about half of the population increase between 1991 and 2001. Analysis of Office for National Statistics data shows that 2.3 million net migrants moved to the UK in the period 1991 to 2006. In 2008 it was predicted that migration would add 7 million to the UK population by 2031, though these figures are disputed. Based on the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Net migration for 12 months in 2010 jumped 21 percent to 239,000 from 2009. The immigration in 2010 was 575,000 or relatively stable since 2004, while the number of people leaving UK to live abroad for more than 12 months was only 336,000.

A record 203,790 foreign nationals became British citizens in 2009. 194,780 people were granted permanent settlement rights in 2009, of whom people from the Indian subcontinent accounted for 34 per cent, 25 per cent were from Africa and 21 per cent from elsewhere in Asia. 24.7 per cent of babies born in England and Wales in 2009 were born to mothers born outside the UK, according to official statistics released in 2010.

At least 5.5 million British-born people are living abroad, the top four destinations being Australia, Spain, the United States and Canada. Emigration was an important feature of British society in the 19th century. Between 1815 and 1930 around 11.4 million people emigrated from Britain and 7.3 million from Ireland. Estimates show that by the end of the 20th century some 300 million people of British and Irish descent were permanently settled around the globe.

Citizens of the European Union have the right to live and work in any member state, including the UK. Transitional arrangements apply to Romanians and Bulgarians whose countries joined the EU in January 2007. Research conducted by the Migration Policy Institute for the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggests that, between May 2004 and September 2009, 1.5 million workers migrated from the new EU member states to the UK, two thirds of them Polish, but that many have since returned home, resulting in a net increase in the number of nationals of the new member states in the UK of some 700,000 over that period. The late-2000s recession in the UK reduced the economic incentive for Poles to migrate to the UK, with the migration becoming temporary and circular. In 2009, for the first time since enlargement, more nationals of the eight central and eastern European states that had joined the EU in 2004 left the UK than arrived.

The UK government is currently introducing a points-based immigration system for immigration from outside the European Economic Area that will replace existing schemes, including the Scottish Government's Fresh Talent Initiative. In June 2010 the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced a temporary cap on immigration of those entering the UK from outside the EU, with the limit set at 24,100, in order to stop an expected rush of applications before a permanent cap is imposed in April 2011. The cap has caused tension within the coalition: business secretary Vince Cable has argued that it is harming British businesses.

Education

Education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, with each country having a separate education system.

Education in England is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education, though the day-to-day administration and funding of state schools is the responsibility of local authorities. Universally free of charge state education was introduced piecemeal between 1870 and 1944, with education becoming compulsory for all 5 to 14 year-olds in 1921. Education is now mandatory from ages five to sixteen (15 if born in late July or August). The majority of children are educated in state-sector schools, only a small proportion of which select on the grounds of academic ability. State schools which are allowed to select pupils according to intelligence and academic ability can achieve comparable results to the most selective private schools: out of the top ten performing schools in terms of GCSE results in 2006 two were state-run grammar schools. Despite a fall in actual numbers the proportion of children in England attending private schools has risen to over 7%. Over half of students at the leading universities of Cambridge and Oxford had attended state schools. The universities of England include some of the top universities in the world; the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Oxford and Imperial College London are all ranked in the global top 10 in the 2010 QS World University Rankings, with Cambridge ranked first. Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) rated pupils in England 7th in the world for maths and 6th for science. The results put England's pupils ahead of other European countries, including Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

Education in Scotland is the responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, with day-to-day administration and funding of state schools the responsibility of Local Authorities. Two non-departmental public bodies have key roles in Scottish education: the Scottish Qualifications Authority is responsible for the development, accreditation, assessment and certification of qualifications other than degrees which are delivered at secondary schools, post-secondary colleges of further education and other centres; and Learning and Teaching Scotland provides advice, resources and staff development to the education community to promote curriculum development and create a culture of innovation, ambition and excellence. Scotland first legislated for compulsory education in 1496. The proportion of children in Scotland attending private schools is just over 4%, although it has been rising slowly in recent years. Scottish students who attend Scottish universities pay neither tuition fees nor graduate endowment charges, as fees were abolished in 2001 and the graduate endowment scheme was abolished in 2008.

Education in Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the Minister of Education and the Minister for Employment and Learning, although responsibility at a local level is administered by five education and library boards covering different geographical areas. The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (CCEA) is the body responsible for advising the government on what should be taught in Northern Ireland's schools, monitoring standards and awarding qualifications. The Welsh Government has responsibility for education in Wales. A significant number of Welsh students are taught either wholly or largely in the Welsh language; lessons in Welsh are compulsory for all until the age of 16. There are plans to increase the provision of Welsh-medium schools as part of the policy of creating a fully bilingual Wales.

Healthcare

Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter and each country has its own system of private and publicly funded health care, together with alternative, holistic and complementary treatments. Public healthcare is provided to all UK permanent residents and is free at the point of need, being paid for from general taxation. The World Health Organization, in 2000, ranked the provision of healthcare in the United Kingdom as fifteenth best in Europe and eighteenth in the world.

Regulatory bodies are organised on a UK-wide basis such as the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council and non-governmental-based, such as the Royal Colleges. However, political and operational responsibility for healthcare lies with four national executives; healthcare in England is the responsibility of the UK Government; healthcare in Northern Ireland is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive; healthcare in Scotland is the responsibility of the Scottish Government; and healthcare in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh Assembly Government. Each National Health Service has different policies and priorities, resulting in contrasts.

Since 1979 expenditure on healthcare has been increased significantly to bring it closer to the European Union average. The UK spends around 8.4 per cent of its gross domestic product on healthcare, which is 0.5 percentage points below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average and about one percentage point below the average of the European Union.

Culture

The culture of the United Kingdom has been influenced by many factors including: the nation's island status; its history as a western liberal democracy and a major power; as well as being a political union of four countries with each preserving elements of distinctive traditions, customs and symbolism. As a result of the British Empire, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies; including Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and the United States.

Cinema

The United Kingdom has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema. The British directors Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean are among the most critically acclaimed of all-time, with other important directors including Charlie Chaplin, Michael Powell, Carol Reed and Ridley Scott. Many British actors have achieved international fame and critical success, including: Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Michael Caine, Charlie Chaplin, Sean Connery, Vivien Leigh, David Niven, Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers and Kate Winslet. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in the United Kingdom, including the two highest-grossing film franchises (''Harry Potter'' and ''James Bond''). Ealing Studios has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world.

Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry has often been characterised by a debate about its identity and the level of American and European influence. Many British films are co-productions with American producers, often using both British and American actors, and British actors feature regularly in Hollywood films. Many successful Hollywood films have been based on British people, stories or events, including ''Titanic'', ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' and the 'English Cycle' of Disney animated films.

In 2009 British films grossed around $2 billion worldwide and achieved a market share of around 7% globally and 17% in the United Kingdom. UK box-office takings totalled £944 million in 2009, with around 173 million admissions. The British Film Institute has produced a poll ranking of what it considers to be the 100 greatest British films of all time, the BFI Top 100 British films. The annual British Academy Film Awards, hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, are the British equivalent of the Oscars.

Literature

'British literature' refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as well as to literature from England, Wales and Scotland prior to the formation of the UK. Most British literature is in the English language. In 2005, some 206,000 books were published in the United Kingdom and in 2006 it was the largest publisher of books in the world.

The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time. Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently the playwrights Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.

Notable pre-modern and early-modern English writers include Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century), Thomas Malory (15th century), Sir Thomas More (16th century), and John Milton (17th century). In the 18th century Daniel Defoe (author of ''Robinson Crusoe'') and Samuel Richardson were pioneers of the modern novel. In the 19th century there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the gothic novelist Mary Shelley, children's writer Lewis Carroll, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the realist George Eliot, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century English writers include: science-fiction novelist H. G. Wells; the writers of children's classics Rudyard Kipling, A. A. Milne (the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh) and Enid Blyton; the controversial D. H. Lawrence; modernist Virginia Woolf; the satirist Evelyn Waugh; the prophetic novelist George Orwell; the popular novelists W. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene; the crime writer Agatha Christie (the best-selling novelist of all time); Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond); the poets T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes; and the fantasy writers J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling.

Scotland's contributions include the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes), romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, children's writer J.M. Barrie, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, was UNESCO's first worldwide City of Literature.

Britain's oldest known poem, ''Y Gododdin'', was probably composed in Cumbric or Old Welsh in the late 6th century and contains the earliest known reference to King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth developed the Arthurian legend with his pseudohistorical account of British history, the ''Historia Regum Britanniae''. Wales' most celebrated medieval poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym (fl 1320–1370), composed Welsh language poetry on themes including nature, religion and especially love. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest European poets of his age. Until the late 19th century the majority of Welsh literature was in Welsh and much of the prose was religious in character. Daniel Owen is credited as the first Welsh-language novelist, publishing ''Rhys Lewis'' in 1885. The best-known of the Anglo-Welsh poets are both Thomases. Dylan Thomas became famous on both sides of the Atlantic in the mid 20th century. The Swansea writer is remembered for his poetry – his "Do not go gentle into that good night; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." is one of the most quoted couplets of English language verse – and for his 'play for voices', ''Under Milk Wood''. Influential Church in Wales 'poet-priest' and Welsh nationalist, R. S. Thomas, was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Leading Welsh novelists include Richard Llewellyn and Kate Roberts.

Authors of other nationalities, particularly from Commonwealth countries, the Republic of Ireland and the United States, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.

Media

The BBC, founded in 1922, is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and Internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates numerous television and radio stations in the UK and abroad and its domestic services are funded by the television licence. Other major players in the UK media include ITV plc, which operates 11 of the 15 regional television broadcasters that make up the ITV Network, and News Corporation, which owns a number of national newspapers through News International such as the most popular tabloid ''The Sun'' and the longest-established daily "broadsheet" ''The Times'', as well as holding a large stake in satellite broadcaster British Sky Broadcasting. London dominates the media sector in the UK: national newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, although Manchester is also a significant national media centre. Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Cardiff, are important centres of newspaper and broadcasting production in Scotland and Wales respectively. The UK publishing sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people.

In 2009 it was estimated that individuals viewed a mean of 3.75 hours of television per day and 2.81 hours of radio. In that year the main BBC public service broadcasting channels accounted for an estimated 28.4% of all television viewing; the three main independent channels accounted for 29.5% and the increasingly important other satellite and digital channels for the remaining 42.1%. Sales of newspapers have fallen since the 1970s and in 2009 42% of people reported reading a daily national newspaper. In 2010 82.5% of the UK population were Internet users, the highest proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of users in that year.

Music

Various styles of music are popular in the UK from the indigenous folk music of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to heavy metal. Notable composers of classical music from the United Kingdom and the countries that preceded it include William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W.S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of the foremost living composers and current Master of the Queen's Music. The UK is also home to world-renowned symphonic orchestras and choruses such as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus. Notable conductors include Sir Simon Rattle, John Barbirolli and Sir Malcolm Sargent. Some of the notable film score composers include John Barry, Clint Mansell, Mike Oldfield, John Powell, Craig Armstrong, David Arnold, John Murphy, Monty Norman and Harry Gregson-Williams. George Frideric Handel, although born German, was a naturalised British citizen and some of his best works, such as ''Messiah'', were written in the English language. Andrew Lloyd Webber has achieved enormous worldwide commercial success and is a prolific composer of musical theatre, works which have dominated London's West End for a number of years and have travelled to Broadway in New York.

