home | 1901-World War II | Britain and Ireland in the Twenties

Irish War of Independence memorial
in Dublin

Coal mine owners viewed by members
of Britain's labor movement.

Before World War I, London was the center of world finance and Britain was the world's largest overseas investor. Britain had also been called the workshop of the world. But during the war, Britain lost markets to the United States and to Japan. The center of world finance moved to New York. Britain emerged from the war deeply in debt to the United States. Forty percent of government spending was to be spent repaying its war debt. An importer of food, many people were to be frugal in eating until the 1950s. And having spent its wealth on war rather than modernizing its machinery, Britain's machinery was becoming antiquated.

After the war, Britain still needed to export its coal, textiles and other manufactured goods to pay for needed imports, but Britain's exports were diminished by the impoverishment of former customers: Germany, Russia and some other East European countries. Britain's war veterans returned home to a dearth in the availability of jobs, and unemployment in Britain rose higher than ten percent of the work force.

Also, the war had brought inflation to Britain, and in 1919 and 1920 wages did not keep up with prices. Labor unions sought recourse in strikes, which were less than helpful. The relatively high cost of labor, along with antiquated machinery, was hurting Britain's trade with other nations - the cost in production raising the price of those goods Britain was trying to sell abroad.

Despite Great Britain's political stability and traditions, the fear of Bolshevism has arisen. Prime Minister Lloyd-George attacked the Labour party as being run by "the extreme pacifist, Bolshevist group," and he cited the Russian Revolution as what could happen as a result of class antagonisms. But, in 1919, despite his outspoken hostility toward Bolshevism, Lloyd-George was unwilling to give much support to the anti-Bolsheviks who were then fighting in Russia's civil war. Lloyd-George believed that Britain did not have enough surplus wealth to spend on an effective intervention on the side of the anti-Bolsheviks in Russia's civil war. Lloyd-George was also concerned that intervention would add to a radicalization of Britain's Left. His enthusiasm for crushing the Bolsheviks was also dampened by misgivings about the anti-Bolshevik commanders, Kolchak and Denikin. Also, Lloyd-George saw a reduced threat to the British Empire by the Bolsheviks remaining in power in Russia. The Bolsheviks were outspoken in their opposition to empire, and Russia under the Bolsheviks, he believed, would be less inclined toward imperial expansion southward. It appeared to Lloyd-George that, under the Bolsheviks, the Crimea, Georgia and the Ukraine might remain independent - which would be of benefit to the British. And Lloyd-George believed that under the Bolsheviks there might be no return of Russian power over Poland and Finland.

The British in Ireland

Willingness to be ruled by others was eroding, and Britain, because of its shortage of money, could not afford to respond to risings against its rule everywhere. Britain bluffed strength in maintaining its empire. But the British were not able to bluff the Irish. The Irish organization, Sinn Fein, had pushed aside the moderate Irish party for independence and had gathered extensive support. By the end of 1918, many from Ireland were in jail for political agitation. An Irish militia began conducting guerrilla war against the Britain's military barracks and convoys. The British retaliated. A large portion of the Irish police resigned rather than serve the British, and England replaced them with a force from Britain called the Black and Tans.

In 1919, all out war erupted in Ireland. Money from Irish-Americans and from the Irish in the British dominions, including Australian, were flowing to the Irish cause. British rule in Ireland was doomed, but Britain pursued the war. The Irish Republican Army was using terror in its guerrilla warfare against the British, and the Black and Tans resorted to counter terror. The Black and Tans burned villages and large parts of towns, and they resorted to torture in interrogation.

In England complaints were made against what was being done in Ireland, some complaints by conservatives and some by members of the Labour Party and by newspapers. The Times complained about Britain being exposed to the scorn of the world. A Labour party commission on Ireland urged withdrawal from Ireland and described things being done in the name of Britain "which must make her name stink in the nostrils of the whole world." A conservative member of Lloyd-George's cabinet, Sir Henry Wilson, issued an opinion that would be heard decades later in the United States. He urged Britain to "go all out" in its efforts in Ireland or "get out."

The war lasted two years and was settled by negotiations from October to December, 1921, the British agreeing to an independent an Irish Free State with dominion status, with five counties in the north of Ireland remaining as a part of Great Britain. There Protestants were a majority and adamantly in favor of remaining a part of Britain, while in Ireland as a whole Catholics were a majority. The independence that the Irish had declared in 1916 had been declared again on January 21, 1919, and had won recognition from only the Bolsehvik government in Russia. Britain officially recognized its new arrangement with Ireland on December 6, 1922. And in Ireland a civil war followed between those who accepted the new arrangement and those who did not.

A Slow Recovery and a New Government

Meanwhile, the British government's strategy for economic recovery was frugality in spending by both the government and the public. Britain's military was held at minimum strength - nearly 3.7 million men having been demobilized after the war. Britain continued to maintain social programs that were more extensive than existed in the United States, getting enough money to the truly needy as the country struggled to rebuild its economy.

In domestic reforms, Lloyd-George's coalition government broke up thousands of estates, large and small. Young men from estate owning families had been decimated during the war, and Britain's estate-owning families were losing their influence.

