UK joins the US in the 1960s

[Peg Leg Pom]

On the NHS, how many continental American citizens would get on a plane to Britain when they can't afford their medical bills in their own states? Will Britain soon be swamped with America's Elderly, Sick, Lame and Lazy taking advantage of the Welfare State?

 

[Infinite-Monkeys]

On the NHS, how many continental American citizens would get on a plane to Britain when they can't afford their medical bills in their own states? Will Britain soon be swamped with America's Elderly, Sick, Lame and Lazy taking advantage of the Welfare State?

I assume the British states would just put a residency requirement on it (e.g must either have been born in the state and under 18, or resident in the state X period of time possibly while also working if not born in the state), while I don't believe this was the case in the 1960s after all by today we have people using the NHS who are being charged (e.g. tourists), so it's reasonably simple to set up; and would be an obvious issue so I expect a hole that gets patched before the actual merging.

Longer term could also have a system to let people pay in if they've just moved to me to get access to it (again not dissimilar to some of the rules for current immigration)

I think the bigger headache is probably actually about coordination between British states my guess is there'd be a interim agreement that the health services of the different states would allow each other's residents to use theirs particularly given how close everything is, but as some states do better than others from the separation and have different political management I expect there state health services are going to rapidly shift in quality and provision, so would not be surprised when the interim deal comes to an end that one of the first times you have a really bad disagreement between two British states is when ones told their residents are no longer welcome in the others health care system.

I suspect this is the resolution for most of the British welfare system and is already the case of a decent chunk of it e.g. accessing a council house you already have to show a connection to the local area so it's very simple to create residency requirements (this would of course mean that people from the United States could move and get access to the welfare system eventually but that's very much working as designed in a federal union, depending on what happened between the UK and the US this could lead to some interesting population movement over time but movement that would be manageable/at least cost neutral)

 

[TimTurner]

I think a lot of folk are both really drastically underestimating the demographic impact/scale of the UK joining the US, and the political implications of US absorbing the decaying British Empire

if this is all in the 1960s

in 1960 the population of the United Kingdom is 52 million, in the US it’s 179m, so were looking at about 30% increase in the US population in one go (and possibly more given the Empire). This isn’t on a par with Hawaii joining and won’t be a matter of adding a couple of states you’d see a virtual constitutional convention for how to handle this.

I personally suspect with a vaguely recognisable history this is ASB, so leaving the precise how aside it appears to be voluntary (the Prime Minister is requesting it), and this is a vaguely recognisable post-war timeline (given who is PM), so based on that I’d assume a negotiated entry where both the UK and the US is firmly on board, and in order to adapt to this massive endeavour there sufficient goodwill to make required constitutional amendments where needed.

Looking at some of the more interesting things (this grew in the telling…)

number of states

while the US states are not of equal size they can these run on a broad spectrum, New York has the highest population in 1960 at about 17 million, the population of England in 1961 (closest I could find) is 43 million! Admitting England as a single state in anything but a scenario where the US has conquered it by force seems grossly unfair and unlikely.

Scotland is a bit of a no-brainer, it has got a history of its own governance (although at this point in history no actual Parliament), a separate culture clearly defined borders and is the second largest component of the UK (about 5m) so I’d agree that is a state

Now I will admit coming into this I also assumed Wales and Northern Ireland were going to be way too small to realistically be comparable to US states but looking at the 1960 census I’m amazed how small the population of some US states were at the time (16 states with a population of under a million), so while dwarfed by England Wales 2.6 million makes sense as a possibility. I wouldn’t say it’s guaranteed Wales had no history of self-governance, an Welsh nationalism was a much smaller deal than it is today, and is very poor on its own.

I don’t think Northern Ireland would become a state instead I suspect would end up in some sort of territory with a plan to long term resolve the question with Ireland about its sovereignty given both the British ambiguity about what to do with it and the strong interest in Irish nationalism in the USA.

