The House of Saxe Coburg Gotha (renamed Windsor in
1918)
A
Chronology from 1901
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The story of one family’s journey through two
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Headlines are in brown.
Dates are in red.
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blue.
References and
citations are in turquoise.
Context and local
history are in purple.
Geographical
context is in green.
The House of Hanover
1901
The House of Saxe Coburg
Gotha
1901-1910 - Edward VII
The 1901 Census
asked for the first time if respondents worked at home.
Population of the
United Kingdom reaches 41.6 million.
The political
landscape changed with the Taff Vale
judgement of 1901. The Taff Vale Railway Company successfully sued the
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for damages for breach of contract
after a sudden strike.
The Conservative
Prime Minister, A J Balfour, understood that all parties recognised the
importance of the work of the trade unions.
Ramsay MacDonald,
secretary of the new Labour Representation Committee, appealed to the trade
unions to seek direct representation in Parliament.
Most Europeans in
1900 imagined themselves as constantly advancing towards a civilisation greater
than the world had ever known. By 1914 194 treaties provided for international;
arbitration and there were 400 peace organisations. Norman Angell’s The Great
Illusion (1910) argued that economic interdependence made war economically self defeating.
In 1901 Russia
began to build a railway line to Tashkent, causing concerns about a threat of
invasion of India. Russia had been industrialising fast in recent years and was
expanding in China, the Near East, Persia and Central Asia. Russia’s alliance
with France also caused concern.
Fear of a
European war was initially driven by Russian expansion. However from this time
there were also fears about German naval; expansion, with Erskine Childer’s Riddle of
the Sands (1903) telling a story of a German naval invasion.
Public opinion
demanded a large naval programme and naval spending increased by 50% between
1899 to 1905, focused on the new Dreadnaught battleships; We want eight and
we won’t wait.
1902
Salisbury’s
government sought to strengthen Britain’s strategic position by improving
relations with the US and signing a treaty with Japan in 1902.
This encouraged
Japan to resist Russian expansionism in north China in the Russo Japanese War
1904 to 1905.
Balfour’s Education Act
1902 provided for secondary education, a national system based on Local
Education Authorities. This was strongly opposed by the Nonconformist-Liberal
opposition.
Buffalo Bill’s
Wild West Show toured England.
1903
The first flight
by Orville Wright made on 17 December 1903
In 1903, Emmeline
Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel Pankhurst founded the Women’s
Social and Political Union in Manchester. Emmeline See Women’s Suffrage.
In May 1903, the
Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain proposed import tariffs with ‘imperial
preference’. This reawakened old arguments of free trade as a source of peace
and prosperity versus tariffs as a source of conflict and oppression.
1904
Russian warships
fired on British trawlers in the North Sea in October 1904.
A rapprochement
with France became the Entente Cordiale in 1904. Behind the scenes was a
colonial deal to recognise Egypt in return for recognition of French Morocco.
The entente and something similar but less enthusiastic with Russia in 1907
were not allienaces, but deals and by 1914, it was by
no means sure who would side with who.
1905
Albert Einstein published is theory of relativity.
1906
George Dangerfield wrote the Strange Death of Liberal England,
portraying am façade of peace and prosperity undermined by smouldering fires of
working class militancy, civil war in Ireland, and the suffragette movement.
The Trades Disputes Act 1906 gave legal immunity to unions.
Union membership was already high compared to other European
countries, and doubled from 1906 to 1914. Over 120 unions with over 800,000
members were affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee, which became
the Labour Party in 1906, under Keir
Hardie’s leadership.
The unions continued to support the Liberal Party who won with a
landslide in the 1906 election. Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman became Prime
Minister.
1907
An agreement was reached with Russia in 1907 over negotiations
over Persia, but relations were tense again by 1913.
Midwives and parents were now required to notify the local health
ministry of births, to prevent missed registration.
The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act 1907 allowed a man to
marry his dead wife’s sister.
New Zealand became self-governing within the British Empire.
1908
On the death of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, H H Asquith became Prime Minister. Lloyd George, a Manchester
born Welshman, was Chancellor. Churchill was President of the Board of Trade. A
mass of legislation caused Churchill later to reflect that it was the best
government he had ever been in. Reforms were introduced in relation to:
· School
meals.
· Accident
compensation.
· Child
protection.
· Labour
exchanged.
· Town
planning.
· Old
age pensions (1908).
· National
Insurance (1911)
Lloyd George introduced an old age pension scheme, to alleviate
fear of entering the workhouse, at 5s a week, which was a significant sum for
the elderly poor. William Beveridge had concerns about a non
contributory scheme as a source of free gifts, then the poorest waste
over 2d per week on drink. It was accompanied by a means test and a requirement
for a record of good behaviour.
Poor people began to regard the state as a benevolent entity.
Pension Day was on 1 January 1909 and was celebrated with flags and bonfires.
The London Olympics.
Mass production of the Model T Ford in USA.
1909
Lloyd George ‘’s People’s Budget was required to pay for expensive
battleships and the new old age pension scheme. There were a range of new taxes
including a super tax on incomes over £5,000, increased dearth duties and a new
land tax. The Conservatives in the Lorsd flouted a
long tradition not to oppose budgets, by defeating the budget in the Lords.
1910
George V (1910 to 1936)
Start of a survey of land ownership (“Lloyd George’s Doomsday”) to
support the Finance Act.
The first general election in February 1910 left the Liberals and
Tories about equal, so the Liberals were dependent on the Irish Nationalists.
The price of a Parliament Act to veto the Lords’ obstruction was Irish Home
Rule.
A second general election in December 1910 returned the same
result, with the Liberals still reliant on the Irish Nationalists.
George V agreed to create enough Liberal peers to overturn the
Tory majority.
1911
The Lords agreed to the Parliament Act
1911, to remove the power of the House of Lords to reject money bills, and
to replace the Lords' veto over other public bills with the power of delay. In
addition, it was proposed to reduce the maximum duration of a Parliament from
seven years to five. The Parliament Act was passed by the House of Lords by a
131-114 vote in August 1911.
