Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents
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Read between July 14 - July 23, 2025
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Union Jack.
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The Union Flag consists of three crosses:
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The cross of St George, patron saint of England, is a red cross on a white ground.
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The cross of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland, is a diagonal white cross on a blue ground.
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The cross of St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, is a diagonal red cross on a white ground.
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The Welsh dragon does not appear on the Union Flag because, when the first Union Flag was created in 1606 from the flags of Scotland and England, the Principality of Wales was already united with England.
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In 1837, Queen Victoria became queen of the UK at the age of 18. She reigned until 1901, almost 64 years. Her reign is known as the Victorian Age. It was a time when Britain increased in power and influence abroad.
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During the Victorian period, the British Empire grew to cover all of India, Australia and large parts of Africa. It became the largest empire the world has ever seen, with an estimated population of more than 400 million people.
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Between 1853 and 1913, as many as 13 million British citizens left the country.
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between 1870 and 1914, around 120,000 Russian and Polish Jews came to Britain to escape persecution.
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repealing of the Corn Laws in 1846. These had prevented the import of cheap grain.
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Just before Victoria came to the throne, the father and son George and Robert Stephenson pioneered the railway engine and a major expansion of the railways took place in the Victorian period.
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bridges by engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
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Brunel was originally from Portsmouth, England.
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He was responsible for constructing the Great Western Railway, which was the first major railway built in Britain. It runs from Paddington Station in London to the south west of England, the West Midlands and Wales. Many of Brunel’s bridges are still in use today.
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British industry led the world in the 19th century. The UK produced more than half of the world’s iron, coal and cotton cloth.
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financial services, including insurance and banking.
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In 1851, the Great Exhibition opened in Hyde Park in the Crystal Palace, a huge buildi...
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From 1853 to 1856, Britain fought with Turkey and France against Russia in the Crimean War. It was the first war to be extensively covered by the media through news stories and photographs.
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Queen Victoria introduced the Victoria Cross medal during this war.
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Florence Nightingale was born in Italy to English parents. At the age of 31, she trained as a nurse in Germany. In 1854, she went to Turkey and worked in military hospitals, treating soldiers who were fighting in the Crimean War.
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In 1860 she established the Nightingale Training School for nurses at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. The
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She is often regarded as the founder of modern nursing.
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Conditions in Ireland were not as good as in the rest of the UK. Two-thirds of the population still depended on farming
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In the middle of the century the potato crop failed, and Ireland suffered a famine.
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A million people died from disease and starvation. Another million and a half left Ireland. Some emigrated to the United States and others came to England.
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The Irish Nationalist movement had grown strongly through the 19th century.
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The Reform Act of 1832 had greatly increased the number of people with the right to vote. The Act also abolished the old pocket and rotten boroughs (see page 38) and more parliamentary seats were given to the towns and cities.
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voting was still based on ownership of property. This meant that members of the working class were still unable to vote.
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Campaigners, called the Chartists, presented petitions to Parliament. At first they seemed to be unsuccessful, but in 1867 there was another Reform Act.
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However, the majority of men still did not have the right to vote and no women could vote.
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Universal suffrage (the right of every adult, male or female, to vote) followed in the next century.
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women in 19th century Britain had fewer rights than men. Until 1870, when a woman got married, her earnings, property and money automatically belonged to her husband.
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an increasing number of women campaigned and demonstrated for greater rights and, in particular, the right to vote. They formed the women’s suffrage movement and became known as ‘suffragettes’.
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Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1858. She set up the Women’s Franchise League in 1889, which fought to get the vote in local elections for married women. In 1903 she helped found the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). This was the first group whose members were called ‘suffragettes’.
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They chained themselves to railings, smashed windows and committed arson.
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In 1918, women over the age of 30 were given voting rights and the right to stand for Parliament, partly in recognition of the contribution women made to the war effort during the First World War. Shortly before Pankhurst’s death in 1928, women were given the right to vote at the age of 21, the same as men.
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British Empire continued to grow until the 1920s,
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The Boer War of 1899 to 1902 made the discussions about the future of the Empire more urgent. The British went to war in South
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20th century, there was, for the most part, an orderly transition from Empire to Commonwealth, with countries being granted their independence.
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Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865 and later lived in India, the UK and the USA. He wrote books and poems set in both India and the UK. His poems and novels reflected the idea that the British Empire was a force for good.
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Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907. His books include the Just So Stories and The Jungle Book, which continue to be popular today.
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On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated.
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First World War (1914–18).
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Britain was part of the Allied Powers, which included (amongst others) France, Russia, Japan, Belgium, Serbia – and later, Greece, Italy, Romania and the United States.
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more than a million Indians fought on behalf of Britain in lots of different countries, and around 40,000 were killed.
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Men from the West Indies, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada also f...
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Allies fought against the Central Powers – mainly Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottom...
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more than 2 million British ...
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British attack on the Somme in July 1916, resulted in about 60,000 British casualtie...
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