Download Interwar Britain

Interwar Britain
Interwar Britain (1919-1939) was a period of peace and relative economic stagnation 1919-1939.
In politics the Liberal Party collapsed and the Labour Party became the main challenger to the
dominant Conservative Party throughout the period.
The Great Depression impacted Britain less severely economically and politically than other major
nations, although there were severe pockets of long-term unemployment and hardship, especially in
mining districts and in Scotland and North West England.
Historian Arthur Marwick sees a radical transformation of British society resulting from the Great
War, a deluge that swept away many old attitudes and brought in a more egalitarian society. (Belief
that all people were equal)
He sees the famous literary pessimism of the 1920s as misplaced, arguing there were major positive
long-term consequences of the war to British society. He points to an energized self-consciousness
among workers that quickly built up the Labour Party, the coming of partial women's suffrage
(1918), and an acceleration of social reform and state control of the economy.
He sees a decline of deference toward the aristocracy and established authority in general, and the
weakening among youth of traditional restraints on individual moral behaviour.
The chaperone faded away; village chemists sold contraceptives. Marwick says that class distinctions
softened, national cohesion increased, and British society became more equal.
Expanding the welfare state
Two major programmess dealing with unemployment and housing that permanently expanded the
welfare state passed in 1919 and 1920 with surprisingly little debate, even as the Conservatives
dominated parliament.
The Unemployment Insurance Act 1920 expanded the provisions of the National Insurance Act 1911.
It set up the dole system that provided 39 weeks of unemployment benefits to practically the entire
civilian working population except domestic servants, farm workers, and civil servants.
Housing
The rapid expansion of housing was a major success story of the interwar years, standing in sharp
contrast to the United States, where new housing construction practically collapsed after 1929.
The influential Tudor Walters Report of 1918 set the standards for council house design and location
for the next 90 years..[5] It recommended housing in short terraces, spaced at 70 feet (21 m) at a
density of 12 to the acre.[6] With the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919 Lloyd George set up a
system of government housing that followed his 1918 campaign promises of "homes fit for
heroes."[7] Called the "Addison Act," it required local authorities to survey their housing needs, and
start building houses to replace slums.
Conservative control
Stanley Baldwin was Conservative Prime Minister between 1923–1924, 1924–1929 and 1935–1937.
The Lloyd-George coalition fell apart in 1922. Stanley Baldwin, as leader of the Conservative Party
(1923–37) and as Prime Minister (in 1923–24, 1924–29 and 1935–37), dominated British politics.[17]
1929 Conservative poster attacking the Labour Party
In May 1923 Prime Minister Bonar Law resigned because of ill health and was replaced by Baldwin.
Having won an election just the year before, Baldwin's Conservative party had a comfortable
majority in the Commons and could have waited another four years, but the government was
concerned. Baldwin felt the need to receive a new mandate from the people. Oxford historian (and
Conservative MP) J.A.R. Marriott depicts the gloomy national mood:
The times were still out of joint. Mr. Baldwin had indeed succeeded in negotiating (January 1923) a
settlement of the British debt to the United States, but on terms which involved an annual payment
of £34 million, at the existing rate of exchange. The French remained in the Ruhr. Peace had not yet
been made with Turkey; unemployment was a standing menace to national recovery; there was
continued unrest among the wage-earners, and a significant strike among farm labourers in Norfolk.
Confronted by these difficulties, convinced that economic conditions in England called for a drastic
change in fiscal policy, and urged thereto by the Imperial Conference of 1928, Mr. Baldwin decided
to ask the country for a mandate for Preference and Protection.[
The result however backfired on Baldwin, who lost a host of seats to Labour and the Liberals. For the
first time in history, Labour formed a government. However in 1924 Baldwin and the Conservatives
returned with a large majority. Ross McKibbin finds that the political culture of the interwar period
was built around an anti-socialist middle class, supported by the Conservative leaders, especially
Baldwin.
Economics
Taxes rose sharply during the war and never returned to their old levels. A rich man paid 8% of his
income in taxes before the war, and about a third afterwards. Much of the money went on
unemployment benefits. About 5% of the national income every year was transferred from the rich
to the poor. A. J. P. Taylor argues most people "were enjoying a richer life than any previously known
in the history of the world: longer holidays, shorter hours, higher real wages."
The British economy was lacklustre in the 1920s, with sharp declines and high unemployment in
heavy industry and coal, especially in Scotland and Wales.
By the late 1920s, economic performance had stabilised, but the overall situation was disappointing,
for Britain had fallen behind the United States as the leading industrial power. There also remained a
strong economic divide between the north and south of England during this period, with the south
of England and the Midlands fairly prosperous by the Thirties, while parts of south Wales and the
industrial north of England became known as "distressed areas" due to particularly high rates of
unemployment and poverty.
Labour
During the war, trade unions were encouraged and their membership grew from 4.1 million in 1914
to 6.5 million in 1918.
