effect on Britain of World War I
Figure 1. Voluntary recruiting at first resulted in more men that could be adequately trained or equipped. The outbreak of war was greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm by all classes. Hatred of the Germans was whipped up by an almost hysterical press, and the chance of adventure and glory after long years of peace brought men flocking to join the forces. With no conscription, Britain had to rely on volunteers and, in spite of massive losses, the supply of new recruits was adequate for more than a year. But the authorities felt obliged to introduce conscription by May 1916 in order to reinforce the depleted ranks.
Figure 2. These women working in a factory in 1917 testify to the sexual revolution that took place on the home front during the war. As more and more men volunteered were drafted into the forces, their places in the munitions factories, shops, offices, voluntary services, hospitals, schools, and transport were taken by women. By thus ably replacing men or working beside them, women's claims for equality of status and rights were so widely accepted that in 1918 an Act giving the vote to women over the age of 30 was passed with very little opposition. After so many women had gained social and economic independence, there was no way for the conventional barriers to be re-erected once the war was over. This radical change in attitudes was reflected later, in the 1920s, in extremes of fashion and a degree of permissiveness in social behavior.
Figure 3. Barrage balloons, thinly spread over London, served as token protection rather than forming any serious deterrent to German air attacks. London was first bombed by Zeppelins (1915) but these were vulnerable and soon replaced by airplanes.
Figure 4. Cotton production and exports in the decade from 1912 to 1920 show a postwar slump that was typical of several major British industries. After the war they discovered that many of their markets had disappeared forever. It was a failure to replace the jobs in these industries that was the basic cause of lasting unemployment.
Figure 5. Ex-servicemen hawking their wares in the streets in 1920 symbolized the disillusionment and despair that broke down all the old certainties of British society. There was a dawning and bitter realization that the prodigious feats of government organization and direction that had helped win the war did not seem to be winning the peace. The poor no longer accept their fate as inevitable or unalterable, while the middle classes saw their income and status been steadily eroded by higher taxes. The frivolity of the "Gay Twenties" stemmed from a widespread desire to ignore doubts and difficulties that seemed insoluble. It amounted to enjoying life for the moment and letting tomorrow look after itself.
Figure 6. Striking coal miners in Wigan formed part of a "triple alliance" of miners, engineering and transport unions who were prepared to call a national strike. There was little industrial strife early in the war, but various government Acts, such as the Munitions of War Act of 1915 (which set wage levels and enforced arbitration), led to widespread strikes in 1917. The government modified its approach, but when in 1921 rising unemployment coincided with a withdrawal of government subsidies, support for a minimum wage, and the removal of state control over the mines, the triple alliance was born. But the government compromised, the transport and engineering workers withdrew their support, and the threat of a general strike was ended. The miners came out alone, but within three months they were defeated, and returned under worse conditions they could have been reached by negotiation. This was followed by the political excitement over the collapse of Lloyd George's coalition government in October 1922.
World War I is seen as one of the turning points in British history – but it would be wrong to suggest that before the war all was tranquility and security, a last "golden age", and that after it all was uncertainty and depression. Major political, economic, and social changes were already taking place in Britain and the empire before 1914. They would have overturned the old way of life anyway; the war merely speeded them up, and made their effects far more shattering than they would otherwise have been.
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| The little "scrap of paper" was a contemptuous phrase used by the German chancellor in 1914 to describe the 1839 treaty that guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. As a gesture, the Germans asked permission to go through Belgian territory on their way to Paris. King Albert I (r. 1909–1034) of the Belgians replied: "Belgium is a nation, not a road", but German troops had already crossed the frontier. During the critical days before the Germans invaded, some sections of British opinion were opposed to Britain's participation in a continental war. But this act of aggression against "brave little Belgium" united the country in its determination to forcibly intervene against Germany. |
Optimism and disillusionment
In 1914, Britain had effectively been at peace for almost a century; the Crimean (1854–1856) and Boer wars (1899–1902) had had little effect on the population, and had seemed only minor interruptions in the growth of Britain's power. Several generations had grown up who knew little of war and were convinced of the superiority of their country and race. But all levels of British society were becoming more aware of the German threat to British naval and commercial supremacy in the years before 1914, and the hostility that this caused goes some way towards explaining the enthusiasm with which war was greeted. More than 500,000 men volunteered in the first few weeks, and during the following year 125,000 men a month went gladly to the front (Figure 1).
