Land and People

England, the largest and most populous portion of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1991 pop. 46,382,050), 50,334 sq mi (130,365 sq km). It is bounded by Wales and the Irish Sea on the west and Scotland on the north. The English Channel, the Strait of Dover, and the North Sea separate it from the continent of Europe. The Isle of Wight, off the southern mainland in the English Channel, and the Scilly Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the southwestern tip of the mainland, are considered part of England. London, the capital of Great Britain, is located in the southeastern portion of England. The Thames and the Severn are the longest rivers.
Behind the white chalk cliffs of the southern coast lie the gently rolling downs and wide plains stretching to the Chiltern Hills and the Cotswold Hills. Along the east coast are the lowlands of Norfolk, reaching up to the Fens, formerly marshy country that has been drained, lining The Wash, an inlet of the North Sea. In the east and southeast, river estuaries lead to some of England's great commercial and industrial centers: London, on the Thames; Hull, on the Humber; Middlesbrough and Stockon-on-Tees, on the Tees; and Newcastle upon Tyne, on the Tyne. The north of England, above the Humber, is mountainous; the chief highlands are the Cumbrian Mts. in the northwest and the Pennines, which run north-south in N central England. The famous Lake District, in the Cumbrians, has England's highest points. The center of England, the Midlands, is a large plain, interrupted and bordered by hills. In the Midlands are the industrial centers of Birmingham and the Black Country. The Midlands, especially its northern edge, was formerly a great coal-mining region. On the Lancashire plain is the great city of Manchester, the center of the English textile industry. Durham and W Yorkshire are also highly industrialized, but E Yorkshire is an area of bleak moors and wolds, and the upper reaches of Northumberland are sparsely populated. In the west and southwest the border with Wales and the peninsula of Devonshire and Cornwall have a hilly, upland terrain. The main ports in the west are Bristol, on the Avon (which flows into Bristol Channel), and Liverpool, on the Mersey. In southern England, the main ports are London, Southampton, and Plymouth.
Despite its northerly latitudes (London is on the same parallel as the easterly tip of Labrador), England has a mild climate, attributable to warm currents in the surrounding seas. Most of the region is subject to much wet weather, and some of it experiences severe cold, but in general the climate is favorable to a wide variety of agricultural and industrial pursuits.
England has 34 administrative counties: Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Sussex, Wiltshire, and Worcestershire. The counties are divided into districts. Herefordshire and the Isle of Wight have abandoned the two-tier county council–district council structure for a single-tier unitary council. The counties of Avon, Berkshire, Cleveland, and Humberside were dissolved in the late 1990s into smaller unitary authorities; these and other areas that were administratively part of the remaining counties are now independent local governing authorities.
From 1974 to 1986 there were also seven metropolitan counties: Greater London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands, and West Yorkshire; the administrative districts that comprised these counties are now responsible for most local government functions. Greater London consists of the City of London and 32 boroughs and, unlike the other former metropolitan counties, has an elected mayor and assembly.
The 39 so-called ancient or geographical counties of England (Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Rutland, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire) typically differ in area from the existing counties even when they share a name with a modern county. Some ancient counties (Sussex and Yorkshire) have been divided into separate counties or counties and districts, while others (Berkshire, Cumberland, Huntingdonshire, Middlesex, Rutland, and Westmorland) have seen their names disappear entirely from among the administrative counties.

Government and politics

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, with executive power exercised on behalf of the monarch by the prime minister and other cabinet ministers who head departments. The cabinet, including the prime minister, and other ministers collectively make up Her Majesty's Government. These ministers are drawn from and are responsible to Parliament, the legislative body, which is traditionally considered to be "supreme" (that is, able to legislate on any matter and not bound by decisions of its predecessors). The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the world today that does not have a codified constitution, relying instead on traditional customs and separate pieces of constitutional law.
While the monarch is head of state and theoretically holds all executive power, it is the prime minister who is the head of government. The government is answerable chiefly to the House of Commons, from which constitutional convention requires that the prime minister be drawn. The majority of cabinet members are from the House of Commons, the rest from the House of Lords. Ministers do not, however, legally have to come from Parliament, though that is the modern day custom. The British system of government has been emulated around the world — a legacy of the British Empire's colonial past — most notably in the other Commonwealth Realms. The Member of Parliament (MP) who commands a majority in the House of Commons is normally appointed prime minister - usually the leader of the largest party or, if there is no majority party, the largest coalition. The current prime minister is Tony Blair of the Labour Party, who has been in office since 1997.

