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I left the UK almost 20 years ago, and cannot imagine returning for any length of time. My personal take on this is the UK got so used to having an empire, and

I left the UK almost 20 years ago, and cannot imagine returning for any length of time. My personal take on this is the UK got so used to having an empire, and specifically India, which could absorb more British bureaucrats than the UK could possibly produce. Consequently when Indian independence occurred this massive pipeline of producing people for running colonies had nowhere to go, and a large number moved back to the UK. What you have now is a class of people have been trying to run the country as a colony of itself with rather predictable results. The UK has a broken culture, and until they start valuing things appropriately they will stay that way.

gadders 2y ago
We ran the empire with a lot less civil servants than we have now: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uk-government-did-we-rule-the-empire-with-4000-civil-servants/ https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uk-government-did-we-ru...
- fidotron 2y ago
  In the census in 1921 there were over 150000 British Subjects in India. Over 40000 of them were women, so we are not talking just army. In 1891 there were 238,409 with english as their mother tongue (before the census broke this out).
barry-cotter 2y ago
The Indian Civil Service was always tiny. There were so few British in India that in 1950 when the Indian government surveyed the populace to try and see if they knew the British had left they discovered the average Indian wasn’t aware there had ever been a British Empire. The British Empire in India and the British Army in India at all but the most rarefied levels were staffed by Indians and there weren’t even that many of them. > At the time of the partition of India and departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP). In 1947, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four other communities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Civil_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Civil_Service
- fidotron 2y ago
  It takes more than the civil service to run a colony. It is quite curious both you and the other replier jumped to that conclusion, and says quite a lot about the current British malaise.
  - barry-cotter 2y ago
    I’m not British, I’m just not ignorant of Indian history. At partition the entire British population of India was about 100,000 including the army, civil service, civilians and family of same. Even if you round up to 1,000 the number of ICS officers and dectuple to 10,000 you get a trivial number of returnees to the UK. The British Army in India returning would have had nugatory impact considering the British had just fought WW2. Leaving India was bad for the British upper classes because there were fewer jobs as officers that would keep a man in the store to which he had become accustomed on salary in the army. The ICS was less important than that in terms of numbers and its peak social impact was as an inspiration for the British civil service. The ICS is the only organisation in British India that might plausibly have had a large impact on the culture of the British civil service and it was too small to have had an impact by numbers alone as you originally posited.
    - fidotron 2y ago
      > Even if you round up to 1,000 the number of ICS officers and dectuple to 10,000 you get a trivial number of returnees to the UK. Why are we obsessed with restricting discussion to ICS? The bureaucracy is not just that, but extends throughout the entire service sector these people rely on, such as banking, schooling, transportation, manufacturing management and so on. There is real denial going on here as to the extent of what happened.
      - barry-cotter 2y ago
        > Why are we obsessed with restricting discussion to ICS? The bureaucracy is not just that, but extends throughout the entire service sector these people rely on, such as banking, schooling, transportation, manufacturing management and There is no plausible mechanism by which these people could have effected a radical change in the general British culture or the culture of the British civil service. The culture of the British in India was an expatriate one, not one of colonial settlement or intermarriage (certainly not after 1900). They weren’t different enough from the British population to have any noticeable effect even though in class composition the civilian element was elevated in education and social class compared to the general population. The pied noirs in Algeria were settlers and they were distinctly different in terms of ethnic composition, being disproportionately Spanish, Maltese and Italian in ancestry compared to French from l’Hexagone and it’s still a matter of debate if their descendants are noticeably different from other French. The British in India were just that. Not a lot more culturally influential in the home country than the British in the UAE. As of 2015 there were A quarter of the million Britons in the UAE. That’s more than twice as many people from Britain in a petrostate then were ever in India.
pjc50 2y ago
I don't think this is about the number of civil servants so much as the attitude of running everything from the Imperial core. Becomes apparent when you ask questions like "now that there is a Scottish Parliament, what exactly does the Scotland Office do?". There's no California Office in the American government, no Jura office in the Swiss government, because those are federal systems with a clear division of power across different levels. See also terrible attitudes to local government. Part of London's recovery is getting its own governance back after the abolition of the GLC. Ihe Assembly is also slowly imposing sensible ideas like Regent Street pedestrianisation on London's councils. Andy Burnham is doing great as mayor of Manchester.
- chaostheory 2y ago
  The power dynamic is apparent when you have to refer to provinces as “countries”.

