AIC Context Flashcards
What Things Happened In And Around 1912?
Just before the sinking of the Titanic and a couple of years before WW1. British society was completely divided by class. Those with the most money had the most power. Only men who owned property could vote; women couldn’t vote. There was not much government support which is why charities were so important. Things were beginning to change: there was miner’s strike in 1912 (the largest the country had ever seen) and the Labour Party formed in 1906 to represent the interests of the working class.
Context on Women in 1912
Women Women in 1912, regardless of social class, were seen as second-class citizens – a fact underlined by their lack of a right to vote. It was the deplorable state of working-class women’s lives that prompted Emmeline Pankhurst to found the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in 1903. It was a women-only organization that campaigned for the vote for women. Pankhurst believed the lack of the vote was the key factor underpinning the inferior status of women in Edwardian Britain. The suffrages fought to bring equality for women.
Conext on What Happened in and Around WW1
WW1 was a watershed moment in European history. Survivors were disillusioned and felt betrayed by the men who sent them to war. Priestley described the war as a ‘huge, murderous public folly’ and felt that ‘the British command specialized in throwing men away for nothing’. He fought in the war and lost many friends and cited the war as the cause for his prejudice against the ruling class.
WW1 proved to be a turning point for the campaign for women’s right to vote. During the war, suffragettes effectively put on hold their campaign of civil direct action in the interests of national unity. As men went to the Western Front, women proved how indispensable they were in the fields and armaments factories. By 1918 women over 30 were given the right to vote.
What was the Great Depression/Great Slump
A period of national economic downturn in the 1930s which had its origins in the global Great Depression. By 1932 registered unemployed numbered 3.5 million.
What was The Beveridge Report (published 1942)
It proposed the creation of a Welfare State. Called for a dramatic turn in British social policy with provision for nationalized healthcare (NHS) and free education. The Labour Party adopted the report and offered a new comprehensive welfare policy reflecting a consensus that social changes were needed.
What Things Happened In And Around 1945?
Following the end of WW2, the majority of the British people, and particularly the working class and returning servicemen and women, did not want a return to pre-war Conservative economic policies which they blamed for the hardship of the 1930s. There was a mood for widespread social change. At the 1945 general election, Winston Churchill was defeated by the Labour Party headed by Clement Attlee. Many of Beveridge’s reforms were then implemented.
Who are your ‘Bernard Shaws and H.G. Wellses’?
Both the noted Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and the father of science-fiction H.G. Wells (1866-1946) were well-known and outspoken socialists.
