Préparation
agrégation anglais civilisation britannique 22
Le Royaume
Uni à l’épreuve de la crise 1970-1979
I will be
giving a series of lectures on this subject beginning early November. Budgets being
what they are, and the agrégation programme having several important components
(literature, linguistics, civilization etc.), there will be 15 hours of lectures.
This is not a lot, and that is one of the main reasons I am regularly
recommending documentaries and books, so that when I begin the lectures my
students will not be starting from scratch.
Today’s
documentary is an interview with a politician. Thirty five year old interviews with
politicians may not be the most exciting programmes on earth, but important
subjects are covered here. The interview takes place in 1980, with one of
Margaret Thatcher’s ministers, Geoffrey Howe, Chancellor of the Exchequer at
the time. He is defending the record of his government, only one year into
their term of office, and quite naturally, in order to do so, he criticizes the
choices which were made by the previous Labour government from 1974- 79, and
even the policies of Edward Heath from 1970- 74 (since Heath’s conservatism had
a notably different emphasis from that of Thatcher).
Listen to
what he has to say about taxes, about wage rises, about public spending and
about the role of the state in general. His critics at the time were
particularly unhappy with the « tax switch » which meant that less
government money came from income tax and more from VAT on goods which were
bought and sold. This switch has important social repercussions : poorer
people do not pay income tax, whereas everybody pays VAT on what they buy. This
means that the tax switch was unfavourable to the poorer sections of society. Public
spending cuts, too, are more of a problem for poorer levels of society than
they are for wealthier ones. Geoffrey Howe’s argument, as you will see, was
that there was no alternative, and that the increased income for businesses
would encourage them to grow, which should create jobs and prosperity.
You will
also notice in the interview that trade union organization remains very
powerful at this time.
The video is here
If, like me, you are overworked, use an online tool like clipconverter to make the videos into MP3 files you can listen to while cleaning the bathroom.
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