gadders 2y ago

We ran the empire with a lot less civil servants than we have now: https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uk-government-did-we-rule-the-empire-with-4000-civil-servants/ https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uk-government-did-we-ru...

fidotron 2y ago
In the census in 1921 there were over 150000 British Subjects in India. Over 40000 of them were women, so we are not talking just army. In 1891 there were 238,409 with english as their mother tongue (before the census broke this out).

barry-cotter 2y ago

The Indian Civil Service was always tiny. There were so few British in India that in 1950 when the Indian government surveyed the populace to try and see if they knew the British had left they discovered the average Indian wasn’t aware there had ever been a British Empire. The British Empire in India and the British Army in India at all but the most rarefied levels were staffed by Indians and there weren’t even that many of them. > At the time of the partition of India and departure of the British, in 1947, the Indian Civil Service was divided between the new Dominions of India and Pakistan. The part which went to India was named the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), while the part that went to Pakistan was named the "Civil Service of Pakistan" (CSP). In 1947, there were 980 ICS officers. 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four other communities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Civil_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Civil_Service

fidotron 2y ago
It takes more than the civil service to run a colony. It is quite curious both you and the other replier jumped to that conclusion, and says quite a lot about the current British malaise.
- barry-cotter 2y ago
  I’m not British, I’m just not ignorant of Indian history. At partition the entire British population of India was about 100,000 including the army, civil service, civilians and family of same. Even if you round up to 1,000 the number of ICS officers and dectuple to 10,000 you get a trivial number of returnees to the UK. The British Army in India returning would have had nugatory impact considering the British had just fought WW2. Leaving India was bad for the British upper classes because there were fewer jobs as officers that would keep a man in the store to which he had become accustomed on salary in the army. The ICS was less important than that in terms of numbers and its peak social impact was as an inspiration for the British civil service. The ICS is the only organisation in British India that might plausibly have had a large impact on the culture of the British civil service and it was too small to have had an impact by numbers alone as you originally posited.
  - fidotron 2y ago
    > Even if you round up to 1,000 the number of ICS officers and dectuple to 10,000 you get a trivial number of returnees to the UK. Why are we obsessed with restricting discussion to ICS? The bureaucracy is not just that, but extends throughout the entire service sector these people rely on, such as banking, schooling, transportation, manufacturing management and so on. There is real denial going on here as to the extent of what happened.
    - barry-cotter 2y ago
      > Why are we obsessed with restricting discussion to ICS? The bureaucracy is not just that, but extends throughout the entire service sector these people rely on, such as banking, schooling, transportation, manufacturing management and There is no plausible mechanism by which these people could have effected a radical change in the general British culture or the culture of the British civil service. The culture of the British in India was an expatriate one, not one of colonial settlement or intermarriage (certainly not after 1900). They weren’t different enough from the British population to have any noticeable effect even though in class composition the civilian element was elevated in education and social class compared to the general population. The pied noirs in Algeria were settlers and they were distinctly different in terms of ethnic composition, being disproportionately Spanish, Maltese and Italian in ancestry compared to French from l’Hexagone and it’s still a matter of debate if their descendants are noticeably different from other French. The British in India were just that. Not a lot more culturally influential in the home country than the British in the UAE. As of 2015 there were A quarter of the million Britons in the UAE. That’s more than twice as many people from Britain in a petrostate then were ever in India.

pjc50 2y ago

I don't think this is about the number of civil servants so much as the attitude of running everything from the Imperial core. Becomes apparent when you ask questions like "now that there is a Scottish Parliament, what exactly does the Scotland Office do?". There's no California Office in the American government, no Jura office in the Swiss government, because those are federal systems with a clear division of power across different levels. See also terrible attitudes to local government. Part of London's recovery is getting its own governance back after the abolition of the GLC. Ihe Assembly is also slowly imposing sensible ideas like Regent Street pedestrianisation on London's councils. Andy Burnham is doing great as mayor of Manchester.

chaostheory 2y ago
The power dynamic is apparent when you have to refer to provinces as “countries”.