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| Watered beer and afternoon closing of the pubs were introduced by the government because it was felt that the national consumption of alcohol was impairing the war effort. |
Early hopes that the war would be over by Christmas 1914 faded as both sides dug in. A static war of attrition ensued. By mid-1916 the fighting men were disillusioned by the squalor of the trenches and the mass slaughter. Because new battalions were formed on a geographical basis, whole towns and villages in Britain were almost depopulated by the fighting. On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed: individual battalions suffered heavily, the 10th West Yorkshires, for example, losing almost 60 percent of its strength. At home there were some shortages and a few air raids (Figure 3), but the civilian population never really understood what it was like at the front. At the start of the war the government established a Press Bureau with the task of censoring newspaper reports and the true progress of the war was concealed from the public. Instead, the mass of public opinion was colored by propaganda stories of atrocities.
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| Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) and other young poets such as Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) and Robert Graves (1895–1985), who had fought in the trenches, wrote about the horror and despair of the experiences through which they had passed. |
The economy and government control
The unforeseen demands that the war placed on the British economy forced the state to intervene more actively than ever before. Although attempts were made after the war to retreat from this, active state involvement was never lost. The need for vast supplies of munitions, and the inability of private industry to produce them, led to the creation of a Ministry of Munitions in May 1915 with considerable directive powers. In 1916 British Summer Time was introduced to prolong daylight working hours. The need to ensure adequate food supplies led, in December 1916, to the establishment of county committees to direct agriculture and the creation of a Ministry of Food. In 1918 rationing was introduced.
The war brought an end to the free trade policy that Britain had struggled to maintain since the 1840s. The McKenna duties of 1915, putting a tariff on luxury imports, were retained after 1918, and were followed in 1921 by a Safeguarding of Industry Act to protect certain industries against foreign competition. On the outbreak of war, the Bank of England was authorized to issue banknotes not backed by gold, and there was a rapid and lasting rise in rates of income tax, which themselves had a much more progressive structure. The national debt rose from £650 million in 1914 to more than £7,000 million in 1918.
Shortages of labor caused by the demand for troops made workers realize their strength. Trade union membership rose from 4.1 million in 1913 to 6.5 million in 1918 and 8.3 million in 1920. Similarly, the widespread recruitment of women into industry broke down prejudices and strengthened the cause of the suffragettes (Figure 2).
The peacetime boom and slump
In November 1918 there was little evidence of any widespread demoralization caused by wartime losses – rather a pride in having come through an unprecedented trial. David Lloyd George (1863–1945), who had become prime minister of a Liberal-Tory coalition in 1916, took the opportunity to hold a general election which swept the coalition back into office. There was a brief restocking and rebuilding boom, but by spring 1920 it had degenerated into speculation and collapsed. The economy slumped and the numbers of those unemployed rose to more than two million in June 1921.
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| Britain's gross national product enjoyed a brief boom immediately after the war as industry restocked and changed over to peacetime products. But drastic cuts in government expenditure, the loss of export markets and the erosion of favorable economic conditions, such as free trade, led to a severe slump. |
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| Unemployment was non-existent during the war, but after 1920 an intricate system of reliefs had to be built up in response to a fundamental change in the attitude of the public. Before the war the unemployed had been resigned to their fate as an inevitable fact of life. But after the war men expected the government to find them jobs, or to support them adequately until the necessary employment was available. |
The government attempted to correct the economy by cutting public spending, wages and prices, all of which only made the problem worse. The war had accelerated the decline of Britain from the industrial and commercial supremacy it had once enjoyed. Traditional export markets had developed their own industries and major exporting sectors of the British economy, such as cotton, coal and shipping, were permanently reduced (Fig 4). The war had given impetus to some new industries, such as chemicals and automobile manufacturing. But these tended to be developed in new regions, far from the traditional centers of industry where the misery and hopelessness of long-term unemployment were at their worst.