The Beatles have international sales of over one billion units and are the biggest-selling and most influential act in the history of popular music. Other prominent British contributors to have influenced popular music over the last 50 years include Queen, Cliff Richard, the Bee Gees, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Rolling Stones; all of whom have world wide record sales of 200 million or more. According to research by Guinness World Records eight of the ten acts with the most UK chart singles are British: Status Quo, Queen, The Rolling Stones, UB40, Depeche Mode, the Bee Gees, the Pet Shop Boys and the Manic Street Preachers. More recent UK music acts that have had international success include Coldplay, Radiohead, Oasis, Spice Girls, Amy Winehouse, Muse, Adele and Gorillaz.

A number of UK cities are known for their music. Acts from Liverpool have had more UK chart number one hit singles per capita (54) than any other city worldwide. Glasgow's contribution to music was recognised in 2008 when it was named a UNESCO City of Music, one of only three cities in the world to have this honour.

Philosophy

The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of 'British Empiricism', a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid, and 'Scottish Philosophy', sometimes referred to as the 'Scottish School of Common Sense'. The most famous philosophers of British Empiricism are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume; while Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid and William Hamilton were major exponents of the Scottish "common sense" school. Two Britons are also notable for a theory of moral philosophy utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill in his short work ''Utilitarianism''. Other eminent philosophers from the UK and the unions and countries that preceded it include Duns Scotus, John Lilburne, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sir Francis Bacon, Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, William of Ockham, Bertrand Russell and A.J. "Freddie" Ayer. Foreign-born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Visual art

The history of British visual art forms part of western art history. Major British artists include: the Romantics William Blake, John Constable, Samuel Palmer and J.M.W. Turner; the portrait painters Sir Joshua Reynolds and Lucian Freud; the landscape artists Thomas Gainsborough and L. S. Lowry; the pioneer of the Arts and Crafts Movement William Morris; the figurative painter Francis Bacon; the Pop artists Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton and David Hockney; the collaborative duo Gilbert and George; the abstract artist Howard Hodgkin; and the sculptors Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Henry Moore. During the late 1980s and 1990s the Saatchi Gallery in London helped to bring to public attention a group of multi-genre artists who would become known as the "Young British Artists": Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood and the Chapman Brothers are among the better-known members of this loosely affiliated movement.

The Royal Academy in London is a key organisation for the promotion of the visual arts in the United Kingdom. Major schools of art in the UK include: the six-school University of the Arts London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; Goldsmiths, University of London; the Slade School of Fine Art (part of University College London); the Glasgow School of Art; the Royal College of Art; and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (part of the University of Oxford). The Courtauld Institute of Art is a leading centre for the teaching of the history of art. Important art galleries in the United Kingdom include the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year).

Sport

Major sports, including association football, rugby league, rugby union, rowing, boxing, badminton, cricket, tennis, darts and golf, originated or were substantially developed in the United Kingdom and the states that preceded it. A 2003 poll found that football is the most popular sport in the United Kingdom. In most international competitions, separate teams represent England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, including at the Commonwealth Games. (In sporting contexts, these teams can be referred to collectively as the Home Nations). However there are occasions where a single sports team represents the United Kingdom, including at the Olympics where the UK is represented by the Great Britain team. London was the site of the 1908 and 1948 Olympic Games, and in 2012 will become the first city to play host for a third time.

Each of the Home Nations has its own football association, national team and league system, though a few clubs play outside their country's respective systems for a variety of historical and logistical reasons. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate countries in international competition and, as a consequence, the UK does not compete as a team in football events at the Olympic Games. There are proposals to have a UK team take part in the 2012 Summer Olympics but the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations have declined to participate, fearing that it would undermine their independent status – a fear confirmed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter. England has been the most successful of the home nations winning the World Cup on home soil in 1966, although there has historically been a close-fought rivalry between England and Scotland.

Cricket was invented in England. The England cricket team, controlled by the England and Wales Cricket Board, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Team members are drawn from the main county sides, and include both English and Welsh players. Cricket is distinct from football and rugby where Wales and England field separate national teams, although Wales had fielded its own team in the past. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and have only recently started to play in One Day Internationals. Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) have competed at the Cricket World Cup, with England reaching the finals on three occasions. There is a professional league championship in which clubs representing 17 English counties and 1 Welsh county compete. Rugby league is a popular sport in some areas of the UK. It originates in Huddersfield and is generally played in Northern England. A single 'Great Britain Lions' team had competed in the Rugby League World Cup and Test match games, but this changed in 2008 when England, Scotland and Ireland competed as separate nations. Great Britain is still being retained as the full national team for Ashes tours against Australia, New Zealand and France. The highest form of professional rugby league in the UK and Europe is Super League where there are 11 teams from Northern England, 1 from London, 1 from Wales and 1 from France. Rugby union is organised on a separate basis for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, each has a top-ranked international team and were collectively known as the Home Nations. The Six Nations Championship, played between the Home Nations as well as Italy and France, is the premier international tournament in the northern hemisphere. The Triple Crown is awarded to any of the Home Nations who beats the other three in that tournament. The game of lawn tennis first originated in the city of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Championships, Wimbledon are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar. Snooker is one of the UK's popular sporting exports, with the world championships held annually in Sheffield. In Northern Ireland Gaelic football and hurling are popular team sports, both in terms of participation and spectating, and Irish expatriates throughout the UK and the US also play them. Shinty (or ''camanachd'') is popular in the Scottish Highlands.

Thoroughbred racing, which originated under Charles II of England as the "sport of kings", is popular throughout the UK with world-famous races including the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. Golf is the sixth most popular sport, by participation, in the UK. Although The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland is the sport's home course, the world's oldest golf course is actually Musselburgh Links' Old Golf Course.

The UK is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK, and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The UK hosted the very first F1 Grand Prix in 1950 at Silverstone, the current location of the British Grand Prix held each year in July. The country also hosts legs of the World Rally Championship and has its own touring car racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC).

Symbols

The flag of the United Kingdom is the Union Flag (also referred to as the Union Jack). It was first created in 1606 by the superimposition of the Flag of England on the Flag of Scotland and updated in 1801 with the addition of Saint Patrick's Flag. Wales is not represented in the Union Flag as Wales had been conquered and annexed to England prior to the formation of the United Kingdom; the possibility of redesigning the Union Flag to include representation of Wales has not been completely ruled out. The national anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the King", with "King" replaced with "Queen" in the lyrics whenever the monarch is a woman.

Britannia is a national personification of the United Kingdom, originating from Roman Britain. Britannia is symbolised as a young woman with brown or golden hair wearing a Corinthian helmet and white robes. She holds Poseidon's three-pronged trident and a shield, bearing the Union Flag. Sometimes she is depicted as riding on the back of a lion. At and since the height of the British Empire, Britannia has often associated with maritime dominance, as in the patriotic song ''Rule, Britannia!''. The lion symbol is depicted behind Britannia on the British fifty pence coin and one is shown crowned on the back of the British ten pence coin. It is also used as a symbol on the non-ceremonial flag of the British Army. The bulldog is sometimes used as a symbol of the United Kingdom and has been associated with Winston Churchill's defiance of Nazi Germany.

See also

Notes

References

External links

; Government

Official website of the British Monarchy

Official website of HM Government

Chief of State and Cabinet Members

Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom statistics

; General information

United Kingdom from ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

; Travel

Official tourist guide to Britain

Category:Constitutional monarchies Category:Countries bordering the Atlantic Ocean Category:English-speaking countries and territories Category:European countries Category:G8 nations Category:G20 nations Category:Island countries Category:Liberal democracies Category:Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations Category:Member states of the Council of Europe Category:Member states of the European Union Category:Member states of NATO Category:Member states of the Union for the Mediterranean Category:Member states of the United Nations Category:Northern Europe Category:Western Europe

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Country	the United Kingdom
Name	Labour Party
Logo
Leader	Ed Miliband MP
Leader1 title	Deputy Leader
Leader1 name	Harriet Harman MP
Foundation
Headquarters
Ideology	Democratic socialism (Social Democracy)
Position	Centre-left
Youth wing	Young Labour
Student wing	Labour Students
International	Socialist International
European	Party of European Socialists
Europarl	Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats
Colours	Red
Website
Colorcode
Seats1 title	House of Commons
Seats1
Seats2 title	House of Lords
Seats2
Seats3 title	European Parliament
Seats3
Seats4 title	London Assembly
Seats4
Seats5 title	Scottish Parliament
Seats5
Seats6 title	Welsh Assembly
Seats6
Seats7 title	Local Government
Seats7	}}

The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after which it formed a majority government under Clement Attlee. Labour was also in government from 1964 to 1970 under Harold Wilson and from 1974 to 1979, first under Wilson and then James Callaghan.

The Labour Party was last in government between 1997 and 2010 under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, beginning with a majority of 179, reduced to 167 in 2001 and 66 in 2005. Having won 258 seats in the 2010 general election, Labour is the Official Opposition. Labour has a working majority in the Welsh Assembly, is the main opposition party in the Scottish Parliament and has 13 members in the European Parliament. The Labour Party is a member of the Socialist International. The Party's current leader is Ed Miliband MP.

Party ideology

Throughout its history, the Labour Party has usually been thought of as being left wing or centre-left in its politics. Officially, it has maintained the stance of being a socialist party ever since its inception, currently describing itself as a "democratic socialist party". The party has been described as a broad church, containing a diversity of ideological trends from strongly socialist, to more moderately social democratic, and in recent years pro-market tendencies. Throughout its history, it has been criticised by other leftist commentators and historians for not being truly socialist in its policies, instead supporting anti-socialist stances such as capitalism and neo-colonialism and has been described as a "capitalist workers' party".

Historically the party was broadly in favour of socialism, as set out in Clause Four of the original party constitution, and advocated socialist policies such as public ownership of key industries, government intervention in the economy, redistribution of wealth, increased rights for workers, the welfare state, publicly-funded healthcare and education. Beginning in the late-1980s continuing to the current day, the party has adopted free market policies, leading many observers to describe the Labour Party as Social Democratic or Third Way, rather than democratic socialist.

Party electoral manifestos have not contained the term ''socialism'' since 1992, when the original Clause Four was abolished. The new version states:

Party constitution and structure

The Labour Party is a membership organisation consisting of Constituency Labour Parties, affiliated trade unions, socialist societies and the Co-operative Party, with which it has an electoral agreement. Members who are elected to parliamentary positions take part in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP). The party's decision-making bodies on a national level formally include the National Executive Committee (NEC), Labour Party Conference and National Policy Forum (NPF)—although in practice the Parliamentary leadership has the final say on policy. The 2008 Labour Party Conference was the first at which affiliated trade unions and Constituency Labour Parties did not have the right to submit motions on contemporary issues that would previously have been debated. Labour Party conferences now include more "keynote" addresses, guest speakers and question-and-answer sessions, while specific discussion of policy now takes place in the National Policy Forum.

For many years Labour held to a policy of not allowing residents of Northern Ireland to apply for membership, instead supporting the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP). The 2003 Labour Party Conference accepted legal advice that the party could not continue to prohibit residents of the province joining, and whilst the National Executive has established a regional constituency party it has not yet agreed to contest elections there.

The party had 198,026 members on 31 December 2005 according to accounts filed with the Electoral Commission, which was down on the previous year. In that year it had an income of about £35 million (£3.7 million from membership fees) and expenditure of about £50 million, high due to that year's general election.