Coal was a sick industry; the best seams were being exhausted, raising the cost. Demand fell as oil
began replacing coal for fuel. The 1926 general strike was a nine-day nationwide walkout of 1.3
million railwaymen, transport workers, printers, dockers, iron workers and steelworkers supporting
the 1.2 million coal miners who had been locked out by the owners. The miners had rejected the
owners' demands for longer hours and reduced pay in the face of falling prices
The Conservative government had stockpiled supplies and essential services continued in operation
using students and middle class volunteers. All three major parties opposed the strike. The Labour
Party leaders did not approve and feared it would tar the party with the image of radicalism, for the
Comintern in Moscow had sent instructions for Communists to aggressively promote the strike.
The general strike itself was largely non-violent, but the miners' lockout continued and there was
violence in Scotland. It was the only general strike in British history, for TUC leaders such as Ernest
Bevin considered it a mistake. Most historians treat it as a singular event with few long-term
consequences, but Martin Pugh says it accelerated the movement of working-class voters to the
Labour Party, which led to future gains.
Food
After the War many new food products became available to the typical household, with branded
foods advertised for their convenience. The shortage of servants was felt in the kitchen, but now
instead of an experienced cook spending hours on difficult custards and puddings the housewife
could purchase instant foods in jars, or powders that could be quickly mixed. Breakfast porridge
from branded, more finely milled, oats could now be cooked in two minutes, not 20. American-style
dry cereals began to challenge the porridge and bacon and eggs of the middle classes, and the bread
and margarine of the poor. Shops carried more bottled and canned goods and fresher meat, fish and
vegetables. While wartime shipping shortages had sharply narrowed choices, the 1920s saw many
new kinds of foods--especially fruits--imported from around the world, along with better quality,
packaging, and hygiene. Middle class households now had ice boxes or electric refrigerators, which
made for better storage and the convenience of buying in larger quantities.
Numerous studies in the Depression years documented that the average consumer ate better than
before. Seebohm Rowntree reported that the "standard to workers in 1936 was about 30 percent
higher than it was in 1899."[37] Food prices were low, but the advantage went overwhelmingly to
the middle and upper classes, with the poorest third of the population suffering from sustained poor
nutrition. Starvation was not a factor, but widespread hunger was.
Great Depression
The Great Depression originated on Wall Street in the United States in late 1929 and quickly spread
to the world. However, Britain had never experienced the boom that had characterized the US,
Germany, Canada and Australia in the 1920s, so its bust was much less severe and ended sooner.
By summer 1931 the world financial crisis began to overwhelm Britain; investors across the world
started withdrawing their gold from London at the rate of £2½ millions a day.
Britain's world trade fell in half (1929–33), the output of heavy industry fell by a third. Employment
and profits plunged in nearly all sectors. At the depth in summer 1932, registered unemployed
numbered 3.5 million, and many more had only part-time employment.
Particularly hardest hit by economic problems were the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland
and Wales; unemployment reached 70% in some areas at the start of the 1930s (with more than 3
million out of work nationally) and many families depended entirely on payments from local
government known as the dole.
Organized protests
Doomsayers on the left such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb, J.A. Hobson, and G.D.H. Cole repeated
the dire warnings they had been making for years about the imminent death of capitalism, only now
far more people paid attention. Starting in 1935 the Left Book Club provided a new warning every
month, and built up the credibility of Soviet-style socialism as an alternative.
In 1936, by which time unemployment was lower, 200 unemployed men made a highly publicized
march from Jarrow to London in a bid to show the plight of the industrial poor. Although much
romanticized by the Left, the Jarrow Crusade marked a deep split in the Labour Party and resulted in
no government action.[49] Unemployment remained high until the war absorbed all the job seekers.
George Orwell's book The Road to Wigan Pier gives a bleak overview of the hardships of the time.
Historiography
The economic crisis of the early 1930s, and the response of the Labour and National governments to
the depression, have generated much historical controversy. Apart from the major pockets of longterm high unemployment, Britain was generally prosperous. Historian Piers Brendon writes:
Historians, however, have long since revised this grim picture, presenting the devil's decade (1930s)
as the cradle of the affluent society. Prices fell sharply between the wars and average incomes rose
by about a third. The term "property-owning democracy" was coined in the 1920s, and three million
houses were built during the 1930s. Land, labour and materials were cheap: a bungalow could be
purchased for £225 and a semi for £450. The middle class also bought radiograms, telephones,
three-piece suites, electric cookers, vacuum cleaners and golf clubs. They ate Kellogg's Corn Flakes
("never miss a day"), drove to Odeon cinemas in Austin Sevens (costing £135 by 1930) and smoked
Craven A cigarettes, cork-tipped "to prevent sore throats". The depression spawned a consumer
boom.
Foreign policy
Britain had suffered little physical devastation during the war but the cost in death and disability and
money were very high. In the Khaki Election of 1918, coming a month after the Allied victory over
Germany, Lloyd George promised to impose a harsh treaty on Germany. At the Paris Peace
Conference in early 1919, however, he took a much more moderate approach. France and Italy
demanded and achieved harsh terms, including German admission of guilt for starting the war
(which humiliated Germany), and a demand that Germany pay the entire Allied cost of the war,
including veterans' benefits and interest. Britain reluctantly supported the Treaty of Versailles,
although many experts, most famously John Maynard Keynes, thought it too harsh on Germany.
