Trade Unions and the General Strike

By the early 20th century the trade unions had become powerful and they were increasingly militant. However they met with opposition. In 1901 came the Taff Vale case when a court decided that trade unions could be sued for damages if they held a strike. It was repealed by the Trade Disputes Act 1906. In 1909 came the Osbourne Judgement, which said that trade unions could not use member’s subscriptions to fund political parties (i.e. the Labour Party). The case was brought by a man named W. V. Osborne, who was secretary of the Walthamstow branch on the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. It was repealed by the Trade Union Act 1913, which allowed individual trade union members to opt out of paying political fees.

From 1923 to 1929 Britain had a conservative government with Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947) as prime minister. During his time the general strike was held.

During the 1920s old industries like coal mining were declining. So in 1921 employers cut wages. In 1926 they proposed to cut wages and increase working hours. The miners leader A.J. Cooke said 'Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day'. the miners went on strike and appealed to the other unions to help them. The result was a general strike from midnight on 3 May 1926.

However the government was prepared. Realizing trade unions might unite and call a general strike they formed the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies in 1925. Middle class volunteers helped to run services like buses and kept supplies moving. Troops and special constables also helped. The general strike ended on 12 May although the miners remained on strike for another 6 months. In the end they miners went back to work defeated.

In 1927 the Trade Disputes Act made general strikes illegal.

Entertainment

In 1922 the BBC began broadcasting radio programs. Radio first became common in the 1930s. By 1933 about half the households in Britain had a 'wireless' and by 1939 most of them did. Television began in 1936. It was suspended during World War II but it began again in 1946.

In the 1920s some people went to see silent films but from about 1930 all films were 'talkies'. During the 1930s cinema-going became much more popular and many people went once or even twice a week.

The Depression of the 1930s

In 1929 the world was plunged into a severe economic recession. By 1932 22.8% of insured workers were unemployed. However unemployment began to fall in 1933. By January 1936 it stood at 13.9%. By 1938 it stood at around 10%.

However in the late 1930s the North of England remained depressed and unemployment in the region remained very high. Traditional industries such as textiles and coal mining were severely affected by the depression. Yet in the Midlands and the South of England new industries brought some prosperity and unemployment was lower. New industries included making cars and aircraft and electronics.

During the 1920s and 1930s a series of 'hunger marches' were held from depression areas to London. The first was from Glasgow in 1922 but the most famous was the Jarrow march of 1936 when 200 shipyard workers marched from Jarrow to London. The hunger marches gained a great deal of publicity for the plight of the unemployed but they did not succeed in their aim of actually reducing unemployment.

However because living standards had risen so much an unemployed man in 1936 was about as well off as an unskilled worker 30 years before. Nevertheless life for the unemployed was grim. They lived in relative poverty.

Nevertheless despite the mass unemployment of the 1930s for most people with a job living standards rose substantially. That was partly due to a fall in prices. The price of essentials like food and rent fell 15% during the decade. So for most people life became steadily more comfortable during the 1930s.

Furthermore from 1939 all workers were entitled to a minimum of 1 week’s annual paid holiday. Before then the only paid holidays many people had were bank holidays.

WW2

 

In the summer and fall of 1940, German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom, locked in the largest sustained bombing campaign to that date. A significant turning point of World War II, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force despite months of targeting Britain’s air bases, military posts and, ultimately, its civilian population. Britain’s decisive victory saved the country from a ground invasion and possible occupation by German forces while proving that air power alone could be used to win a major battle.

On June 17, 1940, the defeated French signed an armistice and quit World War II. Britain now stood alone against the power of Germany’s military forces, which had conquered most of Western Europe in less than two months. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill rallied his stubborn people and outmaneuvered those politicians who wanted to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. But Britain’s success in continuing the war would very much depend on the RAF Fighter Command’s ability to thwart the Luftwaffe’s efforts to gain air superiority. This then would be the first all-air battle in history.

In fact, Britain’s situation was more favorable than most of the world recognized at the time. Britain possessed an effective air defense system, first-rate fighter pilots, and a great military leader in Air Marshal Hugh Dowding. On the other hand, the Germans had major problems: they had no navy left after the costly conquest of Norway, their army was unprepared for any form of amphibious operations, and the Luftwaffe had suffered heavy losses in the west (the first two factors made a seaborne attack on the British Isles impossible from the first).