As a party founded by the unions to represent the interests of working-class people, Labour's link with the unions has always been a defining characteristic of the party. In recent years this link has come under increasing strain, with the RMT being expelled from the party in 2004 for allowing its branches in Scotland to affiliate to the left-wing Scottish Socialist Party. Other unions have also faced calls from members to reduce financial support for the Party and seek more effective political representation for their views on privatisation, public spending cuts and the anti-trade union laws. Unison and GMB have both threatened to withdraw funding from constituency MPs and Dave Prentis of UNISON has warned that the union will write "no more blank cheques" and is dissatisfied with "feeding the hand that bites us".

International linkages

The party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1940. It is currently, and since 1951, member of the Socialist International, which was founded thanks to the efforts of the Clement Attlee leadership. Labour is also a member of the Party of European Socialists, while the party's MEPs sit in the Socialists & Democrats group.

History

Founding of the party

The Labour Party's origins lie in the late 19th century, around which time it became apparent that there was a need for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban proletariat, a demographic which had increased in number and had recently been given franchise. Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, and after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and largely middle-class Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party.

In the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardie's roots as a Methodist lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party which led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that "Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx".

Labour Representation Committee

In 1899, a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all left-wing organisations and form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates. The motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, and the proposed conference was held at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street on 26 and 27 February 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations — trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates.

After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), meant to coordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population. It had no single leader, and in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united. The October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively; total expenses for the election only came to £33. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored, but two were successful; Keir Hardie in Merthyr Tydfil and Richard Bell in Derby.

Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike. The judgement effectively made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative Government of Arthur Balfour to industrial and business interests (traditionally the allies of the Liberal Party in opposition to the Conservative's landed interests) intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared to have little concern for the industrial proletariat and its problems.

In the 1906 election, the LRC won 29 seats—helped by a secret 1903 pact between Ramsay MacDonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone that aimed to avoid splitting the opposition vote between Labour and Liberal candidates in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office.

In their first meeting after the election the group's Members of Parliament decided to adopt the name "The Labour Party" formally (15 February 1906). Keir Hardie, who had taken a leading role in getting the party established, was elected as Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (in effect, the Leader), although only by one vote over David Shackleton after several ballots. In the party's early years the Independent Labour Party (ILP) provided much of its activist base as the party did not have individual membership until 1918 but operated as a conglomerate of affiliated bodies. The Fabian Society provided much of the intellectual stimulus for the party. One of the first acts of the new Liberal Government was to reverse the Taff Vale judgement.

Early years and the rise of the Labour Party

The 1910 election saw 42 Labour MPs elected to the House of Commons, a significant victory since, a year before the election, the House of Lords had passed the Osborne judgment ruling that Trades Unions in the United Kingdom could no longer donate money to fund the election campaigns and wages of Labour MPs. The governing Liberals were unwilling to repeal this judicial decision with primary legislation. The height of Liberal compromise was to introduce a wage for Members of Parliament to remove the need to involve the Trade Unions. By 1913, faced with the opposition of the largest Trades Unions, the Liberal government passed the Trade Disputes Act to allow Trade Unions to fund Labour MPs once more.

During the First World War the Labour Party split between supporters and opponents of the conflict but opposition to the war grew within the party as time went on. Ramsay MacDonald, a notable anti-war campaigner, resigned as leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party and Arthur Henderson became the main figure of authority within the party. He was soon accepted into Prime Minister Asquith's war cabinet, becoming the first Labour Party member to serve in government.

Despite mainstream Labour Party's support for the coalition the Independent Labour Party was instrumental in opposing conscription through organisations such as the Non-Conscription Fellowship while a Labour Party affiliate, the British Socialist Party, organised a number of unofficial strikes.

Arthur Henderson resigned from the Cabinet in 1917 amid calls for party unity to be replaced by George Barnes. The growth in Labour's local activist base and organisation was reflected in the elections following the war, the co-operative movement now providing its own resources to the Co-operative Party after the armistice. The Co-operative Party later reached an electoral agreement with the Labour Party. The Communist Party of Great Britain was refused affiliation between 1921 and 1923. Meanwhile the Liberal Party declined rapidly and the party suffered a catastrophic split that allowed the Labour Party to co-opt much of the Liberals' support.

With the Liberals in disarray Labour won 142 seats in 1922, making it the second largest political group in the House of Commons and the official opposition to the Conservative government. After the election the now-rehabilitated Ramsay MacDonald was voted the first official leader of the Labour Party.

First Labour government (1924)

The 1923 general election was fought on the Conservatives' protectionist proposals but, although they got the most votes and remained the largest party, they lost their majority in parliament, necessitating the formation of a government supporting free trade. Thus, with the acquiescence of Asquith's Liberals, Ramsay MacDonald became the first ever Labour Prime Minister in January 1924, forming the first Labour government, despite Labour only having 191 MPs (less than a third of the House of Commons).

Because the government had to rely on the support of the Liberals it was unable to get any legislation of an arguably socialist nature passed by the House of Commons. The most significant and long-lasting measure was the Wheatley Housing Act, which began a building programme of 500,000 homes for rental to working-class families. Legislation on education, unemployment and social insurance were also passed.

The government collapsed after only nine months when the Liberals voted for a Select Committee inquiry into the Campbell Case, a vote which MacDonald had declared to be a vote of confidence. The ensuing general election saw the publication, four days before polling day, of the notorious Zinoviev letter, which implicated Labour in a plot for a Communist revolution in Britain. The Conservatives were returned to power although Labour increased its vote from 30.7% to a third of the popular vote, most Conservative gains being at the expense of the Liberals. The Zinoviev letter is now known to have been a forgery.

In opposition Ramsay MacDonald continued his policy of presenting the Labour Party as a moderate force. During the General Strike of 1926 he opposed strike action, arguing that the best way to achieve social reforms was through the ballot box.

Second Labour government (1929–1931)

In the 1929 general election, the Labour Party became the largest in the House of Commons for the first time, with 287 seats and 37.1% of the popular vote. However MacDonald was still reliant on Liberal support to form a minority government. MacDonald went on to appoint Britain's first female cabinet minister, Margaret Bondfield, who was appointed Minister of Labour.

The government, however, soon found itself engulfed in crisis: the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and eventual Great Depression occurred soon after the government came to power, and the crisis hit Britain hard. By the end of 1930 unemployment had doubled to over two and a half million. The government had no effective answers to the crisis. A sudden budgeting crisis in the summer of 1931 split the cabinet over whether the rate of unemployment benefit should be reduced; when it became clear that leading Ministers who were opposed would resign, the Government could no longer continue.

To the surprise of fellow Ministers, MacDonald returned from seeing the King having agreed to head a "National Government" with Conservative and Liberal Ministers. A small number of Labour ministers joined him, causing great anger among those within the Labour Party who felt betrayed by MacDonald's actions: he and his supporters were later expelled from the Labour Party. Arthur Henderson returned to the party leadership and repudiated all spending cuts. When the economic crisis did not abate, the National Government called a general election and won an overwhelming victory (MacDonald's supporters having formed a scratch National Labour group). The election was a disaster for the Labour Party which won only 46 seats, together with 3 for the Independent Labour Party and 3 Labour candidates who did not have official endorsement. The total of 52 was 225 fewer than in 1929.

In opposition during the 1930s

Arthur Henderson, elected in 1931 to succeed MacDonald, lost his seat in the 1931 general election. The only former Labour cabinet member who had retained his seat, the pacifist George Lansbury, accordingly became party leader.

The party experienced another split in 1932 when the Independent Labour Party, which for some years had been increasingly at odds with the Labour leadership, opted to disaffiliate from the Labour Party and embarked on a long, drawn-out decline.

Lansbury resigned as leader in 1935 after public disagreements over foreign policy. He was promptly replaced as leader by his deputy, Clement Attlee, who would lead the party for two decades. The party experienced a revival in the 1935 general election, winning 154 seats and 38% of the popular vote, the highest that Labour had achieved.

As the threat from Nazi Germany increased in the 1930s the Labour Party gradually abandoned its earlier pacifist stance and supported re-armament, largely due to the efforts of Ernest Bevin and Hugh Dalton who by 1937 had also persuaded the party to oppose Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.

A plan in Leeds to demolish and replace all the back-to-back houses by five-year stages was accepted by the council in 1933 under the inspiration of the Reverend Charles Jenkinson, a Labour Party member who became the leader of their council when Labour won control of it in 1933. Out of the 72,000 back-to-back houses in Leeds, 8,000 were replaced by 1935.

Wartime coalition (1940-1945)

The party returned to government in 1940 as part of the wartime coalition. When Neville Chamberlain resigned in the spring of 1940, incoming-Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to bring the other main parties into a coalition similar to that of the First World War. Clement Attlee was appointed Lord Privy Seal and a member of the war cabinet, eventually becoming the United Kingdom's first Deputy Prime Minister.

A number of other senior Labour figures also took up senior positions; the trade union leader Ernest Bevin, as Minister of Labour, directed Britain's wartime economy and allocation of manpower, the veteran Labour statesman Herbert Morrison became Home Secretary, Hugh Dalton was Minister of Economic Warfare and later President of the Board of Trade, while A. V. Alexander resumed the role he had held in the previous Labour Government as First Lord of the Admiralty. According to G.D.H. Cole, the basis of the Wartime Coalition was that the labour ministers would look after the “Home Front” (including the maintenance of important social services and the mobilisation of manpower). Although the Exchequer remained in the hands of the Conservative Party, a firm understanding was made with Labour regarding the equitable distribution of tax burdens.

While serving in coalition with the Conservatives, the Labour members of Churchill's cabinet were able put their democratic socialist ideals into practice, implementing a wide range of progressive social and economic reforms which did much to improve the living standards and working conditions of working-class Britons. As observed by Kenneth O. Morgan, “Labour ministers were uniquely associated with the triumphs on the home front.” Herbert Morrison at the Home Office, assisted by his friend Ellen Wilkinson, was noted for his effective involvement in home defence and presiding over the repairs carried out on major cities affected by the Blitz. Arthur Greenwood, in his capacity as minister without portfolio, commissioned the Beveridge Report which would lay the foundations for the post-war British welfare state.

During the war years, the Labour Party was continuously active (with some success) in pushing for better arrangements of housing and billeting both of evacuees and of workers transferred for war services to already congested industrial areas, for fair systems of food rationing and distribution, for more effective control of prices, and for improvements in service pay and allowances. Labour also pressed hard for better provisions for the victims of air warfare, for more and better civic and industrial restaurants and canteens, and for war-time nurseries for the children of female workers.

In a manifesto on "The Peace," adopted by the 1941 Labour Party Annual Conference, it was claimed that Labour’s participation in the Wartime coalition Government had been effective in that, a year after Labour had joined the government, the war was now being fought not only with much greater efficiency, but with a higher regard for social equity as well:

“The area of the social services has been increased. Largely through the care and determination of the Trade unions, the standard of life has been well safeguarded. The health of the workers has been protected by the maintenance of the factory codes, and by the institution of factory doctors, canteens, and nurseries. Labour, national and local, has taken its share in civil defence; and in every sphere its activities have done much to improve the provision for the safety and comfort of citizens. The social protection of our people has been facilitated by the alert and continuous watch which has been kept over financial policy. Interest rates have been kept down. The Treasury has assumed powers over the Banks which assure their full co-operation in the policy upon which Parliament decides. The dangers of inflation, ever present in war-time, have been kept to a minimum.”

