Your most significant moment in British History

[C C Csiders]

You choose.

If other - explain. No football or sex related moments, please!::finger:

 

[Uncle Leo]

Excellent poll, tough call. I plumped for WWII as (with a little help from our friends) we fought off a fascist dictator. Had the Allies lost the war, who knows what sort of world we'd be in now. Not a nice one I imagine. Unless you're German.

 

[Napster]

Magna Carta. Nothing else comes close

 

[canveyshrimper]

I opted for the Civil War, as more than anything it shaped our (and numerous other) Parliament, and removed the rule of an absolute monarch.

 

[londonblue]

Sorry guys, it's got to be the Civil War. How many countries have had a civil war that kept their monarchy? In the end we came to a very English compromise, where the people got to rule and the monarch stayed as head of state with a payment every year to compensate for the lack of tax revenue.

We showed the world how very civilised we are.

 

[Mad Cyril]

Sorry guys, it's got to be the Civil War. How many countries have had a civil war that kept their monarchy? In the end we came to a very English compromise, where the people got to rule and the monarch stayed as head of state with a payment every year to compensate for the lack of tax revenue.

We showed the world how very civilised we are.

The French and the Russians had the right idea.

 

[Slipperduke]

I'd have to go for World War Two as well. Threatened with invasion and deserted by America, it was squeaky bottom time and no mistake.

 

[Mad Cyril]

Magna Carta. Nothing else comes close

What about John Major's Citizens Charter?

 

[londonblue]

I'd have to go for World War Two as well. Threatened with invasion and deserted by America, it was squeaky bottom time and no mistake.

As much as I think this country should be immensely proud of it's achievements during the second world war we should also realise it was WW2 that made America the superpower we once were. They managed this by staying out of the war and selling/loaning us all the equipment we needed.

I think it was last year we finally finished paying the US for the loans during the war. So however fantastic we were, it was WW2 that made us the US's puppet.

Go to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum in London (I did a few weeks ago) and you will get to hear over and over again Churchill's mantra of victory at all costs. That cost probably lasted longer than he expected!

However, I would rather have victory at all costs than the alternative.

 

[Firestorm]

Either the turning away of the Spanish Armada, Spanish occupation at that time in our history would have seriously changed Britain.
or The Roman Invasion and subsequent occupation

or possibly the Anglican Glaciation during the pleistocene epoch (500,000 years ago )

 

[Up the Shrimpers]

The 'Big Bang' approx 10 billion years ago was fairly important.

 

[EastStandBlue]

I'd have to go with WWII aswell...

We came extremely close to invasion and, far from bending over for a facsist dictator a la France, we fought for our freedom and successfully eliminated arguably the worst ever Tyrant the right way. Take note America and your War against Terror.

It goes without saying, had Hitler invaded these shores and Russia, the World would be an extremely different place...

 

[Xàbia Shrimper]

The Roman influence.

 

[Up the Shrimpers]

The Roman influence.

The Romans whatever have they done for us...................

 

[Slipperduke]

As much as I think this country should be immensely proud of it's achievements during the second world war we should also realise it was WW2 that made America the superpower we once were. They managed this by staying out of the war and selling/loaning us all the equipment we needed.

I think it was last year we finally finished paying the US for the loans during the war. So however fantastic we were, it was WW2 that made us the US's puppet.

Go to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum in London (I did a few weeks ago) and you will get to hear over and over again Churchill's mantra of victory at all costs. That cost probably lasted longer than he expected!

However, I would rather have victory at all costs than the alternative.

I think that's a very good point, the war was the making and the breaking of Britain on many levels.

However, the fact that we could have been wiped off the map as a nation, rather than just as a Premier League political force, swings it for me.

 

[canveyshrimper]

I'd have to go with WWII aswell...

We came extremely close to invasion and, far from bending over for a facsist dictator a la France, we fought for our freedom and successfully eliminated arguably the worst ever Tyrant the right way. Take note America and your War against Terror.

It goes without saying, had Hitler invaded these shores and Russia, the World would be an extremely different place...

The point about tyrants is purely subjective, you can name a whole litany of them, Napoleon, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, numerous Russian Czars & Czarinas, and various other tin pot dictators who have attempted genocide on a grand scale.

In defence of France they did not bend over to a fascist dictator, they were invaded and subdued by a superior military force. Hitler did invade Russia, and like Napoleon found it unconquerable, due mainly to it's vast size, inexhaustible supplies of cannon fodder forces that Stalin could through at the Germans, and finally the weather.

To take up earlier points about the USA's position at the outset of WWII, Roosevelt wanted to back Britain as far as he possibly could without taking a military option. Hence Lend / Lease. But what Roosevelt also wanted was British interest in the Pacific to be diminished, which was deemed a better sphere of influence for the US. Ultimately this was achieved after the war, the point remains and will never be answered is what would have happened if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's amazing decision to declare war on the US soon after. The rest as they say is history.

 

[C C Csiders]

, Pol Pot

Didn't he win Britain's Got Talent last night?

 

[Wessex]

Norman conquest, England went from being an independent nordic / teutonic country to an occupied state under french rule almost overnight.

The English became a persecuted majority in their own land for a couple of centuries. A nation with highly developed laws and rights disappeared overnight to be replaced by a feudal society.

One legacy is that we're still ruled by many of their descendants as much of the aristocracy can still trace their roots back to the conquerors.

The Normans had a massive influence in shaping this country but for our Saxon ancestors they were a catastrophe.

 

[Up the Shrimpers]

Didn't he win Britain's Got Talent last night?

I though that young girl that made everyone cry, was going to win it?

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

I see that WWII is currently in the lead. Having given this matter further thought, I'm tempted to agree. Nothing to do with the threat of being invaded by Hitler, nor even the very valid point about it making the US the super power.

WWII's greatest impact was socially. Other than WWI (which I'd bracket it alongside) no other event has seen so many people mobilised than the two world wars. Both wars touched upon the lives of everyone involved and subsequently shaped the rest of the century. The amount of social change that can be traced back to those two wars is staggering.

The only other event to rival it would be the industrial revolution. But this loses marks as it has yet to make an impact in places like Colchester.