Population of the UK at 42.1 million.
Churchill’s National Insurance Act 1911 allowed some sickness
benefits and access to a doctor. It provided health insurance to contributing
workers and unemployment benefit to certain occupations. No other country dared
top introduce compulsory unemployment insurance.
Unlike other charity organisations, ‘deserving’ was no longer the test.
Unemployment benefits introduced.
Mother’s maiden names added to GRO indexes.
The Society of Genealogists was established.
1912
14 April 1912 - the sinking of the Titanic, the unsinkable ship,
on her maiden voyage, seemed to symbolise some underlying tensions in British
society, and its inequalities. Edward Smith was a hero for going down with his
ship, whilst a potential cause of the tragedy. Gentlemanly chivalry was
tempered by the greater escapes from first than third class.
Scott's Expedition to Antarctica also gave rise to heroic stories,
of nearly reaching the Pole; of Captain Oates heroic walk to his death; and of
Scott’s diary recording Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardinhood, endurance and courage of my companions, whilst
mixed with later recognition of his arrogance and incompetence in some
respects.
In 1912, a Home Rule Bill for Ireland was introduced.
1913
In 1913, the Home Rule Bill for Ireland passed on its third
reading. The Liberals pushed it through, but sought to get a compromise to
exclude Ulster.
In January 1913 a paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force was created
and reached 5,000 men, importing illegal weapons.
Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Unionists, proclaimed an Ulster
provisional government to resist nationalist rule.
Suffragette demonstrations in
London. There is an In Our
Time podcast, Suffragism.
1914
In March 1914 a nationalist Irish Volunteer Force was set up in
Dublin and reached 20,000 men.
The Curragh
incident of 20 March 1914, sometimes known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred
in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main
base for the British Army in Ireland. This was one of the few occasions since
the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly
intervened in politics. It is widely thought of as a mutiny, though no orders
actually given were disobeyed.
In May 1914 the Commons passed the Home Rule Bill. The First World
War then postponed things for two years.
The start of the
First World War. See notes on the outbreak of the First World War and
its causes.
German raids on Hartlepool,
Whitby and Scarborough
Notice of official changes in name now published in The London
Gazette.
1915
Evacuations from Gallipoli.
First Zeppelin raid on Great Britain.
A view of the civilian population not facing the reality of modern
war at home, distilled by an anti civilian view from
Siegfried Sassoon’s writings, is largely inaccurate. Home leave and regular
letters meant the home front had a fairly realistic view of the war in France.
There was no significant anti war
movement and views hardened after the torpedoing of the Lusitania in May
1915, with the loss of 1,200 civilians.
Rent control was introduced in 1915, making private letting less
profitable and reducing the supply of rented accommodation. An unforeseen
consequence was to turn the middle classes in future years from tenants into
homeowners.
1916
27 January 1916 – The Military Service Act imposed conscription on all single men
aged 18 to 41 with exemptions for medically unfit, clergymen, teachers and
certain industrial classes.
The first Battle of the Somme
The Third Battle of Ypres
(Passchendaele).
In April 1916 there was an uprising in Dublin with smaller
disturbances in Wexford and Cok. The passage of the Home Rule Bill in 1914, had
been suspended for the war. The moderate nationalist John Redmond supported the
war effort, as did the overwhelming majority in Ireland, but the radical
nationalists rejected this support, fearing that they were losing ground to the
moderate view. On Easter Monday, 24 April 1914, 1,500 rioters took the General
Post Office and other buildings in central Dublin. A conflict followed, with
significant loss of life. 400 rebels were imprisoned and 15 leaders court
martial and shoot. Irishmen, including Catholic Dubliners, continued to
volunteer for the war, but opinion became polarised and Sinn Fein began to win
in by elections at the expense of John Redmond’s moderate nationalists.
In December 1916, Asquith was replaced by Lloyd George who led a
coalition government of Tories, Liberals and Labour. This was the start of a
new political era, when the Liberals went into permanent decline.
Lloyd George was a nonconformist Liberal. He sincerely wanted to
save soldiers’ lives and was adept and maintaining home front morale.
1917
9 April -16 June 1917: the Arras offensive
The Battle of Vimy Ridge (part of the Battle of Arras), 9 to 12
April 1917
The Russian revolution.
USA joined the First World War.
By 1917, the home population were feeling the economic effects of
the war. The biggest long term losers were the traditional landowning class,
especially when fathers and sons were killed giving rise to closely repeated
40% death duties.
This was a tense time:
· The
height of the U boat campaign
· Food
shortages in Christmas 1917
· Aeireal
bombing of London
· A new
German offensive in March 1918
The Balfour
Declaration in November 1917 committed Britain to a National Home for
the Jewish people in Palestine. It seemed a clever plan and would please a
Jewish population influential in America. In time this would lead to an
intractable and damaging problem.
1918
The House of Windsor
The Royal Family
changed its name from, Saxe-Coburg to Windsor.
In January 1918, the Labour Party adopted Clause 4 which pledged
common ownership of the means of production.
Britain was able to buy on world markets to sustain the war
effort. Its economy became centralised with public spending rising from £184M
in 1913 to £2.7B in 1918 by which time 85% of British food supplies were
administered by the State,
The number of women in work increased by about 25% and by 1918,
there were 947,000 women working in munitions factories, but two thirds left
their jobs by 1920. By 1921 there were fewer women working than in 1911.
There was a jump in births out of marriage from 4.3% to 6.3%.
The Representation
of the People Act 1918 widened suffrage by abolishing practically all
property qualifications for men and by enfranchising women over 30 who met
minimum property qualifications. The enfranchisement of this latter group was
accepted as recognition of the contribution made by women defence workers. It
followed an all party Speaker’s conference in 1916
and was a face saving way of resolving the issue of women’s suffrage which had
been complicated before the war by the Suffrage movement. The Act enfranchised
12.9M men over 21 and 8.4M women over 30.