Taking all this into account there would be a lot of horsetrading and I suspect this is the biggest dispute in the ascension talks and it can easily come out lots of different ways but my guess for the core islands is the most likely scenario would be something along the lines of the uk get around 6 states (which is also I’d say about the midpoint in arguable numbers with anything from about 1 to 15 arguable depending on how you do it), this puts the average population of these States very much on the higher end of their equivalent states in the United States, make the UK entry substantial in number of senators but not overwhelming. As for approximate borders my best guess is something like this

• Scotland
• Northumbria (Northern England, economically and culturally reasonably similar decent chunk of the population contingent fairly recognised borders goes from the Scottish borders down to in line with the Welsh border)
• Wales (if the UK got less than 6 states I suspect Wales would get merged in with one of the English ones but I think in 6 they just about scraped through)
• Greater London+ (Will almost certainly not be called Greater London possibly the state of Windsor depending on what happens with thoughts below on the monarchy). Somehwat based on the New York model of a very dominant city with some periphery around it effectively Greater London plus at least all the land east of it to the coast and possibly also eveything south of it this Recognises the importance of London particularly at the time as a global city, and again as a reasonably self-contained economy of effectively London and bits of its commuter belt.
• Midlands, similar logic to the north of England
• Wessex again I doubted it would be called that but effectively the remainder of southern England, this is the most clearly what you’ve got left state but it does at least contain some culturally and economically homogenous areas (particularly Somerset down to the south coast as a core)

my feeling is a numerous small islands e.g. Isle of Man, we just see at least at first the constitutional relationships fold into the US after all the US manages to hold onto all sorts of odd commonwealths and semi-independent island states OTL to the Crown dependencies basically stay as they are (with a new name and linked to the us gov not the crown).

The monarchy

I really disagree with the view the monarchy would be abolished. In the 1960s the British monarchy was still fairly strongly associated in the US with fighting fascism in World War II, the Queen was still quite glamorous and popular, and the support institution in the UK was really high.

My suspicion is you’d see an amendment that permitted

a state to choose to continue a ceremonial honour system with a state monarchy as the fount of honour, in states that had an association with the British monarchy, as of the date 1960 (this future proofed for any new members)

what this would mean formally is the hereditary House of Lords is definitely gone as a second chamber for any of the resulting states. The monarchy stripped of any actual powers except the ability to give out honours (so knighthoods remain as do peerages but no longer with the right to sit in the House of Lords) in each individual state decides whether or not to keep the monarch. In the 1960s I’d expect every single one of those first six states would although by the 2020s I’d expect at least a couple may have ditched it or picked a different fount on honour (e.g. if Welsh identity grows which seems quite likely given both hotel trends and its greater independence as a state I wonder if by the 2000s if they kept a monopoly Welsh state might choose to have a separate Prince of Wales based in the state and with more Welsh tradition, either drawn from a sibling of the monarch creating a new line, a formalisation of it being the heir to the throne (so while your heir to the 'British' you're the ceremonial fount of honour for Wales and expected to put the hours in in Wales, or even making it an appointed or elected for life position by the Welsh Senate/House).

The Empire/Commonwealth and further expansion

so this is the other big headache although I suspect not as much conflict as might first be assumed between the different parties

the UK by the 1960s was broadly in favour of decolonisation, but wanted to keep international influence, while the US was broadly in favour of decolonisation but wanted to keep the Soviets out. So I expect decolonisation lastly happens on schedule with a slightly bigger budget to try and maintain friendly regimes in Africa and Asia.

My main exceptions are

I suspect the Trucial States survive in some form. OTL they were not that keen on ending their reasonably loose formal connection with the UK, the USA has a substantially better protector and the US has a lot of strategic interest in the region so I can easily see that relationship being carried on with a new treaty with the US inheriting it.

