United Kingdom

I

Arts Organization

Some 650 professional arts festivals are held in Britain each year, attracting more than four million visitors. Apart from the Edinburgh Festival and the Mayfest, there are important general arts festivals in Belfast, Brighton, Buxton, Chichester, Harrogate, Llangollen, Malvern, Pitlochry, Salisbury, and York. Festivals focusing on music include the Three Choirs Festival, the Cheltenham Festival, and the Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Benjamin Britten and the English tenor Sir Peter Pears. Many towns hold their own festivals, supported by local amateur performers. Amateur interest in the performing arts is enormous in Britain. More than six million people regularly take part in dance, and there are many thousands of amateur dramatic and operatic societies, choirs, and musical groupings of all kinds including orchestras; dance, brass, and steel bands; and folk, rock, and jazz groups.

For more information on the performing arts see: Church Music; Drama and Dramatic Arts; Early Music; English National Opera; Royal Academy of Music; Royal College of Music; Scottish Opera.

Although the arts in Britain have had to become increasingly commercially minded since the 1980s, raising revenue in a variety of ways, including business sponsorship, public subsidy is still vital to their existence. The main channels of government aid to the arts are the independent arts councils. Separate councils for England, Scotland, and Wales replaced the unitary British Arts Council in 1994. Northern Ireland has its own independent arts council.

The Arts Council of England operates mainly through ten regional arts boards. The four councils provide financial help to major opera, dance, and drama companies; to touring theatres and experimental groups; and to orchestras and festivals. The councils also support training schemes and help professional creative writers, choreographers, composers, artists, and photographers. Much of their funding is done in partnership with local authorities, who are the other source of public finance for the arts. Additional funds are provided through the Foundation for Sport and Arts, set up in 1991 to distribute a percentage of the profits of the football pools; one third goes to the arts, the rest benefits sports. Another important source of revenue is the National Lottery, which came into operation in November 1994. The arts, including film and crafts, receive one fifth of the net proceeds of the lottery.

IV

Economy

The United Kingdom is one of the world’s leading commercial and industrialized nations. In terms of gross national product (GNP) it ranks fifth in the world, after the United States, Japan, Germany, and France. In 2004 Britain’s GNP was about US$2,013 billion, equivalent to US$40,560 per capita. In 2007 gross domestic product (GDP; market prices) was about US$2,772 billion (approximately £865 billion). Major industries, such as transport, communications, steel, petroleum, coal, gas, and electricity, which had been nationalized by Labour governments, were sold to private investors by the Conservative government in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s.

Britain has made great achievements in science, invention, and technology and has a long research tradition. The Nobel Prize has been won by more than 70 British scientists. In the 20th century, contributions included, among many others, the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA (1953) and subsequent breakthroughs in medicine and genetics (such as gene therapy, computerized tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and in vitro fertilization—the world’s first “test-tube” baby). British scientists have also advanced the fields of astrophysics and superconductivity (extremely high electrical conductivity at low temperatures).

In January 1973 Britain became a member of the European Community (EC; now the EU). Since the end of World War II several economic problems have persisted, such as pressure on the currency, a deficit on the overall balance of payments, inflation, and until recently industrial inefficiency. During the 1974 world recession these problems became more critical: unemployment rose to more than one million, productivity declined, wages soared, and the currency sank to record lows. In July 1975 the government introduced stringent anti-inflation measures that were supported by both business and the trade unions, and were regarded as largely successful in holding down wage increases and dampening inflation. Major improvements in the balance of payments occurred in the late 1970s because of the revenues from North Sea oil.

Since 1979 government economic policies have encouraged the private sector while curbing government spending and services. Under the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s the maintenance of low inflation was the government’s priority, but at the cost of historically high unemployment levels. The Labour government elected in 1997 sought to continue the low-inflation policy. Unemployment levels exceeded 3.5 million in the mid-1980s but were about 1.65 million by April 2007 (the unemployment rate being 5.2 per cent), and by the turn of the century had dropped to under 1 million, the lowest figure for 25 years. The annual national budget deficit in 2007 was equivalent to about 3.22 per cent of GDP.

In the late 1990s a major economic policy question for Britain was the terms on which it participates in the financial and economic integration of Europe. In particular, the United Kingdom will have to decide if and when it will join the single European currency—the Euro.

A

Agriculture

About 77 per cent of the land area of Britain is under agricultural use of some sort. However, the sector’s role in the economy is much smaller than in most other major industrialized countries, in terms of employment and contribution to GDP, reflecting Britain’s early industrialization. Agriculture employs around 1 per cent of the population and contributed 0.9 per cent of GDP in 2007. However, it achieves high levels of efficiency and productivity. Britain is self-sufficient in 60 per cent of all types of food and animal feed.