According to the historian G.D.H. Cole, Labour’s claims were arguably justified: profiteering was kept down, and there was greater equity both in the allocation of supplies and in taxation. In addition, social services were not merely kept up, but also expanded to meet wartime needs.

Tom Johnston used his position as Secretary of State for Scotland to push through a range of important developmental initiatives, such as the development of hydroelectricity in the Highlands, while Hugh Dalton’s regional policies directly assisted some of the Labour Party’s strongest cores of support. The Distribution of Industry Act 1945, pushed through by Hugh Dalton before the end of the wartime coalition, launched a vigorous policy of regenerating “depressed areas” such as industrial Scotland, the North-East of England, Cumbria, and South Wales, while diversifying the economic base of these regions. This foundation of this vigorous regional policy were actually laid during the Second World War, with the extension of the role of the trading estates and the linking of the industrial base of areas like the Welsh mining areas with the operations of government ordinance and armaments plants.

Co-operators, in common with the trade unions and labour, pressed hard from the outset of the war for the extension of the food rationing system to cover all essential supplies, arguing that the existence of an unrationed “sector” would create class injustices and result in time wasted on seeking supplies from shop to shop. Labour responded to Co-operative demands on these issues in March 1941 by establishing a Food Deputation Committee to work for more effective control and rationing of food supplies, together with the creation of an effective Consumers’ Council.

As Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin did much to improve working conditions, raising the wages of the lowest paid male workers, such as miners, railwaymen, and agricultural labourers, while also persuading and forcing employers, under threat of removal of their Essential Works Order, to improve company medical and welfare provision, together with sanitary and safety provisions. This was important both for improving working conditions and for cementing worker consent to the war effort, and as a result of Bevin’s efforts, doctors, nurses, and welfare officers multiplied on the shop floor while there was a threefold increase in the provision of works canteens. Almost 5,000 canteens were directly created by Bevin in controlled establishments, while a further 6,800 were set up by private employers by 1944. During the course of the war, the number of works doctors increased from 60 to about 1,000. This provision, however, was much more extensive within larger factories, with smaller employers continuing “to barely comply with the minimum provision of a first aid box.” Accident rates did, however, decline after 1942.

The Second World War also saw significant improvements in the position of trade unions, which were encouraged by Bevin. Trade unions were integrated into joint consultation at all levels of government and industry, with the TUC drawn in to represent labour on the National Joint Advisory Council (1939) and the joint Consultative Committee (1940). A similar status was bestowed upon employers’ organisations, which led Middlemass to argue that capital and organised labour had become “governing institutions” within a tripartite industrial relations system “with the state at the fulcrum.” The elevation of the status of organised labour to one of parity with capital in Whitehall was effectively summed up by Bevin’s biographer as such:

“The organised working class represented by the trade unions was for the first time brought into a position of partnership in the national enterprise of war – a partnership on equal not inferior terms, as in the First World War.”

Collective bargaining was further extended by Bevin, who radically extended both the Wages Boards (the renamed Trades Boards) and the Whitley Committees, 46 of the latter were formed during the Second World War, and by the end of the war 15.5 million workers were covered by the minimum wage provisions by the Wages Boards. On the shop floor, Bevin directly encouraged the formation of joint production committees to extend worker’s participation in industry. By June 1944, almost 4,500 such committees were in existence, covering 3.5 million workers. By the end of the war, the joint production committees were intervening in areas once considered to be the sacrosanct domain of employers, such as health, welfare, transfers of labour, machine staffing, technology, piece rate fixing, and wage payment systems. These developments brought about significant improvements to conditions in the workplace, with a Mass Observation survey carried out in 1942 noting that “the quick sack and the unexplained instability” of the 1930s had practically vanished. During the 1940s, significant improvements in occupational health and safety standards were brought about both by the rising bargaining power of workers within the older “staple” sectors of the economy and the rise of “the pro-active wartime and post-war state.”

Also in the 1940s, trade union power and authority was extended further than in British history up until that point, with labour’s ability to regulate and control work significantly enhanced during this period. This was assisted by developments such as full employment, the growth of union membership, rising from 32% to 45% of the workforce from 1939 to 1950 and increasing workplace representation, as characterised by the large increase in the number of shop stewards. The progressive social changes were continued in the initial post-war period, with the creation of the Welfare State (which placed a floor under wages) and the extension of the legal rights of unions through the repeal of the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act (1927) in 1946, while the 1948 Industrial Injuries Act provided compensation for accidents in the workplace.

The war years also witnessed a significant extension of collective bargaining, which was directly encouraged by Bevin. By 1950, between nine and ten million workers were covered by collective voluntary bargaining. Bevin also established 46 new Joint Industrial Councils and extended the coverage of the Wages Boards between 1943 and 1945. By 1950, as a result of these changes, virtually all of the poorly organised and low-paid categories of workers were subject to state sponsored wage regulation and collective bargaining. This transformation in worker’s protection and bargaining power had the definitive effect of reducing long-established local and regional wage differences.

Bevin was also responsible for the passage of the Determination of Needs Act in 1941, which finally abolished the long-detested household means test. After the passage of the Determination of Needs Act, the Labour Movement continued to press for improvements, particularly for the extension of the principles of the new legislation to cover Public Assistance and other services as well (at that time, it only covered the Assistance Board). In 1943, this was achieved by further legislation, which also improved conditions relating to supplementary pensions. Throughout the war period, the Labour movement (both in and out of Parliament) pressed successfully for a number of changes liberalising the administration of the socials services.

The Catering Wages Act (1943), another initiative by Bevin, established a Catering Wages Commission to oversee wages and working conditions in restaurants and hotels. Inspectors were also appointed to ensure that employers complied with Bevin’s insistence on the provision of canteens, welfare officers, and personnel officers in factories. Bevin also did much to improve conditions for those with disabilities, of which little had been done for before the outbreak of the war. In 1941, Bevin introduced an interim retraining scheme, which was followed by the interdepartmental Tomlinson Committee of the Rehabilitation and Resettlement of the Disabled. According to the historian Pat Thane, the Committee served as “a mouthpiece for Bevin’s own aspirations,” and its proposals for improving the lives of the disabled culminated in the Disabled Persons Employment Act of 1944.

Bevin and the other Labour ministers were also able to ensure that, compared with the First World War, there was greater equality of sacrifice within society. Profiteering was effectively controlled, while rent controls and food subsidies helped to keep down wartime inflation. Wartime wages were allowed to increase in line with, and earnings to surpass, the rate of price inflation, while the tax system became more progressive, with taxation becoming heavier on the very rich (this movement towards greater progressivity was maintained under the Attlee government, with the top rate of income tax reaching 98% in 1949). These policies led to a narrowing of wealth inequalities, with the real value of wage incomes increasing by some 18% between 1938 and 1947, while the real value of property income fell by 15% and salaries by some 21% over that same period.

Post-war victory under Attlee

At the end of the war in Europe, in May 1945, Labour resolved not to repeat the Liberals' error of 1918 but promptly withdrew from government to contest the 1945 general election in opposition to Churchill's Conservatives. Surprising many observers, Labour won a formidable victory, winning just under 50% of the vote with a majority of 145 seats.

Clement Attlee's proved one of the most radical British governments of the 20th century, presiding over a policy of nationalising major industries and utilities including the Bank of England, coal mining, the steel industry, electricity, gas, telephones and inland transport including railways, road haulage and canals. It developed and implemented the "cradle to grave" welfare state conceived by the economist William Beveridge. To this day the party considers the 1948 creation of Britain's publicly funded National Health Service under health minister Aneurin Bevan its proudest achievement. Attlee's government also began the process of dismantling the British Empire when it granted independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, followed by Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) the following year. At a secret meeting in January 1947, Attlee and six cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, decided to proceed with the development of Britain's nuclear weapons programme, in opposition to the pacifist and anti-nuclear stances of a large element inside the Labour Party.

Labour went on to win the 1950 general election but with a much reduced majority of five seats. Soon afterwards defence became a divisive issues within the party, especially defence spending (which reached a peak of 14% of GDP in 1951 during the Korean War), straining public finances and forcing savings elsewhere. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Gaitskell, introduced charges for NHS dentures and spectacles, prompting Bevan, along with Harold Wilson (then President of the Board of Trade), to resign over the dilution of the principle of free treatment on which the NHS had been established.

In the 1951 general election, Labour narrowly lost to the Conservatives despite receiving the larger share of the popular vote, its highest ever vote numerically. Most of the changes introduced by the 1945–51 Labour government were accepted by the Conservatives and became part of the "post war consensus" that lasted until the late 1970s.

Opposition during the 1950s

Following the defeat of 1951 the party underwent a long period of thirteen years in opposition. The party suffered an ideological split during the 1950s while the postwar economic recovery, given the social effects of Attlee's reforms, made the public broadly content with the Conservative governments of the time. Attlee remained as leader until his retirement in 1955.

His replacement Hugh Gaitskell, a man associated with the right-wing of the party, struggled to deal with internal divisions in the late 1950s and early 1960s and Labour lost the 1959 general election. In 1963 Gaitskell's sudden death from a heart-attack made way for Harold Wilson to lead the party.

Labour in government under Wilson (1964–1970)

A down-turn in the economy along with a series of scandals in the early 1960s (the most notorious being the Profumo affair) engulfed the Conservative government by 1963. The Labour Party returned to government with a four-seat majority under Wilson in the 1964 election but increased its majority to 96 in the 1966 election.

Wilson's government was responsible for a number of sweeping social and educational reforms such as the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality (initially only for men aged 21 or over) and a significant expansion of the welfare state. In addition, comprehensive education was expanded and the Open University was created. As noted by one historian, in summing up the reform record of Wilson's government,

"In spite of the economic problems encountered by the First Wilson Government and in spite of (and to some degree in response to) the criticisms of its own supporters, Labour presided over a notable expansion of state welfare during its time in office."

Wilson's government had inherited a large trade deficit that led to a currency crisis and an ultimately doomed attempt to stave off devaluation of the pound. Labour went on to lose the 1970 election to the Conservatives under Edward Heath.

In opposition (1970-1974)

After losing the 1970 general election, Labour returned to opposition, but retained Harold Wilson as Leader. Heath's government soon ran into trouble over Northern Ireland and a dispute with miners in 1973 which led to the "three-day week". The 1970s were a difficult time to be in government for both the Conservatives and Labour due to the 1973 oil crisis which caused high inflation and a global recession. The Labour Party was returned to power again under Wilson a few weeks after the February 1974 general election, forming a minority government with the support of the Ulster Unionists. The Conservatives were unable to form a government as they had fewer seats despite receiving more votes numerically. It was the first general election since 1924 in which both main parties had received less than 40% of the popular vote and the first of six successive general elections in which Labour failed to reach 40% of the popular vote. In a bid to gain a proper majority, a second election was soon called for October 1974 in which Labour, still with Harold Wilson as leader, managed a majority of three, gaining just 18 seats and taking its total to 319.

Return to government (1974-1979)

For much of its time in office the Labour government struggled with serious economic problems and a precarious majority in the Commons, while the party's internal dissent over Britain's membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), which Britain had entered under Edward Heath in 1972, led in 1975 to a national referendum on the issue in which two thirds of the public supported continued membership.