Economy

The British economy follows the Anglo-Saxon model, focusing on the principles of liberalisation, the free market, and low taxation and regulation. Based on market exchange rates, the United Kingdom is the fifth largest economy in the world; [54], the second largest in Europe after Germany, and the sixth-largest overall by purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates.
The British were the first in the world to enter the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrialising countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century. However, as other nations industrialised and surplus labour from agriculture began to dry up, the United Kingdom started to lose its economic advantage. As a result, heavy industry declined throughout the 20th century. The British service sector, however, has grown substantially, and now makes up about 73% of GDP. [55]
The service sector of the United Kingdom is dominated by financial services, especially in banking and insurance. London is one of the world's largest financial centres with the London Stock Exchange, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, and the Lloyd's of London insurance market all based in the city. It also has the largest concentration of foreign bank branches in the world. In the past decade, a rival financial centre in London has grown in the Docklands area, with HSBC, Citigroup, and Barclays Bank all relocating their head offices there. The Scottish capital, Edinburgh also has a large financial sector, the sixth largest in Europe [56].
Tourism is very important to the British economy. With over 27 million tourists a year, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world. [57]
The British manufacturing sector, however, has greatly diminished since World War II. It is still a significant part of the economy, but only accounted for one-sixth of national output in 2003.[58]. The British motor industry is a significant part of this sector, although all large-volume producers are now foreign-owned. Civil and defence aircraft production is led by the United Kingdom's largest aerospace firm, BAE Systems, and the pan-European consortium known as Airbus. Rolls-Royce holds a major share of the global aerospace engines market. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry is also strong in the UK, with the world's second and third largest pharmaceutical firms (GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, respectively) being based in the UK. [citation needed]
The United Kingdom's agriculture sector is small by European standards, accounting for only 0.9% of GDP. [citation needed] The UK though has large coal, natural gas, and oil reserves. Primary energy production accounts for about 10% of Gross domestic product (GDP), [citation needed] one of the highest shares of any industrial state.
The currency of the UK is pound sterling, represented by the symbol £. The Bank of England is the central bank and is responsible for issuing currency, although 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 the issue. The UK chose not to join the Euro on the currency's launch, although the government has pledged to hold a public referendum for deciding membership if "five economic tests" are met. [12] Currently UK public opinion is against the notion. [59]
Government involvement over the economy is exercised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (currently Gordon Brown) who heads HM Treasury, but the Prime Minister (currently Tony Blair), is First Lord of the Treasury (the Chancellor of the Exchequer being the Second Lord of the Treasury). However since 1997, the Bank of England, headed by the Governor of the Bank of England, has control of interest rates and other monetary policy.

History

The present United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the latest of several unions formed over the last 840 years. The Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England had existed as separate states with their own monarchs and political structures since the 9th century. The once independent Principality of Wales fell under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, becoming itself part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Act 1535. [5] With the Act of Union 1707, the independent states of England and Scotland, having been in personal union since 1603, agreed to a political union as the Kingdom of Great Britain. [6]
The Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1541 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. [7] Independence for the now Republic of Ireland in 1922 followed the partition of the island of Ireland two years previously, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927.
The dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, the United Kingdom is often credited with being the nation that "created the modern world", [9] by playing a leading role in developing Western ideas of property, capitalism, and parliamentary democracy as well as making significant contributions to literature, the arts, and science and technology. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one-quarter of the Earth's surface and encompassed a third of its population, making it the largest empire in history. The first half of the 20th century, however, saw the Empire's strength seriously depleted from the effects of World War I and World War II. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and the United Kingdom rebuilding itself into the modern, prosperous, and technologically advanced nation it is today.
The United Kingdom has been a member of the European Union since 1973. The attitude of the present government towards further integration with this organisation is mixed [10], with the Conservative Party favouring a return of some powers and competencies to the state [11]. The government has yet to choose whether to adopt the Euro currency. Plans are to hold a referendum on the issue if and when five economic tests indicate that entry into the Eurozone would be beneficial. [12]