11 November 1918 - The
Armistice.
Revolution and civil strife spread widely after the Great War:
· More
people would die in Russia than during the world war.
· Austria
Hungary
· The
former Ottoman Empire
· Armenia
· Kurdish
lands
· Iraq
· Palestine
· India
· China
1918 to 1919 – The ‘Spanish’ Flu killed 228,000.
In December 1918 the ‘coupon election’ saw a big increase in Tory
seats and the Liberals in decline, with the start of a shift of many to Labour,
but Lloyd George remained Prime Minister of the coalition until 1922.
1919
The Sex
Disqualification (Removal Act) 1919 enabled women to join the professions
and professional bodies, to sit on juries and be awarded degrees.
Soldiers discharged from service after the first world war.
Britain adopted a 48 hour working week.
Peace Terms
A Peace Conference in Paris from January to May 1919 started to
consider the aftermath of the war. Germany would potentially remain the
strongest state and it was not clear after the Armistice, particularly to
Germany, that they had been defeated. Differences emerged between Britain and
America, whose attention turned back to interests outside Europe, who turned
towards Woodrow Wilson’s ideas of a New World Order and France and other
Continental States whose main concern was a resurgence of Germany. Some agreement
was reached when Britain and America offered France a security guarantee;
Germany’s army was to be restricted to 100,000, with no tanks nor air force,
and a small navy with no submarines.
The decisions were generally taken in private, without Germany, in
haste, with emotion and on relatively autocratic lines. The Germans were
summoned on 7 May 1919 and given two weeks. They initially rejected the terms,
but after threats they signed the Treaty
of Versailles under protest in the Hall of Mirrors where the Reich had been
proclaimed in 1871. They felt they had been tricked.
In fact most of the transferred territory was conquered land
restored to the French, Danish and Polish.
Particularly contentious was Clause 231, the War Guilt Clause,
which in English focused on responsibility, but in German, Kriegsschuldfrage
referred to both debt and guilt.
There was popular support in Britain that Germany should pay.
However political and intellectual elites had misgivings. A J Balfour felt that
the only way to stop future war was to change the international system of the
world. John Maynard Keynes, who attended the conference, wrote The Economic
Consequences of the Peace, 1919. He argued for a much less onerous
treaty, not just for the sake of German civilians but for the sake of the
economic well-being of Europe and beyond, including the Allied Powers. He
denounced the reduction of Germany to servitude for a generation.
For Germany the issue was more political than economic.
Reparations signified defeat.
In fact the reparations were fixed at £6.6B to be paid over 36
years. The Allies full costs were circa £12B and the damage to buildings in
Frane alone was estimated at a cost of £17B.
Woodrow Wilson also advocated reconciliation, peace without
victory. He pressed for the New League of Nations to guide the world’s
destiny. The League
of Nations was formally established by the Treaty of Versailles. It had its
headquarters in Geneva, with its secretariat run by Sir Eric Drummond. It was
the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was
to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace
Conference that ended the First World War. The main organization ceased
operations on 20 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the
new United Nations. As the template for modern global governance, the League
profoundly shaped the modern world.
Having replaced the pro war Irish Party, Sinn Fein set up its own
symbolic parliament in Ireland in January 1919.
Sectarian violence in the south of India and in the north this led
to the massacre at Amritsar in
April 1919.
The Government
of India Act 1919 conceded some provincial self
government.
Post War Boom
The post war boom temporarily kept wages at their higher levels,
unemployment benefit became more generous, a house building programme started,
state medical insurance now covered 40% of the population and public health
improved.
The state had increased in size and scope during the war, taxation
had tripled and income tax quadrupled. In the 1920s public expenditure was
about a quarter of GDP, doubled from 1913.
1920
Empire
It 1920, the British Empire was at its largest, with 500M people.
It had acquired significant tracts of Africa and much of the Middle East under
League of Nations mandates, which placed former German and Turkish
possessions into the ‘benevolent British administration’.
English became a new world language.
However after the Great War, Britain’s armed forces were rapidly
demobilised. Britain’s net overseas investments in 1913 were double its GDP and
Britain owned 43% of the world’s foreign investments. By 1918, Britain’s wealth
had halved. By 1945, Britain had little of its wealth left.
The imperial experiment had drawn on eighteenth century ideas of
progress and there were ideas of leading mankind to a prosperous future.
Nevertheless there was envy of French culture against English philistinism,
that the US led the way for democracy and religious dissent, and Germany in
science and business. Britain had become more outward looking through trade,
travel and migration. The empire probably meant less to ordinary Britons than
to outsiders, Economically Britain was greater connected and colonial trade and
investment was about a third of Britain’s total. In general though the imperial
interests made little economic difference when weighing cost (particularly
military) against income. The empire gave rise to heroes like David Livingstone
and General Gordon who were seen as humanitarian and religious martyrs. But
there was equal popularity to European liberators like Garibaldi in Italy. The
British saw themselves as Christian Europeans, but admired the superiority of
French culture and arts, German and Italian art and music, German philosophy
and Ancient Greek culture.
The most truly imperial groups were colonial inter related
families, often from Scotland and Ireland.
The complexity of governments and people was mind-blowing.
Cooperative in wartime, in peacetime they had their own ambitions. Dominions
took German colonies for themselves – South Africa took German South West
Africa; Australia took part of New Guinea.
Popular culture such as Henry Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines
(1886) and Rudyard Kipling,. Were tempered by enthusiasm for Westerns and
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.
(Robert Tombs, The English and their History, 2023, 584 to
591, 651 to 652).
The Middle East
Tensions grew
with France over the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. France demanded
league mandates over Syria and Lebanon. Britain had to reduce the territory it
had offered to the leaders of the Arab revolt, the Sherif of Mecca and his sons
Abdullah and Faisal. The French bombarded Damascus in 1920 and ejected Faisal.
