Prosperity, its rapid development, the technological innovation necessarily involved, the massive organisational structures required for its accomplishment, and, above all, the physical security and order which were needed across the entire world of capitalist trade and industry: these were the prominent and obvious signs, the keys to understanding and living in the post-war world of the West. In Cold War terms, this was an era of opportunity, unmatched in previous eras, to be contrasted with the grey, drab, unfree life endured by those who had been sucked into the system of Soviet Communism, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe.
But for the free world, as it was then called, to be more than a slogan, for it to become the bulwark against Communism that was desired, the movement towards self-rule in the lands beyond Europe (already begun with the independence of the Indian sub-continent in 1947) was not enough. A fundamental change in attitude was required on the part of the peoples of Britain and Western Europe – and the United States, despite the fact that they did not think of themselves as an “imperialist” power. This change in attitude would focus on the way in which the peoples of Asia, Africa and other parts of the world controlled by European powers, were viewed.
The hierarchical outlook held by Europeans had built up over centuries and was based on what by the 19th Century was a self-conscious sense of superiority, not only in the practical matters of economic life and technology, but also in the area of individual freedom and political system. This outlook had been re-emphasised during the peacemaking at Versailles in 1919, when the countries which had formerly been part of the now defeated German and Ottoman Empires were placed in three separate categories to indicate the degree to which each country was deemed capable of taking on self-rule in a modern setting, and also to forecast in general terms the time period which would be needed for this point to be reached. The cultural attitudes regarding different peoples and civilisations around the world which prevailed generally in the Britain of 1945 had been shaped by the fact that for many generations, extending over a period longer than that covered by family memories, Britain had been a base from which people had set out either to settle in what became European-dominated countries such as America, Australia and New Zealand, or to take up positions in places where the indigenous people were in the vast majority, but where the British were the controlling power.
Hierarchy as an inherent part of daily life, as an unconsidered assumption, was at the heart of cultural life in 1945, both in the West and in other civilisations. There are grounds for considering that some form of inequality in the practice of daily life has always been fundamental to social intercourse. What is at issue here is much more than what would today be seen as the unpleasantness involved in doffing caps, touching forelocks, or having to defer to someone for reasons solely of the prevailing social arrangements. Hierarchy, it can be argued, is something universal, obvious. It exists as much in nature, work and family as in society as a whole. It is linked unconsciously with the order and structure of life, which is inconceivable without it. This does not mean that there have not always been struggles, exceptional cases, explosions and revolutions, but despite the fact that life has always been characterised by an incessant tension, hierarchy and role remain. And just as they existed in all cultures, so, it was believed, they existed between cultures. An Indian rajah and his family were not on the same level as someone of the lowest caste. And in Britain it was assumed that, in the modern era, the British people as a whole, due to the role they had played in the development of worldwide capitalist trade and industry, in innovation and in the advanced methods of economic, social and political life, had acquired a position which placed their culture and civilisation above those of other peoples around the globe. Nor was this unusual; at the time of the first contacts with European traders, China thought of itself as being at the pinnacle of civilisations then in existence.
Though many in those times spoke of this in terms of the achievements and endeavour of the British “race”, what was normally meant was British culture, the culture then prevailing in the British Isles (multi-variant as it was between Scots, Irish, Welsh, English and between classes and occupations). And while this culture embraced a pride in recent achievements in many areas of life, all of which contributed to what is today taken for granted as constituting modern life (with all its advantages), it has also been understood that in the longer past the position had been very different. There had, of course, been times when at the same time as much was being accomplished by other civilisations, Britain had been very far from the heartlands of innovation and advance. Awareness of this did not, however, dent the assumption that hierarchy was inherent in life. Rather the opposite.
All of this changed with the spreading of the Cold War post-1945, and the growing awareness of the challenge posed by Soviet-led Communism. In the working out of the Cold War struggle, it became realised quite rapidly that hierarchy, especially that which was assumed to exist between cultures, was not only an embarrassment, but a fatal flaw. What kind of post-war free world was it, in which indigenous peoples were being told by Britain’s rulers that they were not yet ready to take control of their own affairs? And while the United States agreed that the system of colonial control then existing in what was then the British Empire was no longer tenable, what kind of opportunities for the individual were being offered to American citizens in the United States when some black children were not being allowed to attend the same schools as white children? This is why the confrontation of Governor Faubus and President Eisenhower in 1957 over schooling in Little Rock, Arkansas (when federal forces were used to impose federal decisions on the issue of equal treatment) was much more than a local issue, and became an international marker in the world-wide Cold War political struggle. The opportunities created for Communist agitation by these situations, especially in the way they provided indicators as to the way the West thought about non-Western peoples, was obvious.
Thus it was that, as the 1950s progressed, decisions were made that, while it had long been an integral part of the generally-accepted British world-view, the assumption of hierarchy as between cultures would have to go. But, at a time when everyday social life was already beginning to be transformed by the availability of more money and credit, by new fashions, and by new more informal kinds of music and dancing, little attention was paid to of the scale of the shock that was being delivered to the people of all classes in Britain by the fairly rapid abandonment of the hierarchical principle. The essential links between hierarchy, order, structure and predictability in everyday life and the role these all played in generating and maintaining morale did not seem to be properly understood. The idea that by breaking with the essential elements of the national way of life, one may be promoting a more general disintegration of culture, appears to have been little considered. One possibility may be that the buoyancy, even excitement, that began to emerge in the mid-1950s with the evident rise in prosperity and the emergence of new cultural trends combined with the growing hope that the new world war, which had been anticipated in the difficult aftermath of 1945, was not now going to break out. The preoccupations of the general public were being shifted. A new more apparently optimistic, lighter mood was being ushered in, and serious thought about where the national culture was going became increasingly unpopular.
Was this dismantling of the existing system of cultural ideas and practices, which began its inexorable forward movement in the mid 1950s, a conscious and deliberate act? If so, who was behind it, and who would benefit? Or was it a thoughtless accident, a by-product of Cold War politics and the new opportunities being made available by economic progress? Further, what was the character of this dismantling? – who/what was going out and who/what was coming in?
Junius 2 