David Cameron found himself in hot water when, on his visit to the United States he said that Britain was a ‘junior partner’ to the United States in 1940. That was the year of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the start of the Blitz; the year when Churchill became Prime Minister. It was, above all, the year when Britain stood alone, for neither Russia nor America joined the war until 1941.
Interviewed this week on BBC radio 4’s Today programme, Cameron acknowledged his slip – he had meant to say ‘the 1940s’ – and went on to say that 1940 ‘was the proudest year in Britain’s history’.
Do the public agree? We offered ten years in the past 800 and asked people to say which of them they regarded as our proudest year. Five were moments of military conflict – Agincourt (1415), the Armada (1588), Waterloo (1815), 1940 and the Falklands War (1982).
The other five were years of social or democratic advance: The Magna Carta (1215), Bill of Rights (1689), Abolition of Slavery (1833), women getting the vote on the same terms as men (1928) and birth of the National Health Service (1948).
We also offered people the chance to nominate a completely different date, but only 2% did so.
The individual winner, with 29% support was, indeed, 1940. It was the runaway winner among Conservatives (39%), men (38%) and middle class electors (32%). Second came the year the NHS was founded, with 24%, but this was the first choice among Labour voters (42%), Liberal Democrats (33%), women (23%) and working class electors (30%).
The only other two dates to score more than 10% among the general public were the years when slavery was finally abolished (13%) and women gained the vote on equal terms with men (12%).
Perhaps the more striking finding is the way people divided between ‘military’ and ‘social’ years.
Here are the main findings:
| Social (%) | Military (%) | |
|---|---|---|
Women | 65 | 23 |
Labour supporters | 63 | 29 |
Liberal Democrats | 62 | 29 |
Over 60s | 62 | 32 |
Working class | 56 | 33 |
All | 53 | 35 |
Middle class | 51 | 38 |
Under 60s | 50 | 36 |
Men | 40 | 47 |
Conservatives | 38 | 50 |
As those figures show there is a big gender gap, and a big political gap: Tory voters are different not only from Labour voters, but also different from supporters of their Lib Dem partners. But the big picture is that, as a nation, we are more likely to think of the glories of Britain’s past more through the prism of social and democratic advance than military achievement.