Harold Wilson's personal popularity remained reasonably high but he unexpectedly resigned as Prime Minister in 1976, citing health reasons and was replaced by James Callaghan. The Wilson and Callaghan governments of the 1970s tried to control inflation (which reached 23.7% in 1975) by a policy of wage restraint. This was fairly successful, reducing inflation to 7.4% by 1978, but led to increasingly strained relations between the government and the trade unions. The Labour governments of the 1970s did, however, manage to protect many people from the economic storm, with pensions increasing by 20% in real terms between 1974 and 1979, while measures such as rent controls and food and transport subsidies prevented the incomes of other people from deteriorating further.

Legislation was introduced which guaranteed annual uprating of benefits in line with increases in prices or average earnings, whichever was the highest. In addition, new benefits for the disabled and infirm were introduced whilst pensioners benefited from the largest ever increase in pensions up until that period. New employment legislation strengthened equal pay provisions, guaranteed payments for workers on short-time and temporarily laid-off and introduced job security and maternity leave for pregnant women.

A more effective system of workplace inspection was set up, together with the Health and Safety Executive, in response to the plight of many workers who suffered accidents or ill-health as a result of poor working conditions (whose plight which had long been ignored by the media). Industrial tribunals also provided protection through compensation for unfair dismissal, while the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service performed an effective function in the management of industrial disputes.

Although the Wilson and Callaghan governments were accused by many socialists of failing to put the Labour Party's socialist ideals into practice, it did much to bring about a greater deal of social justice in British society, as characterised by a significant reduction in poverty during the course of the 1970s, and arguably played as much as a role as the Attlee Government in advancing the cause of social democracy and reducing social and economic inequalities in the United Kingdom. As noted by one historian,

“In the seventeen years that it occupied office, Labour accomplished much in alleviating poverty and misery, and in giving help and sustenance to groups – the old, the sick, the disabled – least capable of protecting themselves in a market economy.”

Fear of advances by the nationalist parties, particularly in Scotland, led to the suppression of a report from Scottish Office economist Gavin McCrone that suggested that an independent Scotland would be 'chronically in surplus'. By 1977 by-election losses and defections to the breakaway Scottish Labour Party left Callaghan heading a minority government, forced to trade with smaller parties in order to govern. An arrangement negotiated in 1977 with Liberal leader David Steel, known as the Lib-Lab Pact, ended after one year. After this deals were forged with various small parties including the Scottish National Party and the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru, prolonging the life of the government slightly.

The nationalist parties, in turn, demanded devolution to their respective constituent countries in return for their supporting the government. When referenda for Scottish and Welsh devolution were held in March 1979 Welsh devolution was rejected outright while the Scottish referendum returned a narrow majority in favour without reaching the required threshold of 40% support. When the Labour government duly refused to push ahead with setting up the proposed Scottish Assembly, the SNP withdrew its support for the government: this finally brought the government down as it triggered a vote of confidence in Callaghan's government that was lost by a single vote on 28 March 1979, necessitating a general election.

Callaghan had been widely expected to call a general election in the autumn of 1978 when most opinion polls showed Labour to have a narrow lead. However he decided to extend his wage restraint policy for another year hoping that the economy would be in a better shape for a 1979 election. But during the winter of 1978-79 there were widespread strikes among lorry drivers, railway workers, car workers and local government and hospital workers in favour of higher pay-rises that caused significant disruption to everyday life. These events came to be dubbed the "Winter of Discontent".

In the 1979 election Labour suffered electoral defeat by the Conservatives, now led by Margaret Thatcher. The number of people voting Labour hardly changed between February 1974 and 1979 but in 1979 the Conservative Party achieved big increases in support in the Midlands and South of England, benefiting from both a surge in turnout and votes lost by the ailing Liberals.

The "Wilderness Years" (1979–1997)

After its defeat in the 1979 election the Labour Party underwent a period of internal rivalry between the left-wing, represented by Michael Foot and Tony Benn, and the right-wing represented by Denis Healey. The election of Michael Foot as leader in 1980 led in 1981 to four former cabinet ministers from the right of the Labour Party (Shirley Williams, William Rodgers, Roy Jenkins and David Owen) forming the Social Democratic Party.

The Labour Party was defeated heavily in the 1983 general election, winning only 27.6% of the vote, its lowest share since 1918, and receiving only half a million votes more than the SDP-Liberal Alliance who leader Michael Foot condemned for "siphoning" Labour support and enabling the Conservatives to win more seats.

Michael Foot resigned and was replaced as leader by Neil Kinnock who was elected on 2 October 1983 and progressively moved the party towards the centre. Labour improved its performance in 1987, gaining 20 seats and so reducing the Conservative majority from 143 to 102. They were now firmly established as the second political party in Britain as the Alliance had once again failed to make a breakthrough with seats and it subsequently collapsed, prompting a merger of the SDP and Liberals to form the Liberal Democrats.

Following the 1987 election, Kinnock began expelling Militant Tendency members from the party. They would later form the Socialist Party of England and Wales and the Scottish Socialist Party although a remnant of Militant continues to operate within the Labour Party through the newspaper ''Socialist Appeal''.

During the course of the 1980s, the GLC and several other Labour councils attempted to promote local economic recovery by setting up a network of enterprise boards and agencies. In addition, the GLC, Glasgow, Liverpool, Sheffield, and smaller London councils like Lambeth, Camden, and Islington adopted policies that challenged the Thatcher Government’s insistence on budgetary cuts and privatisation.

The Labour councils in old metropolitan counties of West Midlands, South Yorkshire, Greater London, and Greater Manchester led the way in developing interventionist economic policies. In the met county areas, Inward Investment Agencies, Enterprise Boards, Low Pay Units, and Co-operative Development Agencies proliferated, while parts of the country such as Salford Quays and Cardiff Bay were redeveloped. The Labour council in Birmingham in the 1980s worked to diversify the business visitor economy, as characterised by the decision to build a new, purpose-built convention centre in a decaying, inner-city district around Broad Street. By the mid-1990s, the success of this strategy was evident by the success of the International convention centre leading to wider redevelopment, as characterised by the building of a Sea Life Centre, the National Indoor Arena, bars, hotels, and thousands of newly constructed and refurbished flats and houses. This helped to revitalise the city centre and brought in people and money to both and the city and the West Midlands region as a whole.

In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by John Major. Most opinion polls had shown Labour comfortably ahead of the Tories for more than a year before Mrs Thatcher's resignation, with the fall in Tory support blamed largely on the introduction of the unpopular poll tax, combined with the fact that the economy was sliding into recession at the time. One of the reasons Mrs Thatcher gave for her resignation was that she felt the Tories would stand a better chance of re-election with a new leader at the helm.

The change of leader in the Tory government saw a turnaround in support for the Tories, who regularly topped the opinion polls throughout 1991 although Labour regained the lead more than once.

The "yo yo" in the opinion polls continued into 1992, though after November 1990 any Labour lead in the polls was rarely sufficient for a majority. Major resisted Kinnock's calls for a general election throughout 1991. Kinnock campaigned on the theme "It's Time for a Change", urging voters to elect a new government after more than a decade of unbroken Conservative rule. However, the Conservatives themselves had undergone a dramatic change in the change of leader from Margaret Thatcher to John Major, at least in terms of style if not substance, whereas Kinnock was now the longest serving leader of any of the major political parties at the time and was now the longest-serving opposition leader in British political history.

From the outset, it was clearly a well-received change, as Labour's 14-point lead in the November 1990 "Poll of Polls" was replaced by an 8% Tory lead a month later.

The election on 9 April 1992 was widely tipped to result in a hung parliament or a narrow Labour majority, but in the event the Conservatives were returned to power, though with a much reduced majority of 21 in 1992. Despite the increased number of seats and votes, it was still an incredibly disappointing result for members and supporters of the Labour party, and for the first time in over 30 years there was serious doubt among the public and the media as to whether Labour could ever return to government.

Even before the country went to the polls, it seemed doubtful as to whether Labour could form a majority as an 8% electoral swing was needed across the country for this to be achieved.

Kinnock then resigned as leader and was replaced by John Smith.

The Black Wednesday economic disaster in September 1992 left the Conservative government's reputation for monetary excellence in tatters, and by the end of that year Labour had a comfortable lead over the Tories in the opinion polls. Although the recession was declared over in April 1993 and a period of strong and sustained economic growth followed, coupled with a relatively swift fall in unemployment, the Labour lead in the opinion polls remained strong.

However, Smith died from a heart attack in May 1994.

==="New Labour" – in government (1997–2010)=== Tony Blair continued to move the party further to the centre, abandoning the largely symbolic Clause Four at the 1995 mini-conference in a strategy to increase the party's appeal to "middle England". More than a simple re-branding, however, the project would draw upon a new political third way, particularly informed by the thought of the British sociologist Anthony Giddens.

"New Labour" was first termed as an alternative branding for the Labour Party, dating from a conference slogan first used by the Labour Party in 1994, which was later seen in a draft manifesto published by the party in 1996, called ''New Labour, New Life For Britain''. It was a continuation of the trend that had begun under the leadership of Neil Kinnock. "New Labour" as a name has no official status, but remains in common use to distinguish modernisers from those holding to more traditional positions, normally referred to as "Old Labour".

'New Labour is a party of ideas and ideals but not of outdated ideology. What counts is what works. The objectives are radical. The means will be modern.'

The Labour Party won the 1997 general election with a landslide majority of 179; it was the largest Labour majority ever, and the largest swing to a political party achieved since 1945. Over the next decade, a wide range of progressive social reforms were enacted, with millions lifted out of poverty during Labour's time in office largely as a result of various tax and benefit reforms.

Among the early acts of Tony Blair's government were the establishment of the national minimum wage, the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the re-creation of a city-wide government body for London, the Greater London Authority, with its own elected-Mayor. Combined with a Conservative opposition that had yet to organise effectively under William Hague, and the continuing popularity of Blair, Labour went on to win the 2001 election with a similar majority, dubbed the "quiet landslide" by the media.

A perceived turning point was when Tony Blair controversially allied himself with US President George W. Bush in supporting the Iraq War, which caused him to lose much of his political support. The UN Secretary-General, among many, considered the war illegal. The Iraq War was deeply unpopular in most western countries, with Western governments divided in their support and under pressure from worldwide popular protests. At the 2005 election, Labour was re-elected for a third term, but with a reduced majority of 66. The decisions that led up to the Iraq war and its subsequent conduct are currently the subject of Sir John Chilcot's Iraq Inquiry.

Tony Blair announced in September 2006 that he would quit as leader within the year, though he had been under pressure to quit earlier than May 2007 in order to get a new leader in place before the May elections which were expected to be disastrous for Labour. In the event, the party did lose power in Scotland to a minority Scottish National Party government at the 2007 elections and, shortly after this, Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by his Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Although the party experienced a brief rise in the polls after this, its popularity soon slumped to its lowest level since the days of Michael Foot. During May 2008, Labour suffered heavy defeats in the London mayoral election, local elections and the loss in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, culminating in the party registering its worst ever opinion poll result since records began in 1943, of 23%, with many citing Brown's leadership as a key factor.

Finance proved a major problem for the Labour Party during this period; a "cash for peerages" scandal under Tony Blair resulted in the drying up of many major sources of donations. Declining party membership, partially due to the reduction of activists' influence upon policy-making under the reforms of Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, also contributed to financial problems. Between January and March 2008, the Labour Party received just over £3 million in donations and were £17 million in debt; compared to the Conservatives' £6 million in donations and £12 million in debt.

