This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  If reform was evident in almost all the forms it had taken in the early 1800s, there was one huge difference. Many of the early nineteenth-century reforms took place in a society undergoing industrial, social and religious revolution (the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act was an example) following a long and wretched war with France. Now, the British had to anticipate a war on a scale never before imagined.

  In 1914, the Great War, or the First World War as it became called, broke out. The build-up was a long affair. It was a war between the Alliances: the Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy and Austria–Hungary on one side and the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia on the other. The German–Austrian alliance was obvious and reasonable being of a common language and traditional allies in Europe. Austria was in deep political and military uncertainty in the Balkans and Germany was its natural ally. Italy saw no option but to join Germany, the most powerful nation in Continental Europe. Each signed to come to another’s help if that State were to be attacked – one for all and all for one. The Triple Entente was less formal. There was no treaty, only a friendly understanding. As allies, Britain and France made some sense, in spite of their history as enemies. The French were said to have a big and powerful army (it turned out that big did not mean powerful) and the British did not; the British undoubtedly had a powerful navy. As for the Russians, their inclusion in the Triple Entente was far more a factor of late nineteenth and early twentieth century values and responsibilities. Russia was tied to Britain through the blood relationship of the royal families, although similar family ties between Germany and Britain did not draw them together. If Germany had a particular fear of the British, it was the size of the Empire. Bismarck’s legacy in German consciousness was that possessions were indicators of greatness and therefore power. German insecurities twitched whenever the British Empire, at its most powerful, remember, was mentioned; from all this, a drift to war, while not inevitable, did have some sense of fatalism about it.

  The rivalry in the Balkans between Russia and Austria–Hungary was tripped when Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro–Hungarian throne, was assassinated at Sarajevo. At the time, the event held no major interest in Europe. However, interest was heightened when Austria–Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia, holding the notion as it had ever had that it was the guardian of the Orthodox Christian Serb tradition, allied itself with Serbia. The Germans, allies of Austria–Hungary, declared war on Russia and therefore on Russia’s co-entente ally, France. Germany then invaded Belgium, which was allied to no one although Britain had an agreement to go to its aid and did so. In the simplest terms, with no apologies for its unsophisticated explanation, that is how it all began. But if this were seen as a European affair, how did it become styled as a world war?

  The Turks, the Ottoman Empire, joined the Germans and so the campaign spread to the Middle East and, in particular, Mesopotamia (Iraq) in November 1914 – it was a campaign that would continue until 1918, when it was terminated by the success of General Edmund Allenby (1861–1936). At sea, the naval war was almost exclusively between the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet. The British victory off the Falklands Islands in December 1914 meant the Germans were defenceless against British advances on German territories in the Pacific and their African colonies. The main German naval threat to the British and allies came through the latest addition to naval warfare, the submarine. The German U-boats were responsible for the loss of some 6,000 vessels. This was partly Britain’s fault and continued to be so until it introduced the convoy system that meant vessels could not so easily be picked off one by one.

  In May 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania sailed from New York. On board the 32,000-ton Cunard liner were Americans. Nearing Ireland on 6 May the Lusitania received U-boat warnings from the British Admiralty. She was attacked on 7 May and took just eighteen minutes to sink: 1,253 passengers died – 128 of them Americans. Many in the British War Cabinet thought that would be enough to bring America into the war. It was not. Submarine warfare did bring America into the war but not until 1917 when the Germans resumed its unrestricted, shoot-on-sight U-boat policy – and sunk the American grain ship, Housatonic. Three weeks later, on 25 February 1917, the Germans sunk the Laconia; four Americans died. On 6 April, America declared war on Germany. It was the turning point the European allies had waited for.

  This four-year conflict was very much a conflict of new and advanced weapons. The machine gun was not a new system, but its latest version on both sides meant infantry stood little chance and were cut down in the battalions as they went over the top. However, the most feared weapon was poisoned gas. The French used it first in the form of not entirely lethal xylyl bromide grenades. The terrible threat of gas was that it made soldiers more vulnerable to any fighting because they were encumbered in gas masks and capes and, when ‘hit’ by gas, could take a very long time to die so their units were not effectively fighting while coping with gas casualties. Perhaps the decisive new weapon was the tank. It added mobility although many British commanders did not like it as they saw it entirely against their cavalry instincts. The first tanks were used in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. They were not then particularly successful, but this was only the start of the tracked vehicle that would replace the charger with often devastating effect and with the added advantage that, once they took the ground, the tanks were portable artillery that could hold it.