He accepted British Protection who made him king of Iraq (important for oil)
and Abdullah king of Transjordan.
The disastrous
Balfour Declaration of 1917 was quickly a disaster. By encouraging Jewish
immigration and land purchase, it fuelled conflict.
Ireland
Westminster
legislated for two parliaments in Dublin and Belfast. Sinn Fein rejected the
partition. Violence started and then retaliatory killings of those supporting
Sinn Fein. The mostly Catholic Royal Ulster Constabulary was reinforced, to
maintain control and suppress the Irish Republican Army (“IRA”), by the
Black and Tans, mostly unemployed former British soldiers, although they were
less well trained in ordinary police methods.
Death squads operated
for both sides and the worst incident was Bloody Sunday on 21 November 1920.
There was a
short, but severe European depression in 1920 to 1921, with bankruptcies and
dent.
1921
In May 1921 two Irish Parliament were elected, one dominated by
Sinn Fein, the other by Ulster Unionists.
On 6 December 1921 a treaty established the Irish Free State
within the Commonwealth. Civil war followed.
Population of the United Kingdom reaches 44 million.
New cultural trends in the
Roaring Twenties.
1922
The outcome of the violence in Ireland was a compromise, the Irish
Free State gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1922, with the six
counties centred on Protestant Ulster becoming a self
governing province of the United Kingdom..
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union) was created
in 1922.
Inauguration of the British Broadcasting Corporation (“BBC”).
First public radio broadcasts.
Tory governments under Andrew
Bonar Law and Stanley
Baldwin.
1923
The English Place Name Society was founded.
By 1923 Germany started to repeatedly refuse to deliver
reparations and in response French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr
district.
The consequential hyperinflation in Germany reduced the value of
the mark from 7,000 to 4 trillion to the dollar in a few months. The franc also
suffered and tensions grew between France and America and Britian.
1924
The first brief minority Labour Government under James
Ramsay MacDonald from January to November 1924.
The Dawes
Plan 1924 reduced the reparations bill and abandoned enforcement.
1925
Demonstration of the television by James Logie Baird.
Before 1914, the fixing of the value of the pound to the gold
standard facilitated trade and investment. It was suspended for the war, but
due to resume in 1925. Churchill, the chancellor, was all too aware of the
dangers of rising the value of sterling too high, but it was hard to gauge the
right value, and he settled on the pre war rate of $4.85 to the £. This proved
too high. Pre war the Bank of England had flexibility to provide nail outs as a
lender of last resort. However the City’s lead had been replaced by Wall Street
as the world’s banker. By 1929, 40% of the world’s gold was in Fort Knox. After
the war, Europe owed significant debts to USA, but the protectionist US did not
buy enough European goods, so the Europeans couldn’t earn enough to pay their
debts. The US therefore lent more.
The Locarno
Treaties were seven agreements negotiated in Locarno, Switzerland, from 5
to 16 October 1925 and formally signed in London on 1 December 1925, in which
the First World War Western European Allied powers and the new states of
Central and Eastern Europe sought to secure the post-war territorial
settlement, in return for normalizing relations with the defeated German Reich
(the Weimar Republic). It also stated that Germany would never go to war with
the other countries. Locarno divided borders in Europe into two categories:
western, which were guaranteed by the Locarno Treaties, and eastern borders of
Germany with Poland, which were open for revision. Germany’s western border was
thus jointly guaranteed.
1926
The war had cost Britain more than its Allies and its national
debt had risen to 126% of GDP. India had
developed its own textile industry and total exports of cloth fell 71% between
1913 to 1937.
Problems were compounded by understandable policies to cut working
hours and keep wages high.
By this time there was a post war scourge of unemployment.
Opportunities for emigration was becoming more restricted – the US imposed
limits.
Miners’ strikes and the nine day General
Strike of 1926.
The Births and
Deaths Registration Act 1926.
The Legitimacy Act 1926.
1928
The Kellog-Briand
pact initiated by France and US, was an international renunciation of war.
The first tremors of a banking crisis were felt in Austria and
Germany.
Women over 21 years old received the right to vote. Women suffrage
was on the same basis as men.
The discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming leading to the
antibiotics revolution.
In 1928 Japanese forces began to take control of Manchuria
in northern China.
1929
In a new spirit of global security and renunciation of war, the
Labour government slashed Britain’s naval strength in 1929 to 1930, and stopped
development of the Singapore naval base.
The Wall
Street Crash.
The international post war boom had disguised underlying economic
weakness. The appearance of prosperity rested on a façade of cheap money.
The worst consequences were in US and Germany. The reaction of
everyone was self protection. Countries raised
tariffs on foreign imports, This was a further blow to already struggling
English export industries.
The Local Government Act 1929 abolished workhouses (though many
were renamed Public Assistance Institutions and continued under local council
control).
The Viceroy, later Lord Halifax, offered talks with Indian
nationalists under pressure from the embarrassing peaceful Mohandas
Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi.
Ramsay MacDonald’s 1929 Labour government tried to improve
relations with Germany and Ireland and to give more autonomy to Egypt and
India.
1930
A treaty arising from the London
Naval Conference of 1930 with US and Japan limited warship building.
However even the relatively moderate Weimar Republic was still not
reconciled to the aftermath of the First World War and was evading arms
limitations, by tank training in Russia and building ‘pocket battleships’ just
inside the tonnage limits. At the very time that everyone else was disarming,
Germany was reaming, albeit just within the constraints imposed on it.
The frustrated French began to build the Maginot
Line to defend their eastern frontier.
One fifth of the British male population was employed.
By the 1930s, Jewish settlement in Palestine had increased, driven
partly by anti semitism across Europe, and tensions with the Palestinians led
to the Arab Uprisings.
1931
Population of UK reaches 46 million.
26 April 1931, the National Census, but all records for England
and Wales were destroyed in a fire at Hayes in Middlesex.