In the 2010 general election on 6 May that year, Labour with 29.0% of the vote won the second largest number of seats (258). The Conservatives with 36.5% of the vote won the largest number of seats (307), but no party had an overall majority, meaning that Labour could still remain in power if they managed to form a coalition with at least one smaller party. However, the Labour Party would have had to form a coalition with more than one other smaller party to gain an overall majority; anything less would result in a minority government. On 10 May 2010, after talks to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats broke down, Gordon Brown announced his intention to stand down as Leader before the Labour Party Conference but a day later resigned as both Prime Minister and party leader.

In opposition (2010–present)

Harriet Harman became the Leader of the Opposition and acting Leader of the Labour Party following the resignation of Gordon Brown on 11 May 2010, pending a leadership election subsequently won by Ed Miliband. This period has to date witnessed a revival in Labour's opinion poll fortunes, with the first Labour lead recorded since the commencement of Gordon Brown's premiership in 2007 being reported in a YouGov poll for The Sun on 27 September 2010 during the 2010 Labour Party Conference. This phenomenon has been speculatively attributed to the sharp decline in Liberal Democrat support since May 2010, with disillusioned Liberal Democrat supporters defecting their support to Labour. Such poll leads, up to 6% above the Conservatives in a 20 December 2010 opinion poll, are in contrast to Ed Miliband's low public satisfaction ratings; +1% in an Ipsos MORI poll, interpreted by a spokesperson for the said pollster as "...bad news for Ed Miliband. We have to go back to Michael Foot who led the party to a crushing defeat in 1983 to find a lower satisfaction rating at this stage".Foot, in fact, had actually enjoyed a lead in the opinion polls over the Tories wide enough to win an election with a majority of up to 130 seats immediately after becoming leader in 1980,although that lead was wiped out in 1981 following the advent of the Social Democratic Party.

The new leadership of the party has been seeking a coherent ideological position to answer Cameron's 'Big Society' rhetoric, and also mark a seachange from the neoliberal ideology of Blair and 'New Labour'. Blue Labour is a recent, and had been increasingly influential ideological tendency in the party that advocates the belief that working class voters will be won back to Labour through more conservative policies on certain social and international issues, such as immigration and crime, a rejection of neoliberal economics in favour of ideas from guild socialism and continental corporatism, and a switch to local and democratic community management and provision of services, rather than relying on a traditional welfare state that is seen as excessively 'bureaucratic'. These ideas have been given an endorsement by Ed Miliband who in 2011 wrote the preface to a book expounding Blue Labour's positions However, it lost influlence after comments by Maurice Glasman in the Telegraph newspaper.

Electoral performance

^†The first election held under the Representation of the People Act 1918 in which all men over 21, and most women over the age of 30 could vote, and therefore a much larger electorate

^‡The first election under universal suffrage in which all women aged over 21 could vote

==Leaders of the Labour Party since 1906==

Keir Hardie, 1906–1908

Arthur Henderson, 1908–1910

George Nicoll Barnes, 1910–1911

Ramsay MacDonald, 1911–1914

Arthur Henderson, 1914–1917

William Adamson, 1917–1921

John Robert Clynes, 1921–1922

Ramsay MacDonald, 1922–1931

Arthur Henderson, 1931–1932

George Lansbury, 1932–1935

Clement Attlee, 1935–1955

Hugh Gaitskell, 1955–1963

George Brown, 1963 ^†

Harold Wilson, 1963–1976

James Callaghan, 1976–1980

Michael Foot, 1980–1983

Neil Kinnock, 1983–1992

John Smith, 1992–1994

Margaret Beckett, 1994 ^†

Tony Blair, 1994–2007

Gordon Brown, 2007–2010

Harriet Harman, 2010 ^†

Ed Miliband, 2010–present

^†Although these were technically leaders of the Labour Party, they only assumed this role because of the death or resignation of the incumbent and were not elected to the post. They were in effect acting temporary leaders. Margaret Beckett was deputy leader when leader John Smith unexpectedly died, and she automatically became leader as a result of his death. Similarly, George Brown, who became leader after the death of Hugh Gaitskell, had been deputy leader at the time of Gaitskell's death. Harriet Harman was deputy leader when Gordon Brown resigned the leadership in the wake of his May 2010 election defeat, and she too became leader automatically and remained leader while the Labour Party went through the process of electing a new leader.

Deputy Leaders of the Labour Party since 1922

John Robert Clynes, 1922–1932

William Graham, 1931–1932

Clement Attlee, 1932–1935

Arthur Greenwood, 1935–1945

Herbert Morrison, 1945–1955

Jim Griffiths, 1955–1959

Aneurin Bevan, 1959–1960

George Brown, 1960–1970

Roy Jenkins, 1970–1972

Edward Short, 1972–1976

Michael Foot, 1976–1980

Denis Healey, 1980–1983

Roy Hattersley, 1983–1992

Margaret Beckett, 1992–1994

John Prescott, 1994–2007

Harriet Harman, 2007–present

Leaders of the Labour Party in the House of Lords since 1924

Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, 1924–1928

Charles Cripps, 1st Baron Parmoor, 1928–1931

Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, 1931–1935

Harry Snell, 1st Baron Snell, 1935–1940

Christopher Addison, 1st Viscount Addison, 1940–1952

William Jowitt, 1st Earl Jowitt, 1952–1955

Albert Victor Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Hillsborough, 1955–1964

Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, 1964–1968

Edward Shackleton, Baron Shackleton, 1968–1974

Malcolm Shepherd, 2nd Baron Shepherd, 1974–1976

Fred Peart, Baron Peart, 1976–1982

Cledwyn Hughes, Baron Cledwyn of Penrhos, 1982–1992

Ivor Richard, Baron Richard, 1992–1998

Margaret Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington, 1998–2001

Gareth Williams, Baron Williams of Mostyn, 2001–2003

Valerie Amos, Baroness Amos, 2003–2007

Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, 2007–2008

Janet Royall, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, 2008–present

Labour Prime Ministers

See also

{|width=100% |- valign=top |width=33%|

Labour Co-operative

History of British Socialism

Labour leadership election

List of organisations associated with the British Labour Party

List of Labour Party (UK) MPs

List of other Labour Parties

Politics of the UK

Young Labour

|width=33%|

Welsh Labour

Scottish Labour Party

Blue Labour

Liberal Democrats

Conservative Party

Socialist Party (England and Wales)

Socialist Labour Party (UK)

Labour Students

List of UK Labour Party general election manifestos

|}

References

Further reading

Davies, A.J, ''To Build A New Jerusalem'' (1996) ISBN

Stephen Driver and Luke Martell, ''New Labour: Politics after Thatcherism'', Polity Press, 1998 and 2006

Geoffrey Foote, ''The Labour Party's Political Thought: A History'', Macmillan, 1997 ed.

Martin Francis, ''Ideas and Policies under Labour 1945–51'', Manchester University Press, 1997. ISBN

Roy Hattersley, ''New Statesman'', 10 May 2004, 'We should have made it clear that we too were modernisers'

David Howell, ''British Social Democracy'', Croom Helm, 1976

David Howell, ''MacDonald's Party'', Oxford University Press, 2002

H. C. G. Matthew, R. I. McKibbin, J. A. Kay. "The Franchise Factor in the Rise of the Labour Party," ''English Historical review'' Vol. 91, No. 361 (Oct., 1976) , pp. 723–752 in JSTOR

Ralph Miliband, ''Parliamentary Socialism'', Merlin, 1960, 1972, ISBN

Kenneth O. Morgan, ''Labour in Power, 1945-51'', OUP, 1984

Kenneth O. Morgan, ''Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock'' OUP, 1992, ISBN

Henry Pelling and Alastair J. Reid, ''A Short History of the Labour Party'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ed. ISBN

Ben Pimlott, ''Labour and the Left in the 1930s'', Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Raymond Plant, Matt Beech and Kevin Hickson (2004), ''The Struggle for Labour's Soul: understanding Labour's political thought since 1945'', Routledge, ISBN

Clive Ponting, ''Breach of Promise, 1964-70'', Penguin, 1990, ISBN

Greg Rosen, ''Dictionary of Labour Biography''. Politicos Publishing, 2001, ISBN

Greg Rosen, ''Old Labour to New'', Politicos Publishing, 2005, ISBN

Eric Shaw, ''The Labour Party since 1979: Crisis and Transformation'', Routledge, 1994

Andrew Thorpe, ''A History of the British Labour Party'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, ISBN

Phillip Whitehead, ''The Writing on the Wall'', Michael Joseph, 1985

Patrick Wintour and Colin Hughes, ''Labour Rebuilt'', Fourth Estate, 1990

John Pilger, Freedom Next Time, Bantam Press, 2006, ISBN

External links

Official party sites

Labour

Scottish Labour

Welsh Labour

London Assembly Labour

Young Labour - Party youth wing

Labour Party in Northern Ireland

Labour Party in Westminster

Other

Unofficial website with an archive of electoral manifestos and a directory of related websites

Labourhome - unofficial Labour Party grassroots

Labour History Group website

Unofficial history website

Guardian Unlimited Politics—Special Report: Labour Party

Labour Party aggregated news (multilingual)

Labour History Archive and Study Centre holds archives of the National Labour Party

( Translation accessible on www.humaniteinenglish.com)

Category:Democratic socialism Category:Edwardian era Category:Labour parties Category:Party of European Socialists member parties Category:Political parties established in 1900 Category:Second International Category:Social democratic parties in the United Kingdom Category:Socialist International Category:1900 establishments in the United Kingdom

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name	Terry Christian
birth place	Old Trafford, Lancashire, England,United Kingdom
occupation	Broadcaster
yearsactive	1981–present
website	}}

Terry Christian (born 8 May 1962) is a British television and radio presenter whose credits include Channel 4's late night Youth Entertainment show ''The Word'' and ITV1 moral issues talk show ''It's My Life''. He also presented six series of It's My life , two series of 'Turn On Terry and numerous other programmes for ITV , MTV , VH1 , Channel 4 as well as a variety of different local and national radio programmes on stations including radio 4, BBC6 Music, Talksport, Century Radio, Key 103, Signal and BBC's Radio Derby and Manchester.

Biography

Early life

Christian was born in Old Trafford to Irish parents (born in Dublin) on 8 May 1962, and grew up in Brooks Bar Old Trafford with five brothers and sisters. He was educated at St. Alphonsus Primary School, Ayres Road, Old Trafford and St Bede's College, Manchester. His father was a shop steward in the TGWU at Esso In Trafford Park. He attended Thames Polytechnic in London studying Applied Biology and has an HND in that subject specialising in microbiology.

He was spotted in 1981 by Maxine Baker, who booked him along with 99 other unemployed youngsters from the inner City area of Manchester for ''Devil's Advocate'', a programme made by Granada Television and networked on a Sunday night on ITV about youngsters on the dole, presented by former ''World In Action'' editor Gus Macdonald. The show was made in reaction to the Scarman Report which looked into the causes of that summers riots in Moss Side, Toxteth, Brixton, Handsworth and St Pauls. Amongst the other kids on the dole alongside Christian on ''Devil's Advocate'' was Johnny Marr of The Smiths. As a result of his appearances on the programme, Christian was offered his own radio show on BBC Radio Derby called ''Barbed Wireless''.

Radio

Christian worked for BBC Radio Derby from 1982-88 presenting Barbed Wireless and also from 86-88 presented WPFM on Radio 4, with his ''Barbed Wireless'' programme winning Sony Awards in the Best specialist music category in 1985 and 1986. and contributed regularly to Saturday Live on BBC Radio 1.

