The shadow of the lion; Dunkirk or Devil-May-Care

The shadow of the lion. Emerging from a memorable immovable palace. Britain today faces the formidable task of defining the future. And this is our story a story of truth for no longer stands can tell a lie and a deceptive his shadow is but an apparition. You did yesterday his profile. Mrs.. Temple transmission. Heard in London's comedy street in Coventry in Oxford and. Rhythm of a new revolution in Britain.

Programme one Dunkirk or devil may care. From an Indiana University Radio documented essay about contemporary Britain. We present the shadow of the lion with William Kinzer as your net writer. Most Americans feel quite close to Britain. Many of our beginnings begin there and the scars of those bitter rebellious beginnings have since been healed by history leaving only a page or so to

chronicle the time and the lasting trust of common ties. We speak the same language for instance. I haven't noticed how genes get in next door. I love she said. And I dads are always mouthing about spending as Braff down the problem. But then I want to be done about it. Now I have brought up about young Jimmy because I'm doing very well. Oh OK well we thought we spoke the same language although we are often reminded of Oscar Wilde who said in these words we empathy Americans have much in common but there is always the language barrier. Yet we do find ourselves together on most things thinking the same thoughts harboring the same concerns were their lives. But time has made us individuals too and we're often surprised at how little we

know about each other. The American tourist he jets in from Albuquerque Sioux City or Brooklyn he steps from the plane in stereo type camera. Credit cards. Yankee confidence. He shudders in the damp drizzle that is stereotyped dumdum shuttering also at the prospect of seeing Europe him two weeks. But he's game. He stays at the Regent Palace perhaps wanders about Piccadilly Circus walks up Oxford Street sees the conventional sights Big Ben St. Paul's Buckingham Palace in three in lot of days he will have mastered a planked you know a real English pub written with a double decker bus. Bought a few souvenirs seemed the changing of the guard and fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. He would depart with distinct opinions of what the English are like what the

future of Britain will be and he will carefully catalogue his impressions with color slides for the weekly Rotary Club meeting back home. But mark you. Britain is more than can be seen from London's tallest spire the new GPO tower. The past room beauty of Britain using proceed all the way from the wild spree of the Cornish coast. True the Highland Park of Brigadoon country. The forever green fields cross hatched by here drillers defied the simple statistic that more than 52 million people inhabit some ninety three thousand square miles of land. Now we're tired out and we've gotten a lot of green space left it sometimes looks as if the whole country is a garden if you see it from the air. By comparison with the United States or Australia but there is an awful lot of country left. You can

find villages within 30 miles of London that are still very little changed from 200 years ago. Norman Mackenzie is sociologist University of Sussex but now look beyond the steepled horizon of the country village across the urban skyline into the hearts and minds of the people. See for yourself. See the evolution of change. Norman McKenzie tells it all. I think the old image of the stuffed shirt Englishman Bob Hope's famous example of the reading vision or looking up at his rallies making love to a girl and saying pucker my lips mother and see this picture of you know the hour of period type and there was something in it of an upper class. Picture. I think that what's been happening in England in the post-war years I'm ready to think first of all there's been a big change in the

position of the working class in England. What I might loosely call working class patterns of life have changed very considerably with increases in prosperity in better housing better welfare provision more enjoying employment things of this kind. And you've got a rise of a whole new section of the population into types of activity which were never available to them before including education. I think this is one big change I think the other one is the change among young people. I'm a person who grew up in the period between the two wars and I think that if I look at young people today they are very different particularly if one looks at students who have a great deal to do with their much lived there. I think that much righter in their interests. I think a much less hidebound much less conservative. Indeed the criticism of many people today would be not that the English are stuffed shirt people but there are blue jeans and bearded people and that young people are increasingly setting

the tone. It's true aristocratic English has been overwhelmed by the eccentricity index. On top of the modern age it's the thing it's everywhere. The opulence of them pop the minister Amir still beat the way out influence on Carnaby Street. It's everywhere. But yet there is truth also in the contention that the British are reserved. You can see that too. It's a treat deeply ingrained in their existence. Living closely as they do the English are born to respect the rights and the privacy of others. For instance you can travel the length of England in a train say from Manchester to London and sit among six strangers in a compartment and likely as not no effort will be made to strike an acquaintance. The end tire trip of three to four hours

may be made in absolute silence and the English character I think is that of not not wanting to present a picture of brashness. Of loud mouth they have been so odd and I think that. The enjoyment certainly is reserved and as the Germans probably say little whore I have little high meaning that one holds one head how I think I was once proud of being a British or as a secretary to the Bradford Council of Social Services. Urban Scot is a good judge of character in the English comics I think it is a product of his education of his early childhood he's always taught that he must behave himself as an Englishman ought to have. I'm the cricket field or in the classroom English character is being molded and to what end. They're very conceited people in this especially the English middle and upper classes. The training that they get in what a core public school right is you