Even more serious, the Germans had poor intelligence and little idea of British vulnerabilities. They wasted most of July in waiting for a British surrender and attacked only in August. Although air strikes did substantial damage to radar sites, on August 13–15 the Luftwaffe soon abandoned that avenue and turned to attacks on RAF air bases. A battle of attrition ensued in which both sides suffered heavy losses (an average loss of 21 percent of the RAF’s fighter pilots and 16 percent of the Luftwaffe’s fighter pilots each month during July, August, and September).

For a time the advantage seemed to swing slightly in favor of the Germans, but a combination of bad intelligence and British attacks on Berlin led the Luftwaffe to change its operational approach to massive attacks on London. The first attack on London on September 7 was quite successful; the second, on September 15, failed not only with heavy losses, but also with a collapse of morale among German bomber crews when British fighters appeared in large numbers and shot down many of the Germans. As a result, Hitler permanently postponed a landing on the British Isles and suspended the Battle of Britain.

Desintegration of British Empire

Before World War II it was stated fairly, “The sun never set on the British Empire.” For decades, this was true: the British colonial Empire touched all corners of the globe. After the War concluded, however, a worldwide process of decolonization commenced in which Britain granted independence to all of its major colonies, beginning notably in India. The British decision to grant independence to India arose primarily out of necessity; however, Gandhi’s successful social movements also inspired a fundamental change in the perceptions of colonial power that eventually led to the collapse of the British Colonial Empire.

In India there were numerous uprisings and conflicts that erupted over the course of the centuries long British occupation, but it wasn’t until Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi’s social efforts, beginning in India from 1915-1920 and onward, that a popular vision for India began to spread among ordinary Indians.¹ At the time, Gandhi had only recently returned from South Africa where he had stayed for more than twenty years, as the “voice and conscience of thousands” of racially subjugated Indians.² Upon his return to India, Gandhi advocated for Indians to boycott British institutions and products in a non-violent way; this movement was ultimately known as “Swadeshi.” Because of these efforts Gandhi became wildly popular; when Jawaharlal Nehru—the first Prime Minister of independent India—gave his famous Independence speech in 1947, he called Gandhi “The Father of our Nation who… held aloft the torch of freedom and lighted up the darkness that surrounded us.”³ Gandhi’s momentum reached a peak during World War II and consequently caused great strain on Britain, forcing them to recognize the significance of the Swadeshi movement. Additionally, pressures from within India were complemented by two major external factors: Britain’s economic and human resources were exasperated by the War effort; ⁴ and the Japanese, who had invaded the British colony of Burma in 1943, were aggressively expanding in Southeast Asia.⁵ Each of these factors was important in pushing Britain to the realization that it was no longer realistic for them to prolong their control of India. In March 1946, shortly after the close of the War, Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, expressed these sentiments in a speech to the House of Commons:

“India is today in a state of great tension and this is indeed a critical moment… It is a time emphatically for very definite and clear action… Let us all realise that whatever the difficulties, whatever the divisions may be, there is this underlying demand among all the Indian peoples… Is it any wonder that today she claims – as a nation of 400,000,000 people that has twice sent her sons to die for freedom – that she should herself have freedom to decide her own destiny? My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain that freedom as speedily and fully as possible.”⁶

Attlee’s description of India as being in a “state of great tension” was a verbal affirmation of the ultimate conclusion: the British had little choice but to help India “attain [her] freedom.”

After India was finally granted freedom in 1947, as the separate states of India and Pakistan, it was apparent that a change in the perceptions of colonial power was occurring. As early as 1931, Time Magazine featured Gandhi as the “Man of the Year,” forgoing other noted possibilities that included, ironically, the Prime Minister of Great Britain.⁷ In the article, Gandhi is described as being exalted by the people while the British colonizers are condemned:

"Cold English brains devised the system whereby bands of native police, especially in the rural districts, set upon individual Indian men & women and beat them… Individual beatings are applied, in the main, to extort from the victim his land tax.”⁸

Violence within the colonies was viewed as a reflection of the colonizers. From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine prepared monthly newsreels of world events that in 1942 depicted video footage of British soldiers brutally attacking Indian protestors, while a commentator read, “The Indian people have never ceased to defy British authority, whether enforced by Soldier’s bayonets or Policemen’s batons.”⁹ Later, in June 1947, Gandhi graced the cover of Time magazine again, shortly after India had been declared independent.¹⁰ The media therefore played a significant role in showing the brutal reality of colonialism to the masses; in the end, increased media coverage was a catalyst in shifting public perceptions of colonial power.