The Statute
of Westminster 1931 recognised the independence of Canada Australia, the
Irish Free State, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland, and of the
Dominions within a Commonwealth. The empire was now justified as a family,
based on loyalty. In an age of totalitarianism and racist expansion, the empire
would add some protection for more exposed places.
In August 1931 Ramsay MacDonald suddenly resigned and formed a
National Government with Tory and Liberal support. The National Government
tried to cut public sector wages.
The Invergordon
Mutiny was an industrial action by around 1,000 sailors in the British
Atlantic Fleet that took place on 15–16 September 1931. For two days, ships of
the Royal Navy at Invergordon were in open mutiny, in one of the few military
strikes in British history.
There was another run on the pound.
Britain abandoned the gold standard in September 1931 and the
pound lost 30% of its value. The economy benefitted and interest rates fell
from 6% to 2%.
In Germany the National Socialist German Workers Party started to
win votes from a population desperate for a way out of the slump, and who
blamed the reparations and the Treaty of Versailles.
1932
Sir Oswald Moseley drew on the comradeship of the trenches, to
form a quasi military, uniformed political movement,
pursing the third way. He formed the British Union of Facists.
However violence went beyond the tolerance of the British public.
The Ottawa
Conference 1932 created a system of imperial preference, internal
free trade. The global free trade orthodoxy established in the 1840s was
abandoned. By the 1930s the most ardent supporters of global free trade, such
as the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, had abandoned support for it. Imports
fell by 18%. The Yorkshire woollen industry continued to be relatively robust,
so some of the old industries were still thriving at this stage.
An international peace movement was gathering strength. A World Disarmament Conference of
59 states met in Geneva in February 1932.
The peace movement and the policy of appeasement was galvanised by
fear. There was a new fear of aerial bombardment and poison gas that would
spread any conflict everywhere. Baldwin warned in 1932 that there was no power
on earth to stop the man on the street from being bombed. In the Black Death
1934 the nation was killed by poison gas, with a few survivors in the Cheddar
Gorge caves. However there were calls to increase the size of the air force. H G Wells The Shape of Things to Come
(1933) predicted a war over Danzig in 1940.
1933
In January 1933, as the disarmament conference was still in session,
Adolf Hitler, with 40% electorate support became head of a coalition
government, and soon seized power.
On 14 October 1933 Germany announced its withdrawal from both the
Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations, and denounced the Versailles
disarmament clauses, ostensibly in response to the Western powers' refusal to
meet its demand for equality. Prior to its withdrawal, Germany was represented
at the conference by Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph
Goebbels.
Germany began to triple the size of her army.
The mood in Britain continued to look to collective security,
‘appeasement’ and disarmament, in the continued objective to establish a new
world order.
In October 1933 the Labour Party conference supported a motion to
take no part in war and resist it with the whole force of the Labour movement.
1934
Nevertheless, Stanley Baldwin pledged air parity with Germany in
1934. The hopes for the League of Nations were beginning to collapse as
Germany, along with Italy and Japan, became greater threats.
An expansion of the Royal Air Force was announced in 1934.
Planning began for rationing, mass evacuation and a national
hospital service.
Early interpretations of Hitler’s thinking, whilst of overwhelming
dislike, tended towards mockery and dismissal. A reading of Mein Kampf
suggested to western minds that his interest was eastward, not westward.
1935
The Government
of India Act 1935 established relatively democratic self
government at provincial level.
Ramsay MacDonald
retired and Stanley Baldwin became leader of the National Government. He
declared that he was not going to get the country into a war, but began a
degree of rearmament.
In October 1935
Benito Mussolini attacked the African monarchy of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and
Emperor Haile Selassie appealed to the League of Nations. The gallant monarch
came to embody the ideals and hoped for peace and security.
· The League
imposed economic sanctions on Italy (including foie gras, but not oil).
· The Royal Navy
sent a fleet to the Mediterranean.
However Britain
and France secretly agreed with Italy to most of its demands, leaving only a
vestige of independence. When this became known in December 1935, there was
public outcry and the deal was abandoned.
Mussolini became
determined to conquer all of Abyssinia, and started to talk with Hitler.
Noone wanted a
European war over Abyssinia. Yet Britain could have done much to stop Mussolini
just by closing the Suez Canal.
Italy and Germany
drew the message that the allied nations were not willing to take risks.
1936
King Edward VIII, January
to December 1936
Edward VIII
succeeded in 1936, and was determined to marry the American Wallis Simpson.
Baldwin felt this would undermine the modern purpose of the monarchy, as a
symbol of unity and duty. There were
concerns of Edward’s fascist leanings.
The Abdication
A solution to the
abdication crisis was found in the suitably married Duke of York who acceded as
George VI in December 1936.
George VI, 1936 to 1952
On 7 March 1936
Hitler sent 3,000 troops illegally into the
Rhineland (with orders to withdraw if France reacted) and denounced the
Treaty of Locarno. Nazi aggression could arguably have been clipped in the bud
at this stage. The wily Hitler accompanied his move with peace offers. For many
the Rhineland was an ill planned vestige of the Versailles Treaty. Britain and
others had too many commitments elsewhere to go to war.
In July 1936 a military
uprising began in Spain. It became a three year civil war between Nationalists
and Republicans.
· Hitler saw it as
a distraction to the allied powers, a training ground for his new army and air
force, and an arena over which to strengthen ties with Italy.
· The Soviet Union
gave cautious support to the Spanish Republicans at a time when at home Stalin
was beginning his purge.
· The Nationalists
slaughtered on a scale unseen since the French Revolution.
· Paris and London
agreed on a policy of non intervention.
· 60,000 folk from
50 countries, 80% communists, 2,300 from Britain, volunteered for the
International Brigades to defend the Republic.
The Abyssinian
Crisis and the Spanish Civil War gave a sense of Europe in conflict.
