Chapter 22

Britain at war

At the start of the twentieth century Britain was still the greatest world power.

By the middle of the century, although still one of the "Big Three", Britain was clearly

weaker than either the United States or the Soviet Union. By the end of the seventies

Britain was no longer a world power at all, and was not even among the richest

European powers. Its power had ended as quickly as Spain's had done in the

seventeenth century.

The First World War

Germany nearly defeated the Allies, Britain and France, in the first few weeks of war

in 1914. It had better trained soldiers, better equipment and a clear plan of attack. The

French army and the small British force were fortunate to hold back the German army

at the River Mame, deep inside France. Four years of bitter fighting followed, both

armies living and fighting in the trenches, which they had dug to protect their men.

Apart from the Crimean War, this was Britain's first European war for a century, and

the country

was quite unprepared for the terrible destructive power of modern weapons. At

Passchendaele, the following year, the British army advanced five miles at the cost of

another 400,000 dead and wounded. Modern artillery and machine guns had

completely changed the nature of war. The invention of the tank and its use on the

battlefield to break through the enemy trenches in 1917 could have changed the course

of the war.

In the Middle East the British fought against Turkish troops in Iraq and in Palestine,

and at, Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles. There, too, there were many casualties, but many

of them were caused by sickness and heat. It was not until 1917 that the British were

really able to drive back the Turks.

Somehow the government had to persuade the people that in spite of such disastrous

results the war was still worth fighting. The nation was told that it was defending the

weak (Belgium) against the strong (Germany), and that it was fighting for democracy

and freedom.

If Germany's navy had destroyed the British fleet at Jutland, Germany would have

gained control of the seas around Britain, forcing Britain to surrender. In spite of this

partial victory German submarines managed to sink 40 per cent of Britain's merchant

fleet and at one point brought Britain to within six weeks of starvation. When Russia,

following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, made peace with Germany, the German

generals hoped for victory against the

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Allies. But German submarine attacks on neutral shipping drew America into the war

against Germany. The arrival of American troops in France ended Germany's hopes,

and it surrendered in November 1918.

The rise of the Labour Party

An important political development during the war was the rapid growth of the

Labour Party. The Labour Party, however, was not "socialist". Its leaders were, or had

become, members of the middle classes. Instead of a social revolution, they wanted to

develop a kind of socialism that would fit the situation in Britain.

Most working-class people wished to improve their financial situation and to

enjoy the advantages of the middle class without becoming involved in socialist

beliefs. The trade unions and the Labour movement had been shaped by the

experiences of the nineteenth century. They did not believe they could bring down the

existing form of government, and in any case they wanted to change things by

accepted constitutional means, in Parliament. This was partly because they were

supported not only by the working class but also by radicals already in Parliament.

The rights of women

In 1918, some women over the age of thirty gained the right to vote after a long,

hard struggle. John Stuart Mill, a radical thinker, had tried unsuccessfully to include

votes for women in the 1867 Reform Bill.

A man thought of his wife and daughters as his property, and so did the law. It

was almost impossible for women to get a divorce, even for those rich enough to pay

the legal costs. Until 1882, a woman had to give up all her property to her husband

when she married him. And until 1891, husbands were still allowed by law to beat

their wives with a stick "no thicker than a man's thumb", and to lock them up in a

room if they wished. By 1850, wife beating had become a serious social problem in

Britain. Men of all classes were able to take sexual advantage of working women.

Women were probably treated worse in Britain than in any other industrialising

European country at this time.

In 1897 women started to demand the right to vote in national elections. Within

ten years these women, the "suffragettes", had become famous for the extreme

methods they were willing to use. Many politicians who agreed with their aims were

shocked by their violent methods and stopped supporting them.

The war in 1914 changed everything. Britain would have been unable to

continue the war without the women who took men's places in the factories. By 1918

29 per cent of the total workforce of Britain was female. Women had to be given the

vote. But it was not until ten years later that the voting age of women came down to

twenty-one, equal with men.

The liberation of women took other forms. They started to wear lighter clothing,

shorter hair and skirts, began to smoke and drink openly, and to wear cosmetics.

Married women wanted smaller families, and divorce became easier, rising from a

yearly average of 800 in 1910 to 8,000 in 1939.

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Disappointment and depression

After the world war the men who had fought in such terrible conditions during

the war had been promised a land "fit for heroes". But this promise could not easily be

kept, even by the popular new Labour Party.

The cost of the war had led to an enormous increase in taxation, from 6 per cent of

income in 1914 to 25 per cent in 1918.

In 1926 discontent led to a general strike by all workers. The reasons for the

strike were complicated, but the immediate cause was a coalminers' strike. An earlier

miners' strike in 1921 had been defeated and the men had returned to work bitterly

disappointed with the mine owners' terms. In 1925 mine owners cut miners' wages and

another miners' strike seemed inevitable. Fearing that this would seriously damage the

economy, the government made plans to make sure of continued coal supplies. Both

sides, the government and the Trades Union Congress (representing the miners in this

case), found themselves unwillingly driven into opposing positions, which made a

general strike inevitable.

The general strike ended after nine days, partly because members of the middle

classes worked to keep services like transport, gas and electricity going. But it also

ended because of uncertainty among the trade union leaders. Most feared the dangers

both to their workers and the country of "going too far". The miners struggled on

alone and then gave up the strike. Many workers, especially the miners, believed that

the police, whose job was to keep the law, were actually fighting against them.

Whether or not this was true, many people remembered the general strike with great

bitterness. These memories influenced their opinion of employers, government and the

police for half a century.

In the 1930s the British economy started to recover, especially in the Midlands

and the south. This could be seen in the enormous number of small houses which were

being built along main roads far into the countryside.

Middle-class people moved out even further to quieter new suburbs, each of

which was likely to have its own shops and a cinema. unplanned suburbs grew

especially quickly around London, where the underground railway system, the "tube",

had spread out into the country. It seemed as if everyone's dream was to live in

suburbia.

The Second World War

The people of Britain watched anxiously as German control spread over Europe in the

1930s.

Everyone in Britain expected Germany to invade, but the British air force won an

important battle against German planes in the air over Britain. This, however, did not

prevent the German air force from bombing the towns of Britain. Almost one and a

half million people in London were made homeless by German bombing during the

next few months. The war had begun as a traditional European struggle, with Britain

fighting to save the "balance

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Winston Churchill at his desk, March 1944.

of power" in Europe, and to control the Atlantic Ocean and the sea surrounding

Britain. But the war quickly became worldwide. Both sides wanted to control the oil in

the Middle East, and the Suez Canal, Britain's route to India.

In 1941 Germany and Japan had made two mistakes which undoubtedly cost

them the war. Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and Japan attacked the United

States, both quite unexpectedly.

Britain could not possibly have defeated Germany without the help of its stronger

allies, the Soviet Union and the United States. By 1943 the Soviet army was pushing

the Germans out of the USSR, and Britain had driven German and Italian troops out of

North Africa. Italy surrendered quickly following Allied landings in July 1943. In

1944 Britain and the United States invaded German-occupied France. They had

already started to bomb German towns, causing greater destruction than any war had

ever caused before. Such bombing had very doubtful military results. Dresden, a

particularly beautiful eighteenth-century city, and most of its 130,000 inhabitants,

were destroyed in one night early in 1945. In May 1945, Germany finally surrendered.

In order to save further casualties among their own troops, Britain and the United

States then used their bombing power to defeat Japan. This time they used the new

atomic bombs to destroy most of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two large Japanese cities.

Over 110,000 people died immediately and many thousands more died later from the

after-effects.