It was nevertheless not only the perceptions of Europeans and Americans that were affected by India’s independence movement. In Africa, nationalist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah in the British colony of the Gold Coast were inspired by Gandhi’s success. Nkrumah was a native of the Gold Coast territory but nonetheless was highly educated in the United States. During his studies, he drew from the “Back to Africa” vision devised by Marcus Garvey in the 1920’s and consequently later went on to become the most influential proponent of Pan-Africanism in Africa.¹¹ After returning home, Nkrumah became the leader of the Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) in 1950, which advocated the need for self-government, and began a campaign of “positive action involving nonviolent protests, strikes, and noncooperation with the British colonial authorities.”¹² Nkrumah’s campaign was strikingly similar to the one Gandhi had led in India, and likewise, he was imprisoned for his efforts. The atmosphere regarding colonialism, however, had undergone significant changes since India’s independence; after the British granted a new constitution to its colony in 1951, Nkrumah’s party, the CPP, won a majority of votes and Nkrumah was released as the new Premier.¹³ Several years later, a major turning point occurred that was reflective of the times: on May 9^th, 1956, the population of British citizens living in the British administered U.N. Trust Territory of British Togoland voted in a 58% majority to integrate with an independent Gold Coast.¹⁴ Less than a year later, on March 6^th, 1957, the independent state of Ghana was created out of the merging of the former British territories of the Gold Coast and British Togoland; Nkrumah became the first Prime Minister.¹⁵

Ghana thus began the wave of British decolonization in Africa that resulted in nearly every British territory being granted independence in the following decade. In 1960 the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Macmillan, delivered a famous speech known as the “Wind of Change:”

“One of the constant facts of political life in Europe has been the emergence of independent nations… Especially since the end of war, the processes which gave birth to the nation-states of Europe have been repeated all over the world… Fifteen years ago this movement spread through Asia. Many countries there, of different races and civilization, pressed their claim to an independent national life. To-day the same thing is happening in Africa… In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through the continent… Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact.”¹⁶

In the speech, Macmillan clearly indicates the British realization that decolonization was inevitable, calling it a “political fact.” Macmillan also gives reference to the significance of the prior movement in Asia, which was of course led by India.

In a sense, it was at this time that the sun finally did set on the British Empire. What Gandhi had begun in India as early as 1915 had political implications for the entire colonial framework. His devotion to non-violence stood in marked contrast to the rifle bearing British occupiers, and he was immensely effective in making the world notice. Gandhi’s ideologies and India’s independence inspired the repressed around the world and led ultimately to the unraveling of an Empire.

The collapse of British imperial power - all but complete by the mid-1960s - can be traced directly to the impact of World War Two.

The catastrophic British defeats in Europe and Asia between 1940 and 1942 destroyed its financial and economic independence, the real foundation of the imperial system.

It also erased the old balance of power on which British security - at home and abroad - had largely depended.

Although Britain was one of the victorious allies, the defeat of Germany had been mainly the work of Soviet and American power, while that of Japan had been an almost entirely American triumph.

Britain had survived and recovered the territory lost during the war. But its prestige and authority, not to mention its wealth, had been severely reduced.

The British found themselves locked into an imperial endgame from which every exit was blocked except the trapdoor to oblivion.

An early symptom of the weakness of the empire was Britain's withdrawal from India in 1947.

During World War Two, the British had mobilised India's resources for their imperial war effort. They crushed the attempt of Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress to force them to 'quit India' in 1942.

Nonetheless, in an earlier bid to win Congress support, Britain had promised to give India full independence once the war was over.

Within months of the end of the war, it was glaringly obvious that Britain lacked the means to defeat a renewed mass campaign by the Congress. Its officials were exhausted and troops were lacking.

But the British still hoped that a self-governing India would remain part of their system of 'imperial defence'. For this reason, Britain was desperate to keep India (and its army) united. These hopes came to nothing.

By the time that the last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, arrived in India, Congress and its leader Jawaharlal Nehru had begun to accept that unless they agreed to partition, they risked a descent into chaos and communal war before power could be transferred from British into Indian hands.

It was left to Mountbatten to stage a rapid handover to two successor governments (India and Pakistan) before the ink was dry on their post-imperial frontiers.

Repairing Britain

The huge sense of relief at a more or less dignified exit, and much platitudinous rhetoric, disguised the fact that the end of the Raj was a staggering blow for British world power.

Britain had lost the colony that had provided much of its military muscle east of Suez, as well as paying 'rent' for the 'hire' of much of Britain's own army.

The burden of the empire defence shifted back to a Britain that was both weaker and poorer than it had been before 1939.

For these reasons, it may seem strange that the loss of India did not lead to a drastic reappraisal of Britain's world interests and a 'timely' decision to abandon its far-flung commitments from the Caribbean to Hong Kong.