The Battle of Cable Street, London. Moseley’s East End March in
October 1916 saw 7,000 black shirts confronted by angry opponents. The
Depression was lifting and there was little tolerance for the new
movement. series of clashes that took
place at several locations in the inner East End, most notably Cable Street, on
Sunday 4 October 1936 related to a march by the British Union of Fascists.
The 1930s saw economic recovery, a 30% fall in unemployment, and
the evolution of the most developed welfare system of its time in the world.
There were a series of measures including minimum wage agreements,
tribunal regulation, rent control, price fixing and subsidies, which provided
some security, but arguably slowed recovery. However rearmament which started
in earnest in 1936 probably had the most effect on recovery.
However the recovery was uneven. The north of England had been hit
by post war depression accelerated by the Great Depression from 1929. The
shipbuilders of Jarrow suffered worse, while the revival was focused on new
vehicle, chemical and electrical industries in outer London, Coventry and the
Black Country.
And so, the period was also marked by the Jarrow Marches in 1936;
George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1936) and Walter Greenwood’s Love
on the Dole: A Tale of Two Cities (1933). Most people in the 1930s were
suspicious of the Nazis, but many intellectuals were attracted by Communism and
ideas of a planned economy. There was a fear across Europe of a nearing
collapse, as Sidney and Beatrice Webb wrote the Decay of Capitalist
Civilisation (1923), encouraging communism and dismissing the view of
Beatrice’s Webb’s nephew, Malcolm Muggeridge, whose view was that it
represented the most evil and cruel elements of human nature. The playwright George
Bernard Shaw felt Communism and Fascism provided a way to the future.
The Jarrow
March too place between 5 to 31 October 1936, also known as the Jarrow
Crusade. The march was an organised protest against the unemployment and
poverty suffered in the English town of Jarrow during the 1930s. Around 200 men
(or "Crusaders"), the youngest of whom was John William Farndale (FAR00854),
marched from Jarrow to London, carrying a petition to the British government
requesting the re-establishment of industry in the town following the closure
in 1934 of its main employer, Palmer's shipyard. The petition was received by
the House of Commons but not debated, and the march produced few immediate
results.
The 1930s recovery though saw falling prices and greater
purchasing power. There was a new demand for building materials and the car
industry took off.
Bomber Command was set up as a deterrent force in 1936. The
ministry of defence then shifted its focus to air defence through the
development of fighters, particularly focused on the Supermarine Spitfire with
its Rolls Royce Merlin engine.
However the army was downgraded. The RAF and Royal Navy were well
equipped, but not the army.
A series of meetings with Hitler in 1936 suggested he was
‘sincere’ (Arnold Toynbee), an abstainer and non smoker,
desirous of peace. There was a tendency to want to understand what Hitler
really wanted.
1937
A ship building programme aimed at a two ocean fleet, intending to
outbuild Japan by 5:1.
Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister on 28 May 1937. In
retrospect he has been interpreted as unimaginative, armed with a bureaucratic
form of rationalism, and with an aversion and loathing of war, which made him
the wrong person for his time.
Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, soon to be foreign secretary, felt
that what they needed was a list of Hitler’s ‘real’ demands. Lord Halifax was
sent to sound out Hitler and found that they were not talking the same
language, but nevertheless felt that a policy of reassurance was the best
approach.
A new Japanese attack on China began in 1937.
1938
Lord Halifax
became Foreign Minister in February 1938.
Having sized up
the opposition, Hitler invaded Austria in March 1938. He proclaimed it unified
with Germany in breach of the Treaty of Versailles.
Hitler then began
some barely concealed plans to attack Czechoslovakia. The northern part of
Czechoslovakia was known as the
Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was desired by Germany not only for its
territory, but also because a majority of its population were 'ethnically'
German. In the summer of 1938 Hitler demanded the annexation of the Sudetenland
into Germany.
He French Prime
Minister, Edouard Daladier warned that Hitler was far more dangerous than
Napoleon.
The first purpose
built aircraft carrier, H M S Ark Royal, was begun.
The navy’s Anti Submarine Detection Investigation Committee (“ASDIC”)
pioneered an echo sounding submarine detection system.
Chamberlain
invited himself to Berchtesgarten on 15 September 1938, his second flight. In a
further effort to preserve the peace he told Hitler that he could have the Sudetanland in return for a four power guarantee of the new
Czech borders. Hitkler’s response was the Godesberg
Memorandum, a document issued by Adolf Hitler in the early hours of 24
September 1938 concerning the Sudetenland and amounting to an ultimatum
addressed to the government of Czechoslovakia. It was named after Bad
Godesberg, where Hitler had met Neville Chamberlain for long talks on 23
September continuing into the next day.
France began
mobilisation.
In reality French
and British intelligence were still overestimating German strength.
On 27 September
1928, Chamberlain made a disheartening broadcast lamenting the nightmare of
war. "How incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and
trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between
people of whom we know nothing".
Hitler suggested
a conference in Munich on 29 September 1938 with Germany, Italy, France and
Britain. Chamberlain leapt at the proposal.
Chamberlain
approached Munich as the only chance to save the world from catastrophe.
Chamberlain ignored Daladier of France and gave no place for Czechoslovakian
views.
A deal was done,
and in a private meeting Chamberlain surprised Hitler in a proposal that
Britain and Germany would never go to war with the other again.
While Chamberlain
returned home in triumph to declare “Peace in our time”, Hitler had
concluded “Our enemies are small worms. I saw them at Munich.”
An idea of French
and British weakness was ingrained into the nation’s perception at this time.
From the German viewpoint in 1938, the Czechs were equipped with a powerful
army and the Russians were prepared to give them some help. The French army was
still the largest in Europe and the German army of 1938 was not capable of a
decisive defeat. Britain and France, with their empires, were militarily,
economically and politically much stronger than was believed. In 1938 Nazi
Germany still faced the prospect of a long and unwinnable war.
Chamberlain
became the most popular person in the world, and was suggested for the Nobel
Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, on 9
November 1938 Kristallnacht saw mob violence against Jews in Germany. A Tory MP
retorted, I must say Hitler never helps.
