World War I: AD 1914-1918

The rapid escalation of the crisis which flares into World War I lasts only a few weeks, from the assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 to Britain's declaration of war on Germany on August 4. Europe's first experience of total war, involving continuous effort and sacrifice from every citizen, inevitably transforms the social and political landscape in the countries taking part.

The appalling nature of trench warfare, with its gruesome level of casualties, is the main new reality to which families must adapt. But the war brings many other unexpected innovations.

For the first time the bombing of cities is an alarming aspect of warfare; London suffers its first air raid on 1 June 1915, when small bombs (weighing only about 10 lb at this early stage) are thrown overboard fron a German Zeppelin.

Conscription, introduced in 1916, is another aspect of war new to the British. So is the rationing of food, an unpopular measure delayed until 1918. Income tax is raised to the unprecedented level of six shillings in the pound, or 30%. But perhaps the greatest change is the mobilization of women, not only now in their familiar role in textile mills but also in the heavy labour of producing shells and bullets in the munitions factories for the use of their absent men.

By 1917 women are themselves serving in the forces, in the newly formed WAC (Women's Auxiliary Corps) and WRNS (Women's Royal Naval Service), to be followed a year later by the WRAF (Women's Royal Air Force). These changes make possible an easy end to the long struggle of the suffragettes. In 1918, before the end of the war, parliament passes acts granting the vote to women and allowing for female members of parliament.

The other burning issue of the pre-war years, Home Rule for Ireland, is harder to resolve.

In the second month of the war, September 1914, Asquith tries to defuse the issue for the duration of the more urgent crisis. He secures the royal asssent for his Home Rule Act, but accompanies it with another act placing the subject of Home Rule in abeyance until the end of the war.

The Fenians in Dublin are not so easily put into abeyance. In April 1916 they organize the Easter Rising, the most dramatic of the many tense events in the long Irish struggle for Home Rule. This crisis is soon followed by the disastrous Battle of the Somme on the western front. In these circumstances a political coup against Asquith brings Lloyd George to power as prime minister for the remaining two years of the war.

Asquith and Lloyd George: AD 1915-1922

In May 1915, after the failure of the Dardanelles expedition, Asquith has brought politicians of the other two parties into a coalition government. Now, after the troubles of 1916, the members of the coalition lose faith in Asquith's conduct of the war. Complex secret negotiations in December 1916 between Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Carson have the desired effect.

Asquith is persuaded to resign. His place is taken by Lloyd George (in recent months minister of munitions and secretary of state for war), with Bonar Law as chancellor of the exchequer and Balfour as foreign secretary.

Lloyd George introduces a war cabinet of just five members, in order to streamline decisions. In the war effort at home his energies prove very effective, just as they have previously been in the production of munitions.

There is little that any politician can do to end the stalemate baffling the generals on the western front. But when the allies win the final push in 1918, the Westminster coup of 1916 means that Lloyd George rather than Asquith is the victorious war leader representing Britain at Versailles.
In domestic politics Lloyd George's betrayal of Asquith in 1916 splits the Liberal party, foreshadowing the end of its long-held status as a major player in Britain's essentially two-party system. The split is to some extent masked by the need for wartime unity, but it becomes dramatically plain in the first postwar election.

Immediately after the armistice Lloyd George and Bonar Law agree to continue their wartime arrangement and to fight the election as a coalition. Each of their candidates is given a joint letter from the two leaders, assuring the electors of their status as coalitionists. This document, denied to his faction, is ridiculed by Asquith as a 'coupon' for the election.
But it proves to be a coupon for success. The election in December devastates the Liberal party, of which Asquith is still the leader. He himself loses his seat, and only 28 of his colleagues are returned to Westminster. The coalition has 478 members of parliament. Labour, with 59 members, becomes the official opposition.

Lloyd George is never forgiven by many in the Liberal camp for the damage thus inflicted on their party. But meanwhile he has more immediate concerns: coping with the unemployment and industrial unrest provoked by demobilization and the return to a peacetime economy; and confronting anew Britain's most intransigent problem, the question of Ireland.
The Troubles: AD 1919-1921

From January 1919 to July 1921 Ireland is racked by the first of the two periods known colloquially as the Troubles. The events are more formally known as the War of Independence (in Ireland) and the Anglo-Irish War (in Britain).

The Volunteers, or armed supporters of Sinn Fein, are secretly informed at the end of January that they are now the army of Ireland, fighting on behalf of the newly established Dáil Eireann, and that as such they are morally justified in killing enemies of the state - namely British policemen and soldiers. The war of independence is not declared, but in the minds of the combatants of one side it has begun. The Volunteers begin to call themselves the Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

The government temporarily defuses the issue with a subsidy to keep up the level of wages, but this is due to end on 30 April 1926. A few days before this deadline the mine owners offer their final terms, which are so unacceptable to the miners that they interpret them as a lock-out.

With the miners staying at home on May 1 the government declares a state of emergency. The TUC (Trades Union Congress) responds by calling a general strike, to start at midnight on May 3. Some three millions workers respond, crippling transport and all the nation's main industries. Their action launches an extraordinary period of class confrontation, which nevertheless remains for the most part non-violent - and in places almost good-natured.
Members of the middle classes volunteer eagerly to distribute food to the shops, to sort and deliver letters, to drive buses, lorries and even trains, and to serve as special constables.

In these circumstances a quick victory for either side is unlikely. On May 8 the prime minister, Baldwin, uses the fledgling BBC (British Broadcasting Company) to broadcast a message of conciliation - word of which is spread, like other news at this tense time, by the few who have receivers. The mine owners make a compromise offer, which the TUC considers sufficient for them to call off the strike.
The strike ends, after nine days, on May 12 - though the TUC fails to persuade the miners themselves that there are now grounds for a settlement, and it is another five bitter months before they give in and return to work. Their underlying argument, that the piecemeal private ownership of mines is wasteful and inefficient, bears eventual fruit in the nationalization policies of the Attlee government after World War II.

If the general strike of 1926 is a home-grown problem, the next great economic crisis to confront Britain is international in scope. The Slump, or Depression, begins in the USA in 1929. Coping with its effects in Britain falls not to Baldwin but to Ramsay MacDonald.
In the general election of 1929 Labour is for the first time the largest party in the house of commons, though still without an overall majority (287 Labour, 260 Conservative, 59 Liberal). The Liberals agree to support Labour, so once again Ramsay MacDonald forms a minority government.

A major plank in Labour's manifesto has been tackling unemployment, standing at more than a million or 10% of the workforce in 1929. But the Slump makes it impossible even to maintain this level. By 1931 it has doubled to more than two million, with a devastating effect on the government's fund for unemployment insurance.
A report commissioned by the government in July 1931 predicts economic disaster unless there are severe tax rises, cuts in public sector pay and a 20% reduction in the dole. The result is a massive run on the pound (fixed in value because of the gold standard), draining Britain's reserves of gold.

Ramsay MacDonald resigns but is persuaded by the king, George V, to continue at the head of a coalition national government. His decision to do so is regarded as abject betrayal by the Labour party (which immediately appoints a new leader, Arthur Henderson), but is welcomed by Baldwin and the Conservatives.