Britain was now overshadowed by the United States and Soviet Union, its domestic economy had been seriously weakened and the Labour government had embarked on a huge and expensive programme of social reform.

In fact British Prime Minister Clement Attlee and his cabinet colleague Ernest Bevin, who dominated Labour's foreign policy at the time, drew quite the opposite conclusion with regards to the future of Britain's oversees interests.

Attlee and Bevan believed Britain's economic recovery and the survival of sterling as a great trading currency required closer integration with the old 'white' dominions, especially Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The 'sterling area', which included the empire, Commonwealth (the main exception was Canada) and some other countries, accounted for half of the world's trade in the early post-war years.

The British were also determined to exploit the tropical colonies more effectively due to the fact that their cocoa, rubber and tin could be sold for much-needed dollars.

Nor was it simply an economic imperative. Britain's strategic defence against the new Soviet threat required forward air bases from which to bomb Southern Russia - the industrial arsenal of the Soviet Union. That meant staying on in the Middle East even after the breakdown of British control in Palestine and its hasty evacuation in 1948.

In Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and the Gulf, the British were determined to hang on to their treaties and bases, including the vast Suez canal zone. They wanted help from Australia and hoped for Indian support against Soviet influence in Asia.

Across the whole spectrum of party opinion, British leaders had no doubt that Britain must uphold its status as the third great power, and that it could only do so by maintaining its empire and the Commonwealth link. Europe, by contrast, they saw as a zone of economic and political weakness. It was Britain's overseas assets that would help to defend it

In the 1950s, British governments struggled to achieve this post-war imperial vision. They had already reinvented the Commonwealth in 1949 in order to let India remain a republic, overturning the old rule that the British monarch must be head of state in a Commonwealth country.

They accepted the need to grant increasing self-government and then independence to some of their most valuable colonies - including Ghana and Malaya in 1957 - on the understanding that they remained in Britain's sphere of financial and strategic influence.

The British governments took up the challenge of anti-colonial revolts in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus. They invested heavily in up-to-date weaponry and fretted over the slowness of the British economy to resume its old role as the great lender of capital.

By the end of the decade, things were not going well. Staying in the Middle East had led step-by-step to the confrontation with President Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and the disastrous decision to seek his overthrow by force in collusion with Israel.

The 1956 Suez Crisis was a savage revelation of Britain's financial and military weakness and destroyed much of what remained of Britain's influence in the Middle East.

In the colonial territories, more active interference in social and economic matters, with a view to speeding the pace of development, had aroused wide opposition and strengthened nationalist movements.

It was becoming much harder for Britain to control the rate of political change, especially where the presence of settlers (as in Kenya and the Rhodesias) sharpened conflicts over land.

Britain's position as the third great power and 'deputy leader' of the Western Alliance was threatened by the resurgence of France and West Germany, who jointly presided over the new European Economic Community (EEC).

Britain's claim on American support, the indispensable prop of imperial survival, could no longer be taken for granted. And Britain's own economy, far from accelerating, was stuck in a rut.

With conditions as they stood, it was now becoming increasingly difficult to maintain even the semblance of British world power. In the 1960s, British governments attempted forlornly to make bricks without straw.

Britain tried and failed twice to enter the EEC, hoping partly to galvanise its stagnant economy, partly to smash the Franco-German 'alliance'.

To avoid being trapped in a costly struggle with local nationalist movements, Britain backed out of most of the remaining colonies with unseemly haste. As late as 1959, it had publicly scheduled a degree of self-government for Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika. All became independent between 1961 and 1963.

British leaders gamely insisted, and no doubt believed, that Britain would remain at the 'top table' of world power - a status guaranteed by its nuclear deterrent and its continuing influence in the ex-colonial world, and symbolised by the Commonwealth which the ex-colonies had joined.

The situation did not go as planned. Britain's failure to stop the white settler revolt in Southern Rhodesia in 1965 was a huge embarrassment and drew fierce condemnation from many new Commonwealth states.

In South East Asia, protecting the new federation of Malaysia against Indonesian aggression became more and more costly.

Meanwhile the British economy staggered from crisis to crisis and the burden became unsustainable. Devaluation of the pound in November 1967 was followed within weeks by the decision to withdraw Britain's military presence east of Suez.

When Britain finally entered the European Community in 1973, the line had been drawn under Britain's imperial age.

But the ending of an empire is rarely a tidy affair. The Rhodesian rebellion was to last until the late 1970s, Britain fought a war to retain the Falkland Islands in 1982 and Hong Kong continued, with tacit Chinese agreement, as a British dependency until 1997.