know private schools not your not in your sense about private schools. The training that they get in these schools is calculated to make them feel that they are a sort of elite that that the lords of creation Malcolm Muggeridge who enjoys ripping the rug from beneath British complacency and does it certainly in conceit. This was extremely useful when we had an empire. Because if you are ruling a country you were very few and that many when when we ruled India the 400 million Indians and were never more than ten thousand. In these people that they kept it was necessary that they should have the temperament. But now of course it becomes increasingly absurd. The former editor of punch and present day author television personality sits in his book lined study and expresses an opinion about the constitution of his country when the English are very

proud. Malcolm Muggeridge will tell you. But their pride doesn't always stand the test of changed circumstances. And in this precarious age of commerce and economic survival many changes must occur. What to them is the British attitude toward change. They have been in the past the deep conservative people have said they don't like changing in the things they drive on the left hand side of the road. This is the most ridiculous thing to do. It leads to even cost lives because this now is more and more English people take their motor cars the continent where everybody drives on the right hand side of the road. It even this absurd mania for going on driving on the left actually costs lives. Their refusal until now to adopt the metric system I should say that the absurd tables and things that we have to learn as children through our mandate and measures and things like that probably add without exaggeration some

six months. Through the process of being educated they cling to these things. The kind of idiot tenacity which you go with in a way part of their conceit the feeling that if we do it that way that must be the best way to do it. But as Britain struggles to regain her poise in the vortex of economic emergency her leaders cry out for things to be done better than ever. In a world of intense competition efficiency is an essential key to survival. Yet it's difficult to awaken the people to the realities of the day since they exist in a peculiar paradox of dire circumstances on one hand and on equal affluence on the other. What are the realities you ask Paul Burrell. He's editor of the statist one of Britain's leading business and economics periodicals.

My experience of course goes back to well before the wrong. Guy who played the great comfort of a cat in the economic climate and economic attitude in this country. But there should be full employment. This is something which emerged out of a crisis of the 1920s and 1930s. It's history how the industrial dilemmas of Britain converged in the general strike of 1926. The incident began with the coal miners strike soon followed in sympathy by other unions. The event in consequential in its immediate outcome left many bitter memories and an indelible creed for the English working man. Never again he vowed never again would the labor suffer or sink so low when the good day issues of human dignity. And

so we emerged in England the hard core philosophy and formidable strength of organized labor. The British record to me. You've got trade union jump onto the brain and he can't get away from it. The power of the trade union treads easily invisibly through the corridors of government through committees board or come to meetings only occasionally now does it erupt into violence or vented dispute but stoppages still reminded them nation of the elevated status of the British worker. No the worker enjoys of fools paradise of full employment and an equal compensation. This every Briton knows the working man now in a year is giving an engine out of Rocky Mountain each second of the eight being a big person to be a definite action really to go out. Again a distinction between a working man and a upper

class but now. The working man found him working conditions and living conditions no wages and far. From it. Back in action no matter what I continue to go that they're getting a look into the upperclassman. I don't think I missed that command ever being better off in this life. Ordinary lucky man but unfortunately todays worker is living beyond his nation's means. Economist Paul Barrow explains the more supply and demand can be made overnight and the wages and costs have gone up and that we have downfall that is one of the things we have Balfour handed great very difficult battlement international payments. We have tended to import too much. We have unbalanced tended to export too little and we have been in the balance of payment difficulties.

Ironically it's a Labor government caught in conflict between the boy and hopes of the laboring class and the economic undertow of the country. Prime minister Harold Wilson has never been free to advance the idiology of his party treading a thin line of support and the perilous path of a month stable pound Britain's leader has gamely tried to exhort countryman and ally alike to rally to the cause. Inevitably the British worker became a focal point of concern. After all wages had risen two and a half times faster than productivity. Something had to be done to curb a trend that had priced many British goods out of the world market and brought inflation at home and it threatened the value of the pound sterling. Almost everything would be tried a freeze on wages prices and dividends or restricted military commitment an increase in taxes but to no avail at 9:33 a cold foggy Saturday evening of November 967. The word was to be released

the moment many feared came by way of a brief bulletin that interrupted the Doris Day movies. BBC Britain had at last been forced to devalue the palm. Reaction was mixed. The people yes. The world was shocked but somehow life seemed to go on with the same doubt. Decision in differences before and while the press and the politicians presided over Britain's fate the people remained hopeful and didn't shake him against a veneer of gay irresponsible vitality. The British scene is a mixed euro mild concern and confused inertia. But this isn't the first time the British have been on the edge of uncertainty that people can only be executives when they when a

crisis arise. Malcolm Muggeridge would remind you that only until the Nazis were at the Channel ports did the English fully acknowledge the seriousness of their position in World War Two. Then to their credit they were able to deal with the situation without panicking or losing heart. Though the proud moments the gilded glowing hours of endless courage the genesis of heroes and the commonplace acts of inspiration that welded a nation into one Dunkirk remembered defeat turned into victory by dawn as Tweed suited or cloth capped amateurs drawing to the professionals at the beach. It was everyone's war and tiny Turnell spent in dark and damp shelters and the mornings of rubble and smoke and death and still the indomitable will hail and one for the