Malta, only a few years later Malta had a close run referendum on whether to remain part of the UK and again the US is a much better deal. It is on the smaller end population wise but still within the examples of US states. So I’d say a coin flip of either it maintaining some form of formal association (so more like the Trucial states), or even managing to fully incorporate state sometime in the 60s

Singapore (also Hong Kong until the lease is up and a few other similar strategic but tiny regions), again a region that wasn’t that desperate to leave, easy to hold militarily, and incredibly strategically important for the Cold War. I suspect they too good to pass up so the US is going to hold onto them in some form. They are sufficiently non-European I doubt with a route to route statehood but most likely some sort of crown dependency equivalent

The wider Commonwealth point don’t forget in the 1960s Australia New Zealand and to a degree canda and Ireland was still an awful more integrated with UK economically and culturally (the UK had much more the sphere of influence and had today even if it was granted a heavily declining one). I suspect at minimum you’re going to see some sort of initial trade deal maintained as part of the, integration procoess to make sure these economies don’t completely collapse, and also stay on the right side of the Cold War (not to mention there will regimes the US is already broadly friendly to). Medium terms I put very good odds at Canada and Ireland joining the US. The UK gives a good template of how to do this, Canada particularly now has both its dominant southern neighbour and its mother country in the union so if the UK joining goes well i think odds are Canda does in time (but by choice say around the 80s-90s), and there be strong pressure within the USA to use this as a way to allow southern & Northern Ireland unite. Australia New Zealand are much more of a coin flip just given the distance but I still wouldn’t be surprised if by the 2000s they’d also been brought into the US (culturally close enough, economically important, not too poor etc). Which brings us nicely to

What’s in a name

It’s one thing to incorporate a Pacific island chain like Hawaii. But adding 30% to your population, incorporating a granted rapidly declining global power, and I suspect having at leas a half an eye on the long-term potential for some other members from the white Commonwealth. I don’t think the United States of America would stay just United States of America. However the USA is still very much the dominant partner in these negotiation. So my guess is you end up with something like the United States of America and the British Isles, shortened to the US or sometimes USAB. So in other words this actually keeps most of the day-to-day usage the same but recognises the substantial presence of non-American states. If you did see Australia joining at a later date I suspect they just go with the simplest solution of dropping any of the regional identifiers and it just becoming the United States.

Politics

US politics particularly of the 1960s is not my area of massive interest to me so take this with several pinches of salt.

So in comparison to the US pretty much all of these new UK states are very firmly on the left and also pretty firmly in favour of civil rights (I can’t see any of them being pro-segregation). At this point the Democrats and Republicans are both to a degree reinventing themselves and I expect the British states would massively contribute to how this shifts and falls. Once the smoke clears I’d assume the British states would be at the core/generally seen as fairly safe states for the more left wing of the big US party blocks (the US constitution still seems to encourage a broad church two-party system), and generally shift US politics half step to the left (so still more right of centre then Europe or for that matter the UK OTL)

decent odds that by the 2020s we’ve had our first US president born in a British state (I’d assume if the constitution didn’t already cover it for new state admissions anyone who was a citizen of one of the British states when they were created is eligible)

I’d also note the British states are going to be in for quite a period of adjustment. Britain is very centralised while the US federal government does a surprisingly small amount especially in the 1960s and a lot of the wealth of the UK is concentrated very heavily in the south. Once your there be some period of transition I suspect Wales the Midlands and possibly the North when having trouble maintaining the welfare state of the 1960s UK, while Greater London and Wessex (for lack of better names) could do a lot better with the transition)

I wonder if there might be a degree of a knife fight between New York and London about who ends up as the de facto economic capital of the US. After all London is arguably better set up to be the economic centre of a global empire and the US is still getting used to being in that role. While long-term just given the greater wealth of the US in general my suspicion is most of the British states end up no more significant to US politics than their population would suggest (and if anything a bit on the less influential side given the generally poorer) if the leadership of London did really well in its first few years I could potentially see it being one of the more influential states in the union.

also this addition makes direct comparisons between the USSR and the USA even more one-sided economically especially if in the 70s and 80s the British Isles acts more like the USA then the UK OTL so I’d expect in general are more confident US throughout the Cold War.

General constitutional musings

Gun laws are much closer between the two then the USA and UK today, so I don’t see the UK getting so worried about an expansion of the right to bear arms, given what states are allowed to do around permitted regulation.