  What turned the war? Probably the American intervention. In November 1917, with American troops ‘over there’ Passchendaele was finally taken at the third Battle of Ypres and in September 1918, the year the Royal Air Force was formed from the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), the since vilified General Douglas Haig (1861–1928) broke through the Hindenburg Line. On 11 November 1918, the armistice was signed. Probably ten million soldiers on all sides never lived to know that.

  In 1919, Lady Astor left her house in St James’s Square for Parliament. She was to take her seat as the first woman to sit as an MP. It was hailed as the most significant Parliamentary moment since the Reform Act of 1832. Yet the period that followed was hardly a time of post-First World War rejoicing. It seemed clear, even as the Treaty of Versailles to formally end the war was signed, that another conflict between Britain and Germany was likely, if not inevitable. The French determination to enforce crippling economic and territorial reparations against Germany (which incidentally had been allowed to march home with its army intact) rang few bells of satisfaction among the allies. Pushing the Germans to the very brink of a new and dangerous nationalism was not really what the post-war period was best used for.

  The formation of the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, seemed small beer compared with what could happen in Continental Europe. Not that the government of the British Isles was indifferent to what was happening in Ireland. In 1914, the Irish Home Rule Bill had got through Parliament, but because of the war had not been enacted. Tens of thousands of Irishmen joined their regiments to fight the Germans. Thousands of them returned home and promptly volunteered for the IRA. When, in 1920, the Government of Ireland Act offered to partition six north-eastern counties of Ireland from the rest of the island and give both sections parliaments, the southern Irish said ‘No’.

  In March 1920, the first units of the 8,000 soon to be notorious Black and Tans were sent to Ireland from England. This was a unit of often ill-disciplined and tormenting former soldiers (most of whom could not find jobs in post-war Britain) sent in to reinforce the Royal Irish Constabulary in what the British government warned them would be a ‘rough and dangerous task’. They were called Black and Tans because there were too few uniforms for them, so they wore a mixture of army khaki and police blue/black. The theory was that they would take on the IRA. The tried and they failed. Also, acts such as their shooting twelve civilians in Dublin at a football match at Croke Park only recruited sympathizers, if not members, for the IRA. By the following year, 1921, the Irish Free State created by the December Anglo–Irish Treaty gave the twenty-six count
ies of Ireland the sort of dominion status held by Canada inside the British Empire. Not surprisingly, the hard-line Republicans, including the IRA, would have nothing to do with this Free State and so Ireland burst into a civil war that lasted until 1923. As for the six north-eastern counties, they too wanted nothing of the Free State. Instead, they opted to be a self-governing province within the United Kingdom – here in 1921 was the start of what we call Northern Ireland and, the beginning of the Republican demand: ‘Give us back the six counties.’

  If we see Ireland during this period as a challenge to British Establishment authority, which it had been consistently since the sixteenth century, so it was a time to reassess the role of that Establishment. Britain had been ruled by its aristocracy since the thirteenth century. Aristocracy did not always mean titles and honours. The aristocracy was the group, usually families, in British society that assumed the right to rule and/or the dynastic responsibility to do so. When individuals emerged, they were never ordinary, usually powerful or stand-ins during an interregnum – the nineteenth century saw a lot of this. If there is a moment when the ruling class (a general term, but without detailed analysis, reasonable anyway) began to give way to a new style of political influence and persuasion, it was probably in 1916 when H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) failed as a Liberal Prime Minister and as a war leader. He was replaced by the Liberal munitions minister and Secretary for War, David Lloyd George (1863–1945). His reputation was made during the seven previous years as a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer. His harsh 1909 ‘People’s’ Budget included social reforms and supertaxes on those with earnings higher than £3,000. The Lords blocked his Budget. Two elections followed but the decider was the 1911 Parliament Act that reduced the powers of the Upper House. That Act was passed by their Lordships only when the King made it known that if they did not, then he would swamp the Lords with new Liberal peers to get the majority to bulldoze through the Bill. By voting for the Bill, the Lords were only allowed delaying powers on money Bills and they lost the authority to vote out public legislation other than Bills that would have extended the life of the Parliament – and thus the government.

  Lloyd George is usually included in lists of the top three twentieth-century Prime Ministers. But he did preside over the end of the Liberals as a predominant Parliament power. When he replaced Asquith, many Liberals refused to serve under him. The Liberal–Conservative coalition was dominated by the Tories. A month after the signing of the Armistice, Lloyd George went to the country. He was opposed by his own Liberals who still favoured Asquith but, thanks to the Conservatives, Lloyd George won. It was not much of a peace. The land fit for heroes was not fit enough to find employment for four million demobbed soldiers; it was not politically peaceful because so many objected to the Irish settlement and, publicly, very many indeed were scandalized by the number of people who had received honours for making donations to the election campaign treasure chest. Then, in 1922, the coalition collapsed. The Conservatives pulled out. Lloyd George was finished as a national leader and resigned. Asquith returned as Liberal leader in 1923 for three years and Lloyd George between 1926 and 1931, but he and the Liberals were a spent force.