He managed a twelve-piece Reggae band, from the Nottingham/Derby area, Junior C Reaction, who received airplay on John Peel and Janice Long's shows on BBC Radio 1 for their first independent release on Centurion Records, a double A Side, "Cry Jahoviah", and "Love & Emotion". They were signed to Cooltempo, a Chrysalis subsidiary, and enjoyed a modicum of success with their first release, a version of the Delroy Wilson classic, "'Better Must Come", which was C-listed on Radio One and Capital Radio at the time as well as playing a live session on Radio One's Saturday live. Terry also promoted regular gigs around the Derby and Nottingham area, promoting concerts by Pop Will Eat Itself, The Jazz Defektors, Nico (of Velvet Underground fame) Misty In Roots, The Naturalites, The Fall, The Beyond , The Meteors, UK Subs, The Cocteau Twins and Hugh Masakela and regular house nights at Derby's Twentieth Century club, where the resident Saturday night DJ was Graeme Park, who left to join Mike Pickering at the legendary Hacienda Nude Night

In late 1988, he joined Piccadilly Radio's Key 103 FM, presenting from 6-9pm on weekday evenings, and 2pm-5pm on Sunday afternoon, playing (The Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and 808 State), as well as a mixture of classics by everyone from The Beatles, Love, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, classic soul and funk, plus Manchester favourites like The Buzzcocks, The Smiths, The Fall, New Order, and Joy Division, A Guy Called Garald , The Chameleons. Christian also wrote The Word page in the ''Manchester Evening News'' from September 1989, a page dedicated to the Manchester music scene, and gave the first press to a host of Manchester luminaries including The Charlatans, Oasis, and Doves (then called Sub Sub), M People.

Christian has presented on every radio station in the Manchester area. He was also the presenter of ''The Final Whistle'' on talkSPORT every Saturday between 5pm and 8pm from 2006 until 2008, alongside ex-footballer Micky Quinn

Christian joined Stockport based radio station Imagine FM (104.9 fm) in March 2011. Imagine was formerly known as KFM, and Christian once presented a nightly show on the old station alongside Jon Ronson, Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash; and is glad to be back.

Television

In 1990, Christian with the explosion of The Madchester scene, was recruited to host the controversial Channel 4 youth show ''The Word'', named after his column in the ''Manchester Evening News'', and based on the format of his music magazine radio shows. The show was a mayhemic mixture of pop music and teen attitude, and attracted up to a 49% audience share in its Friday night slot. Famously, The Word hosted many bands playing live for the first time on British TV, including Oasis, Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Public Enemy, and Rage Against The Machine. Christian remained its only continuous presenter until it finished its run in 1995.

He went on to present Carlton Television's ''The Big City'', Sky1's pop music show ''The Hitmix'', and ''The Football Show'' for Tyne Tees Television. He presented ''Turn On Terry'' for ITVwith regular guest Tony Wilson and six series of ''It's My Life'' (2003–2007) produced by former ''World In Action'' editor and Tony Wilson's ''So It Goes'' Series producer Geoff Moore for ITV, which was nominated for two St. Martin's Trust Awards.

He has starred as himself in The Cribs' video for the standalone single "You're Gonna Lose Us", which was made to look like an episode of ''The Word''; and also played the part of Ross Peagrum, despotic TV presenter, in series 2 and 4 of the popular BBC TV drama series Cutting It, as well appearing as a guest on numerous TV shows in the UK and Ireland. During the nineties, Terry was also regularly seen as a presenter on MTV Europe. In January 2009 he entered as a contestant on the celebrity version of the reality TV show Big Brother alongside Verne Troyer, Latoya Jackson, Ulrika Jonsson, Coolio and Mutya Buena, finishing in second place. Christian has recently completed hosting series six of ITV's youth discussion show ''It's My Life'', made by Manchester based independent Moore Television. The programme is filmed at Granada Television in Manchester. Special guests on this series include Hazel Blears MP, Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and Helen Newlove, widow of Garry Newlove.

Terry set up his own production company, Gigwise Productions in April 2010 and is working on documentaries about legendary Manchester photographer Harry Goodwin and Britain's first black footballer Arthur Wharton. He has also presents a number of shows for MUTV (Manchester United F.C.), including Terry Christian's Sunday Worship, Live At The Sad Cafe, and documentaries on 100 years of Old Trafford, and the relationship between terrace chants at Old Trafford and the Hillsborough football tragedy. This is despite writing of supporting Manchester City in his early years, in his book, Reds in the Hood. It is believed that his love of Irish Guiness and Chinese takeaway as instrumental in this decision to change clubs. Logically, it would make sense to support a team with such a strong affinity to these areas. Also, his overdone "Professional Northerner" accent would quickly have been exposed as fake at Maine Road.

He is in demand as a host for corporate events and as a guest on numerous TV shows including 'Come Dine With Me, 8 out of 10 cats and Would I Lie To You?. He is a regular guest on a variety of discussion shows on Radio Five live, Radio Four and BBC2's The Culture Show

As Christian is an avid Manchester United fan he frequently appears on the Manchester United channel ''MUTV'' and has his own show, 'Terry Christian's Sunday Worship' and regularly hosts the 'Live From The Red Cafe Show'. He is a regular panellist on topical debate chat show ''The Wright Stuff''. He will star in the natural horror flick DeadTime, which is directed by Chilean filmmaker Tony Jopia and is set for an 2011 release., and has also recently played the part of a debauched Catholic priest in the Mad theatre company's production of Angels with Manky Faces , based loosely on the factual book by Andrew Davies , Gangs Of Manchester and has also appeared in recent film selling yourself , April 2011.

Writing

Terry Christian has written numerous articles and regular columns for newspapers and magazines, including the ''Daily Mirror'', ''Daily Mail'', ''Daily Express'', ''Manchester Evening News'', ''The Observer'', ''The Times'', ''The Sun'', ''Rolling Stone'' magazine, ''New York Rocker'', ''The Guardian'', and ''The Sunday Times'', and is currently a columnist in ''Northern Life'' Magazine. He has also written three books: ''Brothers - from Childhood to Oasis'' (Virgin publishers), ''Reds In The Hood'' (Andre Deutsch 1999) and ''My Word'', a look at the world of television in the 1990s, was published by Orion books in June 2007 to favourable reviews, and came out in paperback in May 2008. He writes the music pages for the Pride of Manchester website.

References

7. Terry Christian - My Word , Orion publishing ,2006 8. Terry Christian - Reds In The Hood , Andre Deutsch, 1999 9. Terry Christian & Paul Gallagher - Brothers From Childhood To Oasis , Virgin books , 1996

External links

DeadTime

Category:Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University Category:1962 births Category:Living people Category:British radio personalities Category:British television presenters Category:British people of Irish descent Category:British radio DJs Category:Old Bedians Category:Big Brother UK contestants Category:People from Stretford

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Ed Miliband
Honorific-suffix	MP
Office1	Leader of the Opposition
Monarch1	Elizabeth II
Primeminister1	David Cameron
Term start1	25 September 2010
Predecessor1	Harriet Harman
Office2	Leader of the Labour Party
Deputy2	Harriet Harman
Term start2	25 September 2010
Predecessor2	Gordon Brown
Office3	Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Primeminister3	Gordon Brown
Predecessor3	Office Created
Successor3	Chris Huhne
Term start3	3 October 2008
Term end3	12 May 2010
Office4	Minister for the Cabinet OfficeChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Primeminister4	Gordon Brown
Predecessor4	Hilary Armstrong
Successor4	Liam Byrne
Term start4	28 June 2007
Term end4	3 October 2008
Office5	Member of Parliamentfor Doncaster North
Term start5	5 May 2005
Predecessor5	Kevin Hughes
Majority5	10,909 (26.3%)
Birth date	December 24, 1969
Birth place	London, England, UK
Spouse	Justine Thornton
Children	Daniel MilibandSamuel Miliband
Nationality	British
Relations	Ralph MilibandDavid Miliband
Alma mater	Corpus Christi, Oxon.LSE
Party	Labour }}

Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British Labour Party politician, currently the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the South Yorkshire constituency of Doncaster North since 2005 and served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Born in London, Miliband graduated from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics, becoming first a television journalist and then a Labour Party researcher, before rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidants and Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers.

As Prime Minister, Gordon Brown appointed Miliband as Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 28 June 2007. He was subsequently promoted to the new post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 3 October 2008 to 12 May 2010. On 25 September 2010, he was elected Leader of the Labour Party.

Background and early life

Born in London, Miliband is the younger son of Polish Jewish immigrants. His mother, Marion Kozak, survived the Holocaust thanks to being protected by Roman Catholic Poles. His father Ralph Miliband was a Marxist and Brussels native whose parents were from Warsaw, Poland, and fled Belgium to the UK during World War II. As a teenager, he reviewed films and plays on LBC Radio's ''Young London'' programme as one of its "Three O'Clock Reviewers", and worked as an intern to Tony Benn.

Education

Miliband was educated at Primrose Hill Primary School, Camden and then Haverstock Comprehensive School in Chalk Farm, North London. He was a violinist at school. After completing his A Levels, Miliband read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, taking a Bachelor of Arts, followed by the London School of Economics, where he obtained a Masters in Economics.

Early political career

Special Adviser

After a brief career in television journalism, Miliband became a speechwriter and researcher for Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Harriet Harman in 1993, and then for Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown the following year. In 1997, following Labour's landslide election victory, Miliband was appointed as one of Gordon Brown's special advisers.

In 1999, Miliband was involved in the process of building Labour's manifesto for the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections. Initially doing so in an informal capacity, he was spotted leaving the Scottish Labour Party's headquarters on the night that a key policy meeting was held, involving the Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar and senior party officials, to consider the party's election strategy and details of Labour's manifesto. As a result, Miliband resigned from his post as a Special Adviser at the Treasury, to work on the Scottish election campaign full-time. It was reported that part of Miliband's Scottish role was to take charge of Labour's rebuttal operation.

Harvard

On 25 July 2002, it was announced that Miliband would take a 12-month unpaid sabbatical from the Treasury to be a visiting scholar at the Centre for European Studies of Harvard University for two semesters. He spent his time at Harvard teaching economics, and stayed there after September 2003 teaching a course titled "What's Left? The Politics of Social Justice". He was granted "access" to Senator John Kerry and reported to Brown on the Presidential hopeful's progress. In January 2004 he was appointed chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers, directing the UK's long-term economic planning.

Member of Parliament

In early 2005, Miliband resigned from the Treasury to stand for election. Kevin Hughes, then the Labour MP for Doncaster North, announced in February of that year that he would be standing down at the next election due to being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. Miliband applied for selection to be the Labour candidate in the safe Labour seat and won, beating off a close challenge from Michael Dugher, then a special advisor to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon. Gordon Brown visited Doncaster North during the general election campaign to support his former adviser. Miliband was elected to Parliament on 5 May 2005, with over 50% of the vote and a majority of 12,656. He made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 23 May, responding to comments made by future Speaker John Bercow. In Tony Blair's cabinet reshuffle in May 2006, he was made the Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office, with responsibility for the so-called Third Sector, relating to voluntary and charity organisations, for which a new Office had been created.

During his time as an MP, Miliband has consistently voted with the party line in over 1,600 votes. In March 2007, however, Miliband voted for Composition Options 4,5, and 6 (50%, 60% and 80% elected respectively) for House of Lords reform against the whip.