The Church of England is definitely getting disestablished especially given the politics of the US in the 1960s. If as I suspect the monarchy was allowed to stay in ceremonial form you get some very awkward discussions about the relationship between the ceremonial monarch of a series of states and the Church of England (small chance this could lead to the Queen having to pick between one and the other but my actual suspicion is, some weasel words are made slightly increasing the importance of the Archbishop of Canterbury and stressing the monarch is someone who appoints him as opposed to the true and full head)

Thanks for this very thorough reply, it was enlightening.

 

[Navigator]

I suppose there is one positive to this: three generations of Britons wouldn't have been denied access to the roll call of the astronauts.

 

[Fulano]

The US might as well annex Canada too if they get Iceland and Greenland

If not Canada, might as well annex Newfoundland, which actually had a chance in OTL, even if minimal. Newfoundland + Greenland + Iceland + New England basically would make the Northwest Atlantic region an American lake.

 

[Discernible]

The nationalised industries are an interesting one to ponder

While very unusual for the United States don't believe that any rule against it? And the nature of the federal system does mean states can own things fairly clearly

My assumption is as part of the integration process there would be a hard look at anything that could be sold off at an okay rates and not be seen as too essential to infrastructure (I'm thinking things like the car companies), the fact that these would be businesses about to enter the much bigger and more energetic US market feels like you might get some buyers willing to offer much better rate than before. With the profits distributed between the formerly British states (insert much horse trading about whether that surround population or GDP but certainly something proportional instead of just an equal split) and possibly also contribute to reducing the national debt as part of the debates about what happens to that (I'm assuming some would be taken up by the states some would be merged into the US and some would potentially get written off especially the debt owed to the US!)

The infrastructure stuff (e.g. national rail or baa), could presumably just be split off into component companies for the different states e.g. Scottish rail, Mercia Rail etc then have the states decide what to do with them (some might sell some might keep)

Finally you have businesses that are not profitable, and not essential that were largely being kept either on life support as they were seen as important for Britain to maintain an independent economy, or effectively for political reasons. My assumption here is the US would make it very clear they are not taking on deadweight so the US isn't acquiring them if the state that they are based in wants to they can but they need to be able to balance their books. Given the states who have a lot of spare cash tend to be the ones most lukewarm to those types of nationalised industries I expect there would be a fire sale for a lot of those.

So probably not too complicated in the end but it would be another way the British state would be very different to the continental ones at least initially. My suspicion is given UK nationalised industries did not tend to have the biggest profit margins (if any), states have a harder time acquiring debt the nations, and the federal government isn't that generous Wales is going to have to sell what it can to help balance the books and what it keeps is public and have to be heavily paired down in scope to be able to afford (it'll wants to keep nationalised industries given it's politics but can't afford a lot of them! As part of this generally being a very rough time for Wales), this is pre-North Sea oil so I'd say similar for Scotland, and political trends in Wessex means I suspect why they keep them initially there sell them off by choice (more right-wing trend) in the medium term. Decent odds that the rest of England (or all of England if you had a single English state although I hold that seems unlikely) could aptly hold onto a decent chunk of them long term depending on the political headwinds.

States have nationalised industries such as North Dakota which owns a flour milling industry and Alaska has its own rail company separate from Amtrak - which is itself federally owned. So it wouldn't be at variance with the UK.

Car production in the UK was never fully nationalised. Some companies were but only in the 1970s. Similar with shipbuilding.

The biggies in the UK would be coal and steel being at variance with the USA.

Other considerations would be the postal services - Royal Mail being rolled into the US Postal Service - and currency - no more Pound Sterling or Bank of England.

Language or regulation of English shouldn't be an issue as both the US and UK have no official state position on it. Therefore spelling and word usage shouldn't be an issue. Even within the USA there are vernacular differences just as there are in the UK. 'Janitors' will still be 'caretakers' in England and Wales whilst in Scotland they will continue to be ... 'janitors'. Scots will still use 'poke' for a paper bag just as Americans in the South use the word for the same thing...