British the admiration and respect of all including the enemy for try as he might he couldn't conquer the invincible spirit. When the bubbly personality of people around us didn't know what to do for a few days they soon got a cross coming on shore and the case didn't.

Last week. And the council started dancing in the pool. My particular corner of the fire that it became a beacon on the pavement and. I mean and

he and the young man came my mom and I. You are releasing a very. Very rash. Do you know why and I just think it was a chair and I

didn't shout standing in the dead wearing white and writing class. From the archives of the BBC voices reliving the hallmark of human courage the spirit of Britain and of there are many who can not stand you or indeed hearken back to better days of dignity and purpose. And they would wish for an encore the United struggle the all out effort the Dunkirk spirit. But somehow sadly it's missing. I put that out there of your with deep regret. I am despondent at

the position we find ourselves in in Great Britain the present time. And I think a very large number of my countrymen share this feel. JM Slater sales executive expresses an Englishman's feel I'm one of the many who fully appreciate that our role in the world is one of diminishing influence. Inevitably the days of our empire have come to an end and I think nine out of 10 Englishman accept that that that man coin has one daughter or of course as you and I well of as far as I can see now descended upon the United States. What I deprecate about the country is that at the end of the war when we had such a golden moment when our name stood so high throughout the world had we worked harder and industrial and justice for a few years after that we would have been today in an unassailable position. Unhappily

we tended for many reasons. To sit back and we gradually seem to take on a philosopher that the world owed as a living. And unfortunately as far as I can see in this country that Outlook still prevails today although I think that with this present crisis that people emerging from this war sleep and now well Malcolm Muggeridge well join. We need irresponsibility. But look. The shadow of the lion is the silhouette of change. And whether subtle or obvious. It's everywhere. In education. The church in the hole. In the architecture and the arts in miles and motorway and teeming traffic. In planning and production. In the people.

Yes. Britain can never again be the Britain of a cherished bygone era. Class lines are clumped. The youths are emerging. From aristocratic and the management have risen to the fore. Triumph by technology is the creed of the coming age. Even Buckingham Palace has called in efficiency experts. Britain is on the brink of transition and it isn't easy for change comes hard in a land so deeply endowed with tradition. On the one hand Britons are alarmed at the insidious encroachments of modern evils. On the other they are eager to embrace that comfort and convenience of a bright new world of consumer products. And so they exist in a skewed toward environment desiring the best of both worlds. Change though is

inevitable. It's essential if we want things to stay as they are. Someone once wrote things will have to change. Recasting old ways can be a tedious and ticklish task nevertheless. No one knows better than Lord Beeching. He's the revolutionary who reshaped the British railways into an almost paying proposition by ruthlessly stripping them of their redundancy. Now that with ICICI the Imperial chemical industries one of Britain's largest corporations as Deputy Chairman of the board Lord Beeching pauses to ponder Britain's rising standard of living. We have achieved this growth in so doing to a large extent by continuing to behave as we've always behaved and to achieve a much higher rate of growth instead of living which we want. I think we've got to start to behave quite differently.

It's difficult to behave differently weaned on the benefits of a welfare state nourished in the affluence of material prosperity. Britain see little need to change except through as they see the world around them changing. But suddenly the austere complacency of the establishment has been shaken by the shock troops of pop culture by the paragons of advertising of commercialism by the pressures from Europe and America and by the influx of immigrants and the influence of changing values. Britain today is taking inventory and this is our story a story of agonizing self-analysis and a constant search for a new resolve. Let the country go back a few years to over Wall get that kind of grit and get our teeth into this thing and work our

passage. From Indiana University Radio we have presented dumb Turk or devil may care program one in a special series of documented essays about contemporary Britain entitled The shadow of the lion as written and produced by Lou Roy Gutman. The narrator was William Kinzer production assistant was John Hopkins the engineer Phil Murphy program consultant Jeremy ward one time excerpts were used by special permission from the British Broadcasting Corporation John Dimmock speaking. Shadow of the lion has been a series made possible by an Indiana University faculty research grant.

And there's a presentation of Indiana University Radio. This is the national educational radio network.