White heat ― at last

摘要

For fifty years, British governments have sought to reverse the actual and perceived decline of the nation's relative economic and political clout. The decline ― which economic historians date from the zenith of British imperial power at around 1870 ― has frequently been attributed to a deep-seated, almost cultural, national aversion to science and technology. This malaise was articulated most forcefully and famously by C. P. Snow, who in 1959 described the "two cultures" in Britain of the scientist and non-scientist, and argued persuasively that the latter always had the upper hand. Snow's diagnosis was accepted by, among others, Harold Wilson, a technocrat who was elected as Labour prime minister after pledging to forge a new Britain in the "white heat" of scientific and technological revolution. But Wilson's four governments, like others before and since, were unable or unwilling to get a real handle on the issue of science and innovation. In a country torn by economic and political crises, as Britain was for much of the time from the 1960s to the 1980s, prime ministers and chancellors had other fish to fry. Economic solvency and industrial peace were always their elusive goals; modernization of the science base would have to wait.