A History of England David Beeson

The return of peace after the First World War might have heralded the arrival of a time of tranquillity. Sadly, it didn’t. Too much had changed. Four empires, three venerable and one an unpstart, had collapsed: Turkey’s Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the longstanding ones, and the German Empire, most powerful of all four, was the upstart that had shared the same fate.

In Britain, Lloyd George, basking in his reputation as ‘the man who won the war’, was nonetheless in a precarious position as the Liberal leader of a Conservative-dominated government. He decided to bring in a major electoral reform, the Representation of the People Act of 1918, and then go to the country at the head of his coalition – that is, the two parties in the coalition campaigning together, rather than as separate organisations which might well form a coalition afterwards, if the election results made that necessary.

The electorate he faced had been greatly increased by his reform, including over five million more men but also, and this was the major innovation, for the first time, over eight million women. At last, the suffrage movement had broken through, but no thanks to the Suffragettes – Emmeline Pankhurst’s WSPU had stopped campaigning for the vote when war broke out. The much bigger organisation, of Suffragists, the NUWSS led by Millicent Fawcett, played a much more significant role. It too, though, had been convulsed by the war, breaking with the peace movement to retain the support of more nationalist individuals, in particular in the Conservative party. At the same time, I had severed its electoral links to the Labour Party.

It had paid off. Enough Conservatives voted for emancipation for the vote to be granted to women aged 30 or over and meeting a property qualification – not universal adult suffrage as granted to men but a big step all the same. So at the December 1918 general election, women could vote, and indeed stand, for the first time ever.







Illustration: The WSPU in action: Millicent Austen addressing a rally in Hyde Park on 26 July 1913. Image from the library of the London School of Economics, which knows of no copyright restrictions on it.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

The First World Was over. Or was it?

First of all, does it deserve the name First World War at all?

Secondly, was it really over in 1918? That depends a lot on when we think the Second World War started. There are lots of possible dates in the thirties. One of the most striking suggestions, however, backed by some eminent historians, is that it was really only a continuation of the First. In which case, both wars share the same start date, in August 1914.

That’s because of what happened to end the fighting in 1918. It was an armistice but not a defeat followed by surrender. The way that happened, the subject of this episode, would play a fundamental role in how things panned out in Germany and in how they led to the Second World War.

Which, as we’ll see later, concluded the First.

Meanwhile, to help us wrap up on the end of the fighting in 1918, and in the spirit of a single death being a tragedy but millions of them simply being a statistic, the episode takes us through the last few deaths of Allied soldiers. And then to Wilfred Owen and how his death contributed to the idea he made his, the pity of war.



Illustration: Conrad Veidt and Claude Rains in a still from Casablanca.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

The last year of the First World War was one of startling about turns in fortune.

In the spring, making highly effective use of a different approach to artillery in combination with new tactics for infantry, the Germans broke through the British lines in France. It looked for a moment as though victory might be in their grasp. But clever tactics weren’t enough once they were through the lines, since to turn the British around and drive them back to the sea needed something more: massive numbers of men. And they didn’t have them.

Not that the Germans learned the lesson. They kept trying, in offensive after offensive, against both the British and the French, at one point getting right back to the Marne and threatening Paris once again. But they were blocked each time.

What was worst for them is that as they started to run out of men – and they lost 1.1 million in all those offensives – the Allies were getting huge reinforcements. The American Expeditionary Force was seriously increasing its numbers in France and, indeed, beginning to win some battles.

Slowly the tables turned. By the autumn, far from seeming to be on the brink of victory, the Germans began to look defeated. And the other Central Powers were cracking too. Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary signed armistices with the Allies from late October into early November.

Finally, the Germans too asked for it all to end. And on 11 November at 11:00 – eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month – they signed their own armistice. The guns, at last, fell silent.



Illustration: Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in France at the end of World War I, in 1920. National Portrait Gallery x120172

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

In 1917, all the belligerents in the First World War were reaching the limits of their resources, certainly in finances, but also in manpower. It looked as though the Central Powers weren’t doing too badly, as revolutions in Russia pushed that nation out of the ranks of the Allied powers. Those allies clearly needed help from outside, and the obvious place, if any, had to be the United States.

Ironically, it would be the leading Central power Germany itself that, by relaunching unrestricted submarine warfare and above all, by sending a telegram to Mexico proposing joint action against the US, ensured that this ultimately fatal intervention would take place.

A fine further proof of the universality of human imbecility. And its associated capacity for shooting itself in the foot.



Illustration: Arthur Zimmermann, German Foreign Secretary, whose telegram suggesting concerted action by Mexico against the United States more or less ensured US intervention in World War I – against Germany. Public domain

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Lloyd George was a Liberal, but he led a coalition government even more dependent on Conservative votes than the one he replaced under Asquith. And, not only was he dependent on the Conservatives, he also faced an Opposition – a loyal and generally supportive Opposition, committed to not blocking any measure designed to win the war – made up of Liberals, under the leadership fo the very Asquith he’d replaced.

Meanwhile, the war itself had hit something of a plateau. In country after country, men were losing heart in the war. In France, that turned into outright mutinies in numerous units, following yet another bloody and unsuccessful offensive. And in Russia things were worse still, with despair both in the military and in the civilian population, leading to the so-called February revolution (that took place in March 1917) which brought down the Tsar.

Only the Germans and the British could still contemplate major offensive actions. And, indeed, Haig organised another, that led to the Battle of Passchendaele, which again caused massive numbers of casualties and failed to achieve its objectives.

This episode looks at how these numbers were now becoming a statistically significant proportion of the total number of men available for service in Britain. That number was kept shockingly low, above all by the effects of poverty, leading to far too few men of military age having the level of fitness necessary for combat.

The most powerful Empire the world had seen couldn’t feed and care for the men of its mother country sufficiently to ensure they could defend their home against an enemy on its borders.



Illustration: Wounded Canadians on their way to a first-aid-post through the mud at the Battle of Passchendaele. Photo: William Rider-Rider / LAC.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

On Easter Monday in 1916, a group of armed Irish republicans took over the main post office in Dublin and several other public buildings. They had little enough popular support, and the British authorities were able to put down the uprising quickly, using Irish troops. Then, however, the military organised a court martial for fifteen surviving leaders and executed them, including a remarkable man, James Connolly, who was so badly injured he couldn’t even stand to face the firing squad and had to be shot strapped to a chair.

Those executions, followed by that of Roger Casement in August, only served to enhance the status of Sinn Fein, the Irish republican movement, wrongly believed by many to have been behind the uprising. As is not at all uncommon, brutal repression only enhanced the status of the insurgents.

Asquith’s government did try to take action to improve the situation in Ireland. It sent in the man of the moment, David Lloyd George, whose performance in government was constantly strengthening his reputation as an effective politician, if not a particularly trustworthy one. He failed in Ireland, but continued to strengthen his reputation. That turned into a major problem for Asquith, whose own standing was being rapidly undermined by the perception that he was indecisive and, above all, by the disaster of the Battle of the Somme, casting doubts on his capacity to manage the war.

In the end, that left him hopelessly vulnerable to attack. Lloyd George joined forces with twos Conservatives, the party leader Bonar Law, and the leader of the Ulster Protestants Edward Carson. They proved too much for Asquith to resist. Eventually, he felt forced to resign, and Lloyd George achieved the height of his ambition, by becoming Prime Minister himself.





Illustration: James Connolly, Irish Republican, Socialist and Trade Unionist, put to death by firing squad by the British Army in Dublin when he was too badly injured even to stand. www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/dublin/

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.