Interwar Britain Research Articles

Lacey Sparks. Women and the Rise of Nutrition Science in Interwar Britain and British Africa Britain and the World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. 206. $119.00 (cloth).

Lacey Sparks. Women and the Rise of Nutrition Science in Interwar Britain and British Africa Britain and the World. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. 206. $119.00 (cloth).

Elite hostesses as disruptive forces: the country house in interwar Britain

ABSTRACT British high society in the interwar years was led by a small group of hostesses who were instrumental in heralding consistency after the upheaval of the Great War. Yet, they were also beacons of change, introducing the famous names of the day to each other. Likewise, the country house was entering a period of adjustment as many changed hands or were utilised more often due to the advent of the motor car and quicker travel. This article analyses the role of two hostesses who were at the centre of two of the greatest scandals of the 1930s and argues that the seclusion of the country house was significant to events. Wallis Simpsons role as de facto hostess at Fort Belvedere is explored through the writings of her contemporaries and analysed in the context of the Abdication Crisis. Nancy Astor's role as chatelaine of Cliveden House is explored in relation to her involvement with the Cliveden Set.

‘An amazing gang of women crooks and blackmailers’: women, organized crime, and the ‘Forty Elephants’ gang in inter-war Britain

Abstract Women’s participation in organized crime has been overlooked within historical research, with studies typically relegating their roles to that of auxiliaries to male gangsters. This article explores the activities and portrayals of women involved in organized crime during the British inter-war period, focusing specifically on one of Britain’s only known all-female criminal organizations (the ‘Forty Elephants’). Examining coverage from local, regional, and national newspapers, it argues that the Forty Elephants captivated the inter-war press, with depictions of gang members reflecting the stereotypical ‘devil in disguise’; according to the media, the female gangster was a dangerous and ‘professional’ criminal who hid behind a façade of good looks, fashionable clothing, and high social status. Furthermore, the article demonstrates how portrayals of the gang resonated with contemporary discussions around the emerging ‘modern woman’, reflecting concerns over women’s growing participation in social, political, and economic life.

Industrial, regional, and gender divides in British unemployment between the wars

Abstract Despite a substantial body of literature on the severe unemployment crisis in interwar Britain, our understanding of its distributional impacts remains limited. Using newly digitized government data, this paper analyzes the gender, industrial, and regional composition of unemployment 1923–1936. I find that the unemployment rate was higher for men owing in part to a strongly gender-segmented labor market, that unemployment was widespread across industries and not just a product of the declining staple industries, that unemployment exhibited strong seasonality, and that regional unemployment differentials cannot be primarily attributed to regions’ varying industrial compositions. These results offer a more granular view of this mass unemployment episode.

Active citizen or pest? Civic authorities, democratization and citizenship in inter-war England

Abstract In the 1920s, the art collector John Hilditch tirelessly undertook a public campaign to have his objects exhibited at the Manchester City Art Gallery. This article uses his struggle as a lens through which to examine how the relationship between the civic museum and its citizens was reshaped during the transition to mass democracy. Historians have explored how civic authorities responded to the challenge of mass democratization by encouraging their citizens to become ‘active’, but we know little about how the citizens responded to this call. Hilditch’s campaign allows us to see what public platforms citizens could negotiate to become ‘active’ citizens, and just how far they could influence civic policy.

The National Union of Journalists and Journalism Education in Interwar Britain

ABSTRACT Are journalists born or made? During the interwar period (1919–1939), the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) grappled with this question, as the first university course for journalism was founded and more university-educated staff entered newsrooms. This article is the first to consider interwar journalists’ opinions on whether and how British journalists should be educated. Debates on journalism education continued until the 1990s, when university education became the norm for British journalists. This article explores the emergence of this contentious argument. Through the articles published in the pages of the NUJ’s monthly member magazine the Journalist, two strands of the NUJ’s activities on education are explored: the Union’s stance on the University of London Diploma for Journalism and the work of the NUJ’s Education Committee. During the interwar period, the National Union of Journalists developed educational output for its members. Unlike other British trade unions, the NUJ focused on providing its members with education that was directly related to their careers. These activities raised fundamental questions that went to the heart of the profession during a period when journalism’s professional identity in Britain was still evolving.