Britain began to look on a restored Germany as an important trading partner and worried about the
effect of reparations on the British economy. In the end the United States financed German debt
payments to Britain, France and the other Allies through the Dawes Plan, and Britain used this
income to repay the loans it borrowed from the U.S. during the war.
Vivid memories of the horrors and deaths of the World War made Britain and its leaders strongly
inclined to pacifism in the interwar era.
1920s
Britain maintained close relationships with France and the United States, rejected isolationism, and
sought world peace through naval arms limitation treaties, and peace with Germany through the
Locarno treaties of 1925. A main goal was to restore Germany to a peaceful, prosperous state.[56]
With disarmament was high on the agenda, Britain played a major role following the United States in
the Washington Naval Conference of 1921 in working toward naval disarmament of the major
powers. By 1933 disarmament had collapsed and the issue became rearming for a war against
Germany.
Politically the coalition government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George depended primarily on
Conservative Party support. He increasingly antagonized his supporters with foreign policy miscues.
The Chanak Crisis of 1922 brought Britain to the brink of war with Turkey.
Britain maintained close relationships with France and the United States; however the U.S. refused
to renegotiate its wartime loans.
1930s
The Dominions (Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand) achieved virtual independence in
foreign policy in the Statute of Westminster 1931, though each depended heavily upon British naval
protection. After 1931 trade policy favoured the "imperial preference" with higher tariffs against the
U.S. and all others outside the Commonwealth.
The great challenge came from dictators, first Benito Mussolini of Italy from 1923, then from 1933
Adolf Hitler of a much more powerful Nazi Germany. Britain and France led the policy of noninterference in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The League of Nations proved disappointing to its
supporters; it was unable to resolve any of the threats posed by the dictators. British policy was to
"appease" them in the hopes they would be satiated. League-authorized sanctions against Italy for
its invasion of Ethiopia had support in Britain but proved a failure and were dropped in 1936.
Germany was the difficult case. By 1930 British leaders and intellectuals largely agreed that all major
powers shared the blame for war in 1914, and not Germany alone as the Treaty of Versailles
specified. Therefore, they believed the punitive harshness of the Treaty of Versailles was
unwarranted, and this view, adopted by politicians and the public, was largely responsible for
supporting appeasement policies down to 1938. That is, German rejections of treaty provisions
seemed justified.
Coming of Second World War
By late 1938 it was clear that war was looming, and that Germany had the world's most powerful
military. The British military leaders warned that Germany would win a war, and Britain needed
another year or two to catch up in terms of aviation and air defense. The final act of appeasement
came when Britain and France sacrificed Czechoslovakia to Hitler's demands at the Munich
Agreement of 1938. Instead of satiation Hitler seized all of Czechoslovakia and menaced Poland. At
last in 1939 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dropped appeasement and stood firm in promising
to defend Poland. Hitler however cut a deal with Joseph Stalin to divide Eastern Europe; when
Germany did invade Poland in September 1939, Britain and France declared war; the British
Commonwealth followed London's lead.
Popular culture
As leisure, literacy, wealth, ease of travel, and a broadened sense of community grew in Britain from
the late 19th century onward, there was more time and interest in leisure activities of all sorts, on
the part of all classes. Drinking was differentiated by class with upper-class clubs, and working-class
and middle-class pubs.
Taxes were raised on beer, and there were more alternatives now at hand, such as cigarettes (which
attracted 8/10 men, and 4/10 women), the talkies, the dance halls, and Greyhound racing..
Church attendance declined to half the level of 1901.
The annual vacation became common. Tourists flocked to seaside resorts; Blackpool hosted 7 million
visitors a year in the 1930s. Organized leisure was primarily a male activity, with middle-class women
allowed in at the margins. Participation in sports and all sorts of leisure activities increased for the
average Englishman, and his interest in spectator sports increased dramatically. By the 1920s the
cinema and radio attracted all classes, ages and genders in very large numbers, with young women
taking the lead.[72] Working-class men wearing flat caps and munching fish and chips were
boisterous football spectators. They sang along at the music hall, fancied their pigeons, gambled on
horse racing, and took the family to Blackpool in summer. Political activists complained that
working-class leisure diverted men away from revolutionary agitation.
Cinema and radio
The British film industry emerged in the 1890s, and built heavily on the strong reputation of the
London legitimate theatre for actors, directors, and producers. The problem was that the American
market was so much larger and richer. It bought up the top talent, especially when Hollywood came
to the fore in the 1920s and produced over 80 percent of the total world output.. Traditionalists
grumbled about the American cultural invasion, but the permanent impact was made
In radio British audiences had no choice apart from the upscale programming of the BBC, which had
a monopoly on broadcasting. John Reith (1889 – 1971), an intensely moralistic engineer, was in full
charge. His goal was to broadcast, "All that is best in every department of human knowledge,
endeavor and achievement.... The preservation of a high moral tone is obviously of paramount
importance
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