1939
On 13 March 1939, the German army invaded what remained of
Czechoslovakia, in violation of what had just been agreed in Munich, and, from
the Prague Castle, Hitler declared the 'Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. '
The Spanish Republic was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering
in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.
The press generally continued to favour appeasement.
Starting to grasp something of the threat, Chamberlain told the
Commons that Britain must arm herself to the teeth. Intelligence reports
started to report a risk of surprise attack of Holland and even Britain. The
government doubled defence spending. An air defence strategy took shape. By
summer 19389 the old biplanes had largely been replaced by Hawker Hurricanes.
By 1939, Britain had more battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers than any
other country.
Poland became the fulcrum of policy. On 31 March 1939, Chamberlain
told the Commons that Britain and France would help Poland if its independence
was risked.
In August 1939, France and Britain explored an alliance with the
Soviet Union. There was no trust between Russia and the two western powers.
Poland and Romania did not want the Red Army on their soil anyway!
To global astonishment, on 24 August 1939, the Soviet Union signed
a Non Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany. This gave
Hitler what he needed to unleash war.
29 September 1939 – mini census and issue of identity cards
On 1 September 1939 Hitler attacked Poland. Mussolini tried a
repeat of the Munich ploy by proposing another conference, but the now furious
House of Commons pressed the flustered Chamberlain for a robust response.
On 3 September 1939 Britain at 9am delivered its ultimatum
demanding Germany’s immediate withdrawal from Poland.
At 11am on 3 September 1939, Chamberlain, in a 5 minute broadcast
on the Home Service, announced that as Hitler had failed to respond to British
demands to leave Poland, "this country is at war with Germany".
Chamberlain added that the failure to avert war was a bitter personal blow, and
that he didn't think he could have done any more.
The Second World War.
Following the Prime Minister's speech there were a series of
announcements. All places of entertainment were to close with immediate effect,
and people were discouraged from crowding together, unless it was to attend
church. Details of the air raid warning were also given and it was emphasised
that tube stations were not to be used as shelters.
In London the air raid sirens sounded only 8 minutes later, and
many of those remaining, including commentator John Snagge, donned tin helmets
and rushed to the roof of Broadcasting House to watch the bombs falling. It was
a false alarm.
Evacuation of women and children from London.
1940
On 7 May 1940, Chamberlain formed a
National Government.
A
sudden German attack began on Holland, Belgium and France at 5.35am on 10 May
1940 and Churchill became Prime Minister that afternoon.
Winston
Churchill, in his first address as Prime Minister, told the House of Commons of
the United Kingdom, "I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil,
tears, and sweat."
Dunkirk Evacuation
– May to June 1940
The Battle of Britain,
in which the Royal Air Force defended Britain against large-scale attacks by
Nazi Germany's air force, the Luftwaffe. It has been described as the first
major military campaign fought entirely by air forces. The British officially
recognise the battle's duration as being from 10 July until 31 October 1940,
which overlaps the period of large-scale night attacks known as The Blitz, that lasted from 7
September 1940 to 11 May 1941.
Blitz over Swansea
In June 1940 Clement Attlee saw a need for complete control over
persons and property. War expenditure rose from 7% of net national expenditure
to 55% and taxation rose steeply.
The mobilisation of 4.5M men and 467,000 women required new
workers to take places in industry and agriculture. Millions of acres of
grassland and even parks and golf courses went under plough.
The Minister of Labour and National Service was the tough union
boss, Ernest
Bevin, autocratic but completely loyal to Churchill and Attlee. The Emergency
Powers Act 1940 gave him wide powers to take almost any necessary action.
He saw a need for a collectivist approach. The Bevin Boys, drawn by lot on
conscription, were sent to work in coalmines.
The five major constraints on the wartime economy were:
· Gold
and foreign currency reserves. Whilst US could supply foreign credit, Congress
initially forbade loans and restricted the supply of armaments. However in
March 1941 it passed the Len Lease Act which removed restrictions and deferred
payments. The American economy boomed. Washington extracted trade concessions
which removed much of its postwar economic power.
· Raw
materials.
· Shipping.
· Industrial
capacity.
· Manpower.
Normal working hours were 8am to 7pm, seven days a week, with many people
exceeding this. Women were conscripted for the first time,. Later Prisoners of
war were put to work. In the long term the voluntary submission of free people
to discipline was more successful than the Nazi approach, fearing opposition at
home, who ruthlessly exploited the labour in occupied countries.
Britain became used to rationing, queuing and shallow baths.
Basics like potatoes remained unrationed. New foods like spam appeared. The
average diet was healthier but less enjoyable. Britain never went hungry.
1941
December 1941 – Attack on Pearl Harbour
1942
2 December 1942 – The Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of
Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiates
the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
An austere Whitehall mandarin, Sir William Beveridge, was tasked
to report on welfare policy, adopting ideas which included a stern refusal to
give something for nothing. Beveridge identified the five giants of want,
disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness, which his programme of social reform
was intended to deal with. His idea was for a national minimum safety net of £2
a week in return for service and contribution – everyone would pay the same
level of contribution and receive the same level of benefit. The
Beveridge Report (Social Insurance and Allied Services) was
published in December 1942. Churchill committed himself to a post war four year
plan. In due course Tory hesitations and Labour enthusiasm contributed to
Labour’s landslide victory in 1945.
The new era of state planning had its limits. The cost of war
followed by military spending during the Cold War limited the extent of a
centrally funded health service, union ambitions for full employment, and the
extent of state aid.
1943
Conclusion of the two year National Farm Survey.
6
June 1944 – D Day landings.
The Education Act 1944 (The
Butler Act) established tripartite education system of grammar schools,
secondary modern schools and technical schools. The change was led by the Tory,
R A Butler. It set up a new Ministry of Education with hundreds of small Local
Education Authorities,. The new model was based on three types of state
secondary education – grammar, technical and ‘secondary modern’, driven by a
single aptitude test, the eleven plus, at age 11, which were intended to work
together with the types of school often located together. It never worked as
intended and in practice left a divide between grammar and secondary modern
schools.