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Given how class-ridden british society is combind with how the US at least had an ideal for a long timeeven if they never lived up to it of a fair shake for at least all white people, it's honestly a shock it's the US without either a national healthcare system or some sort of labor-type party and not the UK. I suspect significantly more timelines diverging after say 1939 or even as late as 1943 see the US with some kind of universal healthcare while the UK is the european, well devloped world outlier in no healthcare.

I suspect in this tl, you either see british classism making US politcs even worse or a reverse of people rejecting reaganism/thatcherism/third way liberalism as "weirdo british stuff" and "unamerican").

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

it's honestly a shock it's the US without either a national healthcare system or some sort of labor-type party and not the UK.

Noblesse oblige - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

An attitude the UK upper classes have/had instilled in them from birth (less so now than in the past) the seems entirely absent from their US equivalents. This is most obvious in the attitude to military service. In the UK it is/was seen as a duty that came with their station. In the US it appears to be something to get out of by any excuse they can find.

 

[TimTurner]

An attitude the UK upper classes have instilled in them from birth (less so now than in the past) the seems entirely absent from their US equivalents. This is most obvious in the attitude to military service. In the UK it is/was seen as a duty that came with their station. In the US it appears to be something to get out of by any excuse they can find.

I think this used to be a thing in America, but then Vietnam happened...

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

I think this used to be a thing in America, but then Vietnam happened...

Even in the US Civil war you could if wealthy enough hire a proxy to serve in your stead if called up. In he UK this would never have been allowed at the time and in the extremely unlikely event it was anyone doing so would be ostracized as a coward and have to leave the country.

 

[Dan1988]

The infrastructure stuff (e.g. national rail or baa), could presumably just be split off into component companies for the different states e.g. Scottish rail, Mercia Rail etc then have the states decide what to do with them (some might sell some might keep)

Hmm, British Rail is an interesting topic in this context - I'm thinking here of the Alaska Railroad as a later precedent, as well as the early commuter rail systems that existed during this period. In Massachusetts, for example, the MBTA was founded in 1964 (taking over the earlier MTA, which focused mainly on rapid-transit and buses around Metro Boston) precisely because the railway companies were abandoning passenger service, including commuter services, like crazy. (The UTA/Northern Ireland Railways are probably safe in this context, as it's an integrated public transit network.) Perhaps in this case we'd get an earlier sectorization, albeit partial on a national level (InterCity, Railfreight, and London & Southeast/NSE) as the core of a surviving British Rail - although, in that case, I'd suggest merging it with the London Transport Board if NSE is the main thing surviving from BR (a revived British Transport Commission in that case, albeit much reduced). The equivalent of Provincial/Regional Railways, in that case, could either be devolved to state-level agencies and/or spinning off the remaining BR regions as non-profit inter-regional public-transit commuter and regional services (which means, I guess, ScotRail, GWR, LNER, and London Midland).

 

[TimTurner]

Even in the US Civil war you could if wealthy enough hire a proxy to serve in your stead if called up. In he UK this would never have been allowed at the time and in the extremely unlikely event it was anyone doing so would be ostracized as a coward and have to leave the country.

Fair enough.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Noblesse oblige - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

An attitude the UK upper classes have/had instilled in them from birth (less so now than in the past) the seems entirely absent from their US equivalents. This is most obvious in the attitude to military service. In the UK it is/was seen as a duty that came with their station. In the US it appears to be something to get out of by any excuse they can find.

I was thinking more of the upper-middle class/professional class/managerial class for present-day british classism and not the old money/aristos.

 

[Peg Leg Pom]

I was thinking more of the upper-middle class/professional class/managerial class for present-day british classism and not the old money/aristos.

The Middle classes took their lead from the upper class, that with their position in society came responsibilities. This is why the traditional middle class housewife would be very involved in charity work of some sort. It was the done thing even if many did it, at least in part, to gain a sense of superiority over those they helped.