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The House of Saxe Coburg Gotha (renamed Windsor in 1918)
A Chronology from 1901
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Headlines are in brown.
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark 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
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