1945
8 May 1945 - Victory in Europe Day
The National register of Archives was established to collect
manuscript information outside public records.
From 1945, the Australian government encouraged British citizens
to emigrate to Australia under an assisted passage scheme.
In July 1945 there was a general election. Churchill was popular,
but there was a shift in opinion towards a brave but planned new world. Many
voters had been turned off politics by the war and were politically confused.
Many saw no point in the election while the war with Japan was continuing. Half
the armed forces didn’t vote at all. Labour won their first clear majority.
6 to 9 August 1945 - Atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
15 August 1945, Victory in Japan Day.
George Orwell’s Animal Farm published.
1946
The New Towns Act led to 27 new towns.
Family Census carried out for the Royal Commission on Population.
1947
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst opens.
Education now compulsory up to age 15.
1948
The National Health Service started.
Summer Olympics in London.
The Poor Law abolished.
1949
February 1949 - First round-the-world nonstop flight. Capt. James
Gallagher and USAF crew of 13 flew a Boeing B-50A Superfortress around the
world nonstop from Ft. Worth, returning to same point: 23,452 mi in 94 hr., 1
min., with four aerial refuelings en
route
Formation of NATO
1950
Korean War
(1950–1953).
1951
Population of UK reached 50.2 million
8 April 1951 – the first full census since World War 2.
The first volume of Nikolaus Pevsner’s The Buildings of England
published with detailed surveys of all significant historical buildings
1952
Elizabeth II, 1952 to 2022
The Second Elizabethan Age
The great smog of London.
1953
29 May 1953 - Hilary and Tenzing reach the suit of Everest
2 June 1953 - Elizabeth II’s Coronation
Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double-helix structure
of DNA.
1955
The Vietnam War began
1960
British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered his Wind of
Change speech in 1960.
1961
First man in space
The Berlin Wall was built
The data from the 1961 census was entered onto a computer for the
first time.
1962
The Cuban Missile Crisis (16–28 October 1962)
1963
Kennedy was assassinated and replaced by Vice President Lyndon
Johnson.
1966
A mini census was held based on 10% of the population.
1967
The Public Record Act 1967 reduced the length of time records were
closed to 30 years, except for census data to remain closed for 100 years.
1968
The assassination of Martin Luther King junior.
1969
The Apollo 11 mission landed the first humans on the Moon in July
1969.
The Representation of the People Act 1969 extended the vote to
women and men over 18 years old.
The Divorce Reform Act 1969 made divorce easier from 1971.
British Troops deployed to Northern Ireland.
1970
The age of majority reduced from 21 to 18 years old.
1971
Population of UK was 55.9 million.
Decimalisation of the currency.
1972
Bloody Sunday
1973
Britain and Ireland joined the European Economic Union (“EEC”).
1973 Oil Crisis
1976
Deaths exceeded live births in England and Wales for the first
time since records began.
1977
Opening of The National Archives (“TNA”) at Kew.
1979
Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party rose to power in the
United Kingdom in 1979, initiating a policy of reducing government spending,
weakening the power of trade unions, and promoting economic and trade
liberalization.
SAS storm the Iranian Embassy
Lord Mountbatten murdered by the IRA.
1979–1989
Soviet–Afghan War – a war fought between the Soviet Union and the
Islamist Mujahideen Resistance in Afghanistan. The mujahideen found other
support from a variety of sources including the Central Intelligence Agency of
the United States (see Operation Cyclone), as well as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan
and other Muslim nations through the context of the Cold War and the regional
India–Pakistan conflict.
1981
UK population 56.3 million
The Space Shuttle Columbia seconds after engine ignition, 1981
1982
The Falklands War.
1984
GRO and BMD registers now arranged annually not quarterly.
1985
The Bradford City Stadium Fire
Toxteth, Liverpool and Broadwater Farm, Tottenham Riots
1987
Legal restrictions between Children born to married and unmarried
parents removed (The Family Law Reform Act 1987).
U.S. President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev
signing the INF Treaty, 1987
1989
The Fall of the Berlin Wall. Anti communist
revolutions across Europe.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The development of the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee).
1990
Germany reunified on 3 October 1990 as a result of the fall of the
Berlin Wall and after integrating the economic structure and provincial
governments, focused on modernization of the former communist East. People who
were brought up in a socialist culture became integrated with those living in
capitalist western Germany.
First Gulf War 1990
The release of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela
from jail in February 1990 after thirty years of imprisonment for opposing
apartheid and white-minority rule in South Africa. This would resolve with the
end of Apartheid in South Africa in 1994.
1991
21 April 1991. The Census. About 1 million went uncounted due to
Poll Tax related refusals to participate.
1992 - 1995
Bosnian War
1995
Any suitable privately owed premises
could be licensed for marriage ceremonies which led to increasing number of
marriages away from places of birth/family home.
1997
The Scottish Parliament established following a referendum in
September 1997, the 1997 Scottish devolution referendum was put to the Scottish
electorate and secured a majority in favour of the establishment of a new
devolved Scottish Parliament, with tax-varying powers, in Edinburgh.
Death of Princess Diana.
2000
The Millennium
2001
UK Population 59 million
29 April 2001 – the National Census – about 94% of the population
completed the survey
11 September 2001 attacks in New York City; Washington, D.C.; and
Shanksville, Pennsylvania
2002
The Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II
2003
Start of the Second Gulf War
2004
Mars Exploration Rover
2005
7 July 2005 – Terrorist attacks in London
2007/8
Economic crisis
2009
Barack Obama, the first African American president of the United
States, was inaugurated in 2009
2012
Summer Olympics held in London
Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II
2015
Population of London reaches 8.6M
2016
The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union (“Brexit”)
2018
The Human Genome Project completed in Cambridge
Charles III