  When Lloyd George went in 1922, the Tory, Andrew Bonar Law (1858–1923) became Prime Minister. He was not a well man. He had already retired once through ill health. Now in October 1922, having helped bring down Lloyd George, he went into Number 10 as a not particularly significant fellow and lasted only until May 1923. He died that year. Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) followed him into office and so started a prime ministerial career of a far higher calibre national leader than many in the twenty-first century give him credit. He would steer the Tories through the hectic and uncertain years of economic decline and National Government that led into the Second World War. However, the important British political moment at the start of the 1920s was the appearance, for the first time, of the Labour Party as Her Majesty’s Official Opposition when Lloyd George went in 1922. It was also all change elsewhere: that same year, Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) became Prime Minister of Italy and Stalin (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili,1879–1953) became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR.

  The strength of the Labour Party in the 1920s marked the significant political change of the twentieth century. Under Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) the first Labour government (1924) may have been short-lived, but it was now seen to be a party worth voting for. Baldwin was again Prime Minister when the Labour administration could not continue. Whatever the political leadership and brilliance of individuals, none could duck the force of the economic collapse that buried Britain’s business and individual finances in the 1920s. The General Strike of 1926 was never as dramatic as now pictured, but it illustrated the sense of hopelessness throughout the nations. There was no big idea like the United States’ New Deal to get Britain back on its feet – nor were there resources to create one. And so, officially, in 1929 the Great Depression began.

  The Depression began with Black Tuesday in October 1929, when Wall Street crashed. Two years later, the world was deep in the worst economic recession in history, caused by land price collapses, too many loans to people who could not repay, too many goods made for a nation that increasingly could not afford them. In the United States, thirteen million were unemployed. The Depression disease spread. The United States had too many banks (5,000 or so closed down) making unrepayable loans in Europe, including the United Kingdom. The money had been borrowed partly to pay off debts from the First World War although Britain had for the most part used sales from its own foreign assets to pay for the war effort. Nevertheless, because it had lost so many foreign exchange assets, Britain was not immune when the American banks called in the loans and pressure was placed on European banks. They could not take the financial strain and many collapsed.

  One aspect of Britain’s slump in the late 1920s was a poor decision made in 1925 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston S. Churchill – long since back in the Conservative Party from which he had jumped to the Liberals in 1904. Churchill, in April 1925, restored the pound sterling to the gold standard; but he took the Bank of England’s advice and he did so at its pre-war rate of $4.86. This made British exports prohibitively expensive. Unemployment doubled to at least 2.5 million. The knock on from this was a lowering of wages. This provoked the 1926 General Strike.

  By 1930, investors were running from British deals, and the briefly returned Labour government could not cope. The Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, had to accept that Britain had to have a National Government with the Liberals and the Conservatives. The Labour Party saw MacDonald as a traitor to the party’s cause. In 1931, the General Election saw Labour decimated at the polls. But the National Government continued – with Baldwin and the dominant Conservatives. A Budget of draconian cuts in spending and wages, along with rises in income tax rates, had the opposite result than was intended. Deflation ran through industry, commerce and finances and, because of Churchill’s decision on the gold standard, gold was being sold. On 21 September Britain left the gold standard and the pound dropped from $4.86 to $3.40. The pound was now more realistically priced and began a slow recovery. It was just as well; by 1936 with the rise of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, there was, once more, a whiff of war in the political air. Certainly industry would benefit from the unstable nature of near foreign relations: the government started a rearmament programme.

  For many economists and political scientists, the Second World War was inevitable because economic pressures (partly engineered by French demands on post-First World War Germany) and often political humiliation had encouraged German nationalism. We should always remember that Hitler was elected. Certainly the war came because the 1919 Treaty of Versailles failed and, indirectly, because the League of Nations could never survive without the United States; the historical irony was that an instinctive post-First World War United States could never follow the enthusiasm of its President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) for such a body –
it was his idea – that could prevent war and the horrid slaughter of that witnessed during 1914–18. Also, Germany was not allowed to join the League in 1919 as it was considered to have started the First World War and therefore was an aggressor; and nor was Russia, as it was a Communist State and so therefore a potential aggressor. The standing procedures, rules and protocols amounted to a very inept piece of political and constitutional draughtsmanship. Whether or not a better format could have stopped Hitler is impossible to know; certainly without the United States enthusiastically on board, it is unlikely that it would have.