In foreign policy, Lloyd-George's government pursed cooperation with much of Europe. Britain  tried to make it easier for Germany to make its reparation payments. The Lloyd-George government agreed that Russia should be brought back into the European community of nations. And regarding Turkey's defeat in the Great War, the British government supported an enlarged Greece - Greece having been Britain's ally in World War I. The Greeks were fighting the Turks again. Lloyd-George supported independence from Turkish rule for the Greeks in western Asia Minor. The able Turkish leader, Kemal Ataturk, advanced against the Greek forces in Turkey, and he destroyed the Greek army.

Lloyd-George's failed policy concerning the Greeks and some other failures, including a continuing decline in Britain's economy, wore down support for his government. Some in Britain had become uncomfortable with David Lloyd-George's personality and character. Conservatives rebelled against Lloyd-George. His government, which had been a coalition in opposition to Labour and the Left, fell apart, and Lloyd-George resigned in October 1922 - eleven days before Mussolini came to power.

A general election held toward the end of October resulted in the election of 347 conservatives to Parliament. Labour won 142 seats - up from 59 in 1918 - and Britain's Communists proved their weakness by winning only two seats. A conservative government was formed. Then, at the end of 1923, new elections were held. Conservative seats in parliament dropped to 258, and seats for the Labour Party rose to 191. Labour and members of the Liberal Party joined in forming a coalition government. Its prime minister was Ramsay MacDonald, who was also foreign secretary. MacDonald was a former anti-war activist, a boy from a poor family who had married well. Although he believed in parliamentary government and in democratic methods, fear in conservative circles accompanied his inclusion into the government, including the fear that the new government would be influenced by Moscow. A few investors panicked and sold their investments, as did some American investors in British stocks. But the radical legislation that they expected did not happen, while MacDonald and his Labour Party continued to seek support from the Liberals and the middle classes.

MacDonald's government increased spending on building public housing - housing with controlled rents. His government worked at improving unemployment benefits, while employment figures did not improve. The figure that was rising was the percentage of the nation's income that the government was spending. It was up to twelve percent from the five percent that it had been before the war, and it was to stay at twelve percent throughout the era between the two World Wars.

MacDonald's trade agreement with Russia came under attack. And after just a few months in office, new elections were held. The conservatives made much of a claim of a new Communist threat, using a letter from the head of the Communist Internationale, Zinoviev, to British Communists, a letter describing the recent trade agreement between Britain and the Soviet Union as advancing the prospects for revolution in Britain. The letter is believed to have been a forgery, and the Left believed it to be a trick by conservatives. Whether the letter had a significant impact on voters remains debatable. At any rate, Labour lost the elections to parliament because of a middleclass swing to conservative candidates. The Conservative Party won 415 seats, and a new conservative government was formed under Stanley Baldwin.

A New Jazz Age in the Last Half of the Decade

By the mid-twenties, Britain's economy had improved, rising with the boom that had come elsewhere in the interconnected world of trade and business. But unemployment in Britain remained high - over ten percent - and especially high in Britain's declining coal, cotton, shipbuilding and metal industries. Britain's exports remained low - about half what they were in 1913. And in textiles it faced new competition from Japan.

Then Britain went back onto the gold standard (Britain having gone off the gold standard during the war, as had other belligerents). It was widely believed that the gold standard was a return to the monetary stability of the good old days before the war. But, in returning to the gold standard, Britain overvalued its currency, which lowered the cost of imported goods, including foods and raw materials, but made the price of the goods that the British were trying to sell abroad higher in price.

Of course, Britain's employers were trying to keep wages down, but labor rebelled. In 1926, coal miners went on strike. The strike in coal expanded into a general strike, which shook the nation. The specter of revolution was haunting Britain as it had earlier in other places in Europe. But the strike was broken, with Britain's workers having gained little. It was in the wake of this strike that Churchill had praised Mussolini.

Meanwhile, with improvement of the economy, Britain's population was rising again, and in the latter half of the twenties a new jazz age was in the making. People with limbs that were lost in the war were still seen making their way in the streets, and it was obvious that there would be no return to the glittering days of those prewar times called the Edwardian Age. But an attempt was made at the spirit of "eat, drink and be merry." The tango, fox trot, Charleston, Black Bottom, shimmy and the blues rose and fell in popularity. Bohemians had appeared, preferring simple furnishings or living in Spain, Italy or France. Ideas critical of fundamentalism were spreading within the churches. The Church of England, whose hierarchy had been enthusiastic supporters of the war, now had regrets and was swinging in the direction of pacifism and sympathy towards the political Left. Church attendance was declining, and divorce was on the rise. And, against 19th century cheerfulness and optimism, a poet named T. S. Eliot focused on incoherence and the prevalence of wickedness and wrote a poem called the Wasteland.

Technological advances were apparent in the number of automobiles and busses on the streets, the number of autos having doubled between 1922 and 1927 to one car for every 57 persons. Radio and movies had become widespread - the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) having been formed in 1922. John Maynard Keynes mentioned contraceptives in a lecture on Malthus and aroused the old propriety, expressed in a Cambridge undergraduate calling his words "unseemly and immoral."

Many women were now smoking in public, thinking it looked chic to have a cigarette drooping from one's mouth. Some women went to pubs or nightclubs. And they discussed their sex lives. A generation gap between the old suffragettes and the liberated young woman was noticed. And mothers of young women spoke of never having thought of behaving as their daughters did.

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