Large parts of Britain, notably in Scotland and Wales, are suitable only for grazing. Overall, in the second half of the 1990s about 48 per cent of agricultural land was under pasture, another 27 per cent under rough grazing, and the remainder under crops or lying fallow. There were around 244,000 farm holdings, 75 per cent of them owner-occupied, with an average size of just over 70 hectares (173 acres). However, some 44 per cent of farms were considered to be of the minimum size to provide a full-time living, or smaller (see Smallholding).

Over half of all full-time farms are devoted to dairy- or beef-farming, or sheep. Britain in 2007 had an estimated 9.99 million cattle, 33.6 million sheep, 4.88 million pigs, and almost 164 million poultry. Cattle and sheep contribute more than 40 per cent of the value of gross agricultural output.

An outbreak of swine fever in Britain led to the slaughter of about 12,000 pigs and the isolation of farms in August 2000. It was the country’s first outbreak in 14 years. Far more serious to the farming industry was the outbreak in February 2001 of foot-and-mouth disease, the first outbreak since 1967. The North-West of England, Devon, and the Scottish Borders were particularly badly affected. At the end of September 2001 the number of confirmed cases stood at over 2,000, which had led to the slaughter, and then burial or burning, of almost 4 million animals.

The treatment of farm animals is of growing concern in Britain. Opposition by a section of the public to factory farming of chickens for eggs and meat is long-standing. However, during 1995 there were major protests at a number of English ports over the export of calves to continental Europe for veal production. In 1996 increasing concern over the possible links between bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the British beef herd and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in human beings who may have eaten infected beef products led to the temporary collapse of consumer confidence in the safety of British beef and an EU ban on the export of cattle products. Sales of beef in British supermarkets revived in 1997.

Arable farming is concentrated mainly in eastern and south-central England and in eastern Scotland. The main crops (2007 production, tonnes) grown are: wheat (13.4 million), sugar beet (7 million), barley (5 million), potatoes (5.63 million), and oilseed (1.92 million). There is also a significant horticultural industry producing a variety of vegetables, orchard and soft fruits, and bulbs and flowers.

The high productivity of the arable sector—one of the most efficient in Europe—has been achieved by the removal of hedgerows to create larger fields, by mechanization, and by the intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides. As with the issue of animal treatment, these trends in arable agriculture have provoked public concern. Combined, these concerns have helped encourage the rapid growth of vegetarianism in Britain since the early 1980s and the expansion of organic farming, although this is still on a very small scale. However, partly in reaction to these concerns, and partly because of costs, the trend is now towards lower chemical use in farming.

B

Agricultural Policy

Agricultural policy in the United Kingdom since 1973 has been determined primarily by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the EU, which aims to ensure stable markets, a fair standard of living for producers, and regular supplies of food at reasonable prices for consumers. The costs to EU taxpayers of the CAP, which accounts for more than 50 per cent of the EU’s budget, and the mechanisms of maintaining farm prices through grants and subsidies, and through tariffs on cheaper imports, have come under increasing criticism since the early 1980s by Britain, by developing countries, and by the United States.

Various reforms have been implemented in an attempt to reduce costs, subsidies, and the huge levels of overproduction that generated “butter mountains” and “wine lakes” during the 1970s and 1980s. These have included schemes to encourage farmers to take land out of agricultural production, to adopt more environmentally kind, but less productive methods of farming, to impose production quotas on certain products, like milk, and to reduce subsidies for the production of others.

In Britain agricultural marketing is carried out by private traders, producers’ cooperatives, and marketing boards for certain products. The number of marketing boards has been steadily reduced over the past 20 years. In November 1994 one of the largest, the Milk Marketing Board for England and Wales, ceased to exist and was replaced by a producers’ cooperative, Milk Marque.

Britain’s food industry is one of the world’s largest (per capita) and most successful, with a highly developed retail, supply, and distribution network. Its supermarket chains (now known as food giants) supply an ever-increasing choice of food products to the British consumer and are among Europe’s most profitable companies.

C

Forestry

The approximately 3 million hectares (7 million acres) of woodlands in Britain cover about 7 per cent of England, 15 per cent of Scotland, 12 per cent of Wales, and 5 per cent of Northern Ireland. The most common trees are oak, beech, ash, and elm. Pine and birch predominate in Scotland. Production of roundwood totalled about 9.02 million cu m (318 million cu ft) in 1994. Sawnwood production in 2007 came to approximately 3.15 million cu m (111 million cu ft). The Forestry Commission began a reforestation programme in the 1950s, under which approximately 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) were replanted annually, mostly in Scotland.

Private owners, who hold 62 per cent of the total forestlands, have been encouraged to replant some 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) each year. New plantings in 1994 totalled 17,300 hectares (42,749 acres), of which private owners accounted for almost 92 per cent (15,900 hectares/39,290 acres). The reforestation of an additional 65,000 hectares (160,000 acres) in Northern Ireland is also planned. Despite these efforts, however, Britain still imports more than 85 per cent of its timber.