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Week 8: A People’s War?
I. To what degree did 1939-45 see the British nation united in a ‘people’s war’?
II. What do the MRC documents indicate about wartime unity?
III. Did the election of the Labour Party in 1945 reflect a radicalisation of the British
people as a result of the war?
Core Reading
 Steven Fielding, ‘What did the “People” want? The Meaning of the 1945 General
Election’, Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 623-9
 James Hinton, ‘The Apathy School’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), 266-72
 See the documents under ‘The Peoples War’ on the MRC website:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/modules/docs/britain
Further Reading
 For an overview: R. Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 (2002),
chapter 1 ‘Warriors’ & Chapter 2 ‘Citizens’.
 For the idea of the ‘people’s war’: Angus Calder, The People’s War (1969). For an
overview: Jose Harris, ‘Great Britain: The People’s War?’ in David Reynolds, Allies
of War: The Soviet, American and British Experience, 1939-1945 (1994), 233-59.
 Challenging some of the assumptions of a ‘people’s war’: Sonya Rose, Which
People’s War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945
(2003).
 For an attempt to capture the mood of the nation in 1945: P. Hennessy, Never
Again (1992)
 For a critical examination of Britain ‘standing alone’ in 1940: M. Smith, Britain and
1940: History, Myth and Popular Memory (2000); and Angus Calder, The Myth of
the Blitz (1991).
 There are differing views of the extent of popular radicalism and social solidarity in
wartime Britain, and on whether this led to Labour’s election in 1945. The
conventional view of a changed environment is presented in Paul Addison, The
Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (1975/1994). However there
has recently been a tendency to emphasise limitations: Tony Mason & Peter
Thompson, ‘“Reflections on a Revolution”? The Political Mood in Wartime Britain’
in N. Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (1993), pp. 54-70; Steven Fielding, ‘What did
the “People” want? The Meaning of the 1945 General Election’, Historical Journal,
35 (1992), 623-9; S. Fielding, ‘Don’t know and Don’t Care: Popular Political
Attitudes in Labour’s Britain, 1945-51’, in N. Tiratsoo (ed.), The Attlee Years (1991);
and S. Fielding, N. Tiratsoo & P. Thompson, England Arise: The Labour Party and
Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (1995). For criticism of this position: J. Hinton, ‘The
Apathy School’, History Workshop Journal, 43 (1997), 266-72. On this theme see
also: D. L. Prynn, ‘Common-Wealth - A British Third Party of the 1940s’, Journal of
Contemporary History, 7 (1972), 169-79; R. Mckibbin, Classes and Cultures: England
1818-1951 (1998), pp. 528-36; Ross McKibbin, Parties and People: England, 1914-1951,
esp. Ch 5 ‘The English Road to Socialism’ (2010) – ebook.
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On the social impact of war: Jose Harris, ‘War and Social History: Britain and the
Home Front during the Second World War’, Contemporary European History, 1
(1992), 17-35; P. Summerfield, ‘The Levelling of Class’, in H. Smith (ed.), War and
Social Change (1988).
On the black market which complicates analysis of wartime fairness: Mark
Roodhouse, ‘Popular Morality and the Black Market in Britain, 1939-1955’, in Frank
Trentmann (ed.), Food and Conflict in Europe in the Age of the Two World Wars
(2006), 243-65
For explorations of the way that wartime circumstances fostered new images of
national identity within British culture and in particular the development of ideas
of citizenship: Sian Nicholas, ‘From John Bull to John Citizen: Images of National
Identity and Citizenship on the Wartime BBC’, in R. Weight & A. Beach (eds.), The
Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930-1960 (1998), pp.
36-58; Toby Haggith, ‘Citizenship, Nationhood and Empire in British Official Film
Propaganda, 1939-45’, in R. Weight & A. Beach (eds.), The Right to Belong:
Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930-1960 (1998), pp. 59-88; D. Matless,
‘Taking Pleasure in England: Landscape and Citizenship in the 1940s’, in R. Weight
& A. Beach (eds.), The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain,
1930-1960 (1998), pp. 181-204.
The Mass Observation movement attempted to measure the national mood in
wartime and has provided valuable albeit problematic material for historians of
this subject: T. Harrisson, Living through the Blitz (1976). See also the MO
contemporary reports such as: People in Production (1942); War Factory (1943); and
The Journey Home (1944); James Hinton, Nine Wartime Lives: Mass-Observation
and the Making of the Modern Self (2010)
For thoughts on the relationship between gender, class and wartime national
identity: L. Noakes, War and the British: Gender and National Identity; S. Rose, ‘Sex,
Citizenship and the Nation in World War II Britain’, American Historical Review,
103 (1998), 1147-76; H.L. Smith, ‘The Effect of the War on the Status of Women’, in
H.L. Smith (ed.), War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War
(1986); P. Summerfield, Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives (1998); James
Hinton, Women, Social Leadership and the Second World War: Continuities of Class
(2002)
The image of wartime national unity and radicalisation owes much to the
contrasting image of the decade which preceded it. The idea of the thirties and
shifting interpretations of this decade are explored in: J. Baxendale & C. Pawling
(ed.), Narrating the 30s: A Decade in the Making, 1930 to the Present (1996). There is
disagreement among historians as to the seriousness of social divisions in the
1930s. Some point to social misery provoking political radicalisation and building
the foundations for the victory of Labour in 1945: see for instance, Charles
Webster, 'Hungry or Healthy Thirties', History Workshop Journal, 13 (1982), 110-29.
Others have suggested that in comparative terms there was relative prosperity,
social harmony, and a lack of attraction towards political extremism: John
Stevenson, Social Conditions between the Wars (1977).