Locating Exhibition Design as a Means of Marketing Architectural Modernism in Inter-War Britain

Throughout the interwar period many dialects of modernist visual languages were developed and often mediated by the technologies of photography, film, and design. This negotiation of modernity was a key feature characterizing the exhibition designs of architect Oliver Hill (1887-1968). Taking Hill’s designs for the “Exhibition of British Industrial Art in Relation to the Home” at Dorland Hall in 1933 as a starting point, this paper investigates Hill’s commitment to consumer education. Exhibition designs, such as at Dorland Hall, proved a perfect vehicle for Hill’s educational imperatives in elevating consumers’ understanding of “good design.” Through a close reading this paper highlights how Hill embraced fashionability, both in terms of market consumerism and in terms of the power that fashion had on improving taste and standards in design during that time.

“Indignities Imposed by Arbitrary Adult Rule?” Children’s Dress (and Undress) in Progressive Schools in Interwar England

Independent schools describing themselves as “progressive,” “modern,” or “advanced” flourished in interwar England. At the same time, new ideas were emerging among intellectuals about the social and psychological value (or otherwise) of clothing (and its lack). Progressives’ experiments in living and loving, eating and dressing, intersected with the choices they made for educating their children. Radical utopian child-centred establishments integrated health cures and vegetarian diets, for example, alongside new curriculum approaches that included nude practices of “sun and air bathing.” This article examines attitudes to children’s dress and undress by interwar progressive educators alongside arguments of contemporaneous health campaigners, sexologists, fashion writers, and nudists, who were often one and the same. In radical educational and health literatures, children were discussed and photographically depicted as “natural nudists” or, as curator and dress historian James Laver put it, “the best advocates of the modern movement.” Drawing on primary research in pedagogic literature and nudist publications, as well as histories and theories of fashion, nudism, education, sexology, and visual culture, this article argues that utopian interwar English independent education used nudity to demonstrate its most radical agendas and to perform its progressiveness via the bodies of children (un)dressed in an alternative school uniform.

Mrs Ann Errington of Sacriston: the political biography of a Durham miner's wife between the wars

ABSTRACT The place of women in the history of UK coalfield communities remains under-researched. This paper addresses this lacuna through an examination of the life of County Durham miner's wife, Annie Errington, who emerged as an important political leader in her community in the interwar period. Situating her life story in the context of her community, characterised by strong cooperative and socialist values, the paper assembles her political biography from fragmented sources. It identifies her key role in local government, her visit to Soviet Russia in 1926 and as a leader of a mass movement of miners’ wives in interwar Britain. While avowedly a miner's wife, Annie Errington emerges as an important political leader, albeit her role was limited by prevailing orthodoxies about gender relations, some of which she endorsed herself. The paper contributes to the feminist historiography of mining communities, which has largely overlooked—and at times denied—the extent of political activism of women in this period.

Henry Green’s Investments

Henry Green’s Investments

Animals, Film, Audiences: Regulating Cruelty and Morality through Science and Law in Interwar Britain

Animals, Film, Audiences: Regulating Cruelty and Morality through Science and Law in Interwar Britain

Taxes and Growth: New Narrative Evidence from Interwar Britain

Abstract The impact of fiscal policy on economic activity is still a matter of great debate. And, ever since Keynes first commented on it, interwar Britain, 1918–39, has remained a particularly interesting and contentious case—not least because of its high-debt environment and turbulent business cycle. This debate has often focused on the effects of government spending, but little is known about the effects of tax changes. In fact, a number of tax reforms in the period focused on long-term and social objectives, often reflecting the personality of British Chancellors. Based on extensive historiographical research, we apply a narrative approach to the interwar period in Britain and isolate a new series of exogenous tax changes. We find that tax changes have a sizable effect on GDP, with multipliers exceeding 2 within two years. Our estimates provide new evidence on the effects of tax changes, contribute to the historical debate about fiscal policy in the interwar period and are also consistent with the sizable tax multipliers found after World War II.

‘Zoooooop! Look quickly or you’ll miss it!’: Pella Rolscreens®, Pilkington Insulight Activ™ and Jennifer Bloomer’s disappearing matter

Even before new materialism, Jennifer Bloomer’s writing on matter made it possible to rethink materiality in architecture from a feminist perspective. Drawing on this rich body of