Cabinet

In June 2007, when Brown became Prime Minister, Miliband was sworn of the Privy Council and appointed Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and promoted to the Cabinet. This meant that he and his brother David Miliband became the first brothers to serve in Cabinet since Edward and Oliver Stanley in 1938. He was given the task of drafting Labour's manifesto for the next general election.

On 3 October 2008, Miliband was promoted to Secretary of State for the newly-created Department of Energy and Climate Change in a Cabinet reshuffle. On 16 October, Miliband announced that the British government would legislate to oblige itself to cut greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050, rather than the 60% cut in carbon dioxide emissions previously announced.

Whilst Secretary of State, Miliband attended ''The Age of Stupid'' UK premiere where he was ambushed by Pete Postlethwaite who threatened to return his OBE and vote for any party other than Labour, if the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station was given the go-ahead by the government. A month later the Government announced a change to its policy on coal – no new coal-fired power station will get government consent unless it can capture and bury 25% of the emissions it produces immediately – and 100% of emissions by 2025. This, a source told ''the Guardian'', represented “a complete rewrite of UK energy policy”.

Miliband represented the UK at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, from which emerged a global commitment to provide an additional $10bn a year to fight the effects of climate change, with an additional $100bn a year provided by 2020. The conference was not able to achieve a legally-binding agreement. Miliband accused China of deliberately foiling attempts at a binding agreement; China explicitly denied this, accusing British politicians of engaging in a "political scheme".

During 2009, Miliband was named by the ''Daily Telegraph'' as one of the "saints" of the expenses scandal, for claiming one of the lowest amounts of expenses in the House of Commons.

Leadership of the Labour Party

Leadership election

Following the formation of the coalition government on 11 May 2010, Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party with immediate effect, with Deputy Leader Harriet Harman taking over as Acting Leader. On 14 May 2010, following his brother's announcement of his own candidacy the day earlier, Miliband announced that he would stand as a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party. He launched his campaign during a speech given at a Fabian Society conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies and was nominated by 62 fellow Labour MPs. The other candidates were Diane Abbott, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and his elder brother David Miliband.

On 23 May, former Labour Leader Neil Kinnock announced that he would endorse Miliband's campaign to become the next Leader, saying that he had "the capacity to inspire people" and that he had "strong values and the ability to 'lift' people". Other senior Labour figures who backed Miliband included former Deputy Leaders Roy Hattersley and Margaret Beckett. By 9 June, the deadline for entry into the Labour leadership contest, Miliband had been nominated by just over 24% of the Parliamentary Labour Party, double the amount required. By September, Miliband had received the support of six Trade Unions, including both Unite and UNISON, 151 of the Constituency Labour Parties, three affiliated socialist societies, and half of the Labour MEPs.

Ed Miliband won the election, the result of which was announced on 25 September 2010, after third and fourth preferences votes were counted, with the support of 50.654% of the electoral college, defeating his brother by 1.3%. In the fourth, and final stage of the redistribution of votes after three candidates had been eliminated, Ed Miliband led in the trade unions and affiliated organisations third of the electoral college (19.93% of the total to David's 13.40%), but in both the MPs and MEPs section (15.52% to 17.81%), and constituency Labour parties section (15.20% to 18.14%), came second. In the final round, Ed Miliband won with a total of 175,519 votes to David's 147,220 votes.

Leader of the Opposition

On becoming Leader of the Labour Party on 25 September 2010, Miliband also became Leader of the Opposition. At the age of 40, he was the youngest Labour Leader since World War II. He had his first Prime Minister's Questions as Labour Leader on 13 October 2010, raising questions about the government's announced removal of a non-means tested child benefit. During the 2011 military intervention in Libya, Miliband supported UK military action against Colonel Gaddafi. Miliband spoke at a large "March for the Alternative" rally held in London on 26 March 2011 to protest against cuts to public spending, though he was criticised by some for comparing it to the anti-apartheid and American civil rights movements.

Miliband's first electoral tests as Labour Leader came in the elections to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and various councils across England, excluding London on 5 May 2011. The results for Labour were described as a "mixed bag", with the party performing well in Wales – falling just one seat short of an overall majority and forming the next Welsh Government on its own – and making large gains from the Liberal Democrats in northern councils, including Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. Results were less encouraging in the south of England however, and results in Scotland were described as a "disaster", with Labour losing nine seats to the SNP, which went on to gain the Parliament's first ever majority. Miliband commented positively in regard to the results and said that following the poor showings in Scotland "lessons must still be learnt".

A June 2011 poll result from Ipsos MORI found Labour 2 percentage points ahead of the Tories, but Miliband's personal rating was low; he was rated as less popular than Iain Duncan Smith at a similar stage in his opposition leadership."

In July 2011, following the revelation that the News of the World had paid private investigators to hack into the phones of Milly Dowler, as well as the families of murder victims and deceased servicemen, Miliband called for News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks to resign, urged David Cameron to establish a public and judicial-led inquiry into the scandal and announced that he would force a Commons vote on whether to block the News International bid for a controlling stake in BSkyB. He also called for the Press Complaints Commission to be abolished - which would later be echoed by both Cameron and Nick Clegg - and called into question Cameron's judgement in hiring former News of the World editor Andy Coulson to be his director of communications. Cameron would later take the rare and unusual step of saying that the government would back Miliband's opposition motion that the BSkyB bid should be dropped, and just an hour before Miliband's motion was due to be debated, News International announced that it would drop its bid for BSkyB.

Following the riots in England in August 2011, Miliband called for a public inquiry into the events, and insisted that society had "to avoid simplistic answers". The call for an inquiry was later rejected by David Cameron, prompting Miliband to say that he would set up his own inquiry in the absence of a government one. In a BBC Radio 4 interview shortly after the riots, Miliband spoke of an irresponsibility that not only applied to the people involved in the riots, but "wherever we find it in our society. We've seen in the past few years...MPs' expenses, what happened in the banks". Miliband also stated Labour didn't do enough to tackle moral problems during their thirteen years in office.

Shadow Cabinet appointments

The first election to the Shadow Cabinet that took place under Miliband's leadership was on 7 October 2010. Ending days of speculation, David Miliband announced that he would not seek election to the Shadow Cabinet on 29 September, the day nominations closed, saying he wanted to avoid "constant comparison" with his brother Ed. The three other defeated candidates for the Labour leadership all stood in the election, though Diane Abbott failed to win enough votes to gain a place. Following the election, Miliband unveiled his Shadow Cabinet on 8 October 2010. Amongst others he appointed Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Yvette Cooper was chosen as Shadow Foreign Secretary, and both defeated Labour leadership candidates Ed Balls and Andy Burnham were given senior roles, becoming Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Education Secretary respectively. Burnham was additionally given responsibility for overseeing Labour's election co-ordination. Sadiq Khan, who managed Miliband's successful leadership campaign, was appointed Shadow Justice Secretary and Shadow Lord Chancellor, and continuing Deputy Leader Harriet Harman continued to shadow Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, as well as being made Shadow International Development Secretary. Alan Johnson would later resign from his position, stepping down for "personal reasons" on 20 January 2011, necessitating Miliband's first reshuffle, in which he made Balls Shadow Chancellor, Cooper Shadow Home Secretary and Douglas Alexander Shadow Foreign Secretary.

On 24 June 2011, it was reported that Miliband was seeking to change the decades-old rule that Labour's Shadow Cabinet would be elected every two years, instead wanting to adopt a system where he alone had the authority to select its members. Miliband later confirmed the story, claiming that the rule represented "a legacy of Labour's past in opposition". On 5 July, Labour MPs voted overwhelmingly to back the rule change, paving the way for NEC and Conference approval. This change will allow Miliband to be the first Leader of the Labour Party to have the authority to pick his own Shadow Cabinet, though he indicated that he would not be using the new powers to reshuffle his Shadow Cabinet "any time soon".

Policies and views

Self-description of views

Miliband has described himself as a new type of Labour politician, looking to move beyond the divisiveness of Blairism and Brownism, and calling for an end to the "factionalism and psychodramas" of Labour's past. He has also repeatedly spoken of the requirement for a "new politics". During the Labour leadership campaign, he described himself as a socialist, and has spoken out against some of the actions of the Blair Government, including criticising its record on civil liberties and stating that he would not have backed the Iraq War. He has also made calls for the UK to adopt a "capitalism that works for the people". Though he wasn't in Parliament at the time of the 2003 vote, he remains a strong critic of the Iraq War. He has, however, backed UK military action and intervention in Afghanistan and Libya respectively. He also backs gay marriage, supports making the UK's 50p top rate of tax permanent, as well as the institution of a new financial transaction tax, mutualising Northern Rock, putting limits on top salaries, scrapping tuition fees in favour of a graduate tax, implementing a living wage policy and the scrapping of the ID cards policy, and has spoken in favour of a "National Care Service" scheme, in effect nationalising elderly care in a manner similar to the NHS. Though Labour remained officially neutral, he in a personal capacity supported the ultimately unsuccessful "Yes to AV" campaign in the Alternative Vote referendum on 5 May 2011, saying that it would benefit Britain's "progressive majority".

Comments on other politicians

Miliband has criticised Conservative Leader and Prime Minister David Cameron for "sacrificing everything on the altar of deficit reduction", and has accused him of being guilty of practising "old politics", citing alleged broken promises on areas such as crime, policing and child benefit.

Miliband has also been particularly critical of Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg following the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Agreement, accusing him of "betrayal" and of "selling-out" his party's voters. He has also stated that he would demand the resignation of Nick Clegg as a precursor to any future Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. In the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, Miliband refused to share a platform with Clegg, stating that he had become "too toxic" a brand, and that he would harm the "Yes to AV" campaign. He did, however, share platforms during the campaign with former Lib Dem Leaders Lord Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, as well as current Lib Dem Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, the Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas and Business Secretary Vince Cable, among others. Since becoming Labour Leader, Miliband has made a number of speeches aimed at winning over disaffected Liberal Democrats, identifying a difference between the "Orange Book" Lib Dems who were closer to the Conservatives and Lib Dems who were on the centre-left, offering the latter a role in helping Labour's policy review.

Miliband has previously spoken positively of his brother David, praising his record as Foreign Secretary, and saying that "his door was always open" following David's decision not to stand for the Shadow Cabinet in 2010. When asked to choose the greatest British Prime Minister, Miliband answered with Labour's post-war Prime Minister and longest-serving Leader, Clement Attlee. He has also spoken positively of his two immediate predecessors as Labour Leader, former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, praising their leadership and records in government.

Personal life

Miliband married Justine Thornton, a Cambridge-educated barrister, on 27 May 2011 in a civil ceremony at the Langar Hall Hotel near Nottingham. After the civil ceremony Miliband paid tribute to his Jewish heritage with the tradition of breaking a glass. They met in 2002, were engaged in March 2010, and live together in North London. They have two sons – Daniel Miliband, born 2009, and Samuel Miliband, born 2010. Miliband is Jewish, but not religious.

Styles

Ed Miliband Esq (1969–2005)

Ed Miliband MP (2005–2007)

The Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP (2007–present)

References

External links

Ed Miliband, MP for Doncaster North ''official constituency site''

Ed Miliband at Labour.org.uk

Ed Miliband collected news and commentary at ''The London Evening Standard''

Ed Miliband collected news and commentary at ''The Telegraph''

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Category:1969 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics Category:British people of Jewish descent Category:British Secretaries of State Category:Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Leaders of the Labour Party (UK) Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Politics of Doncaster Category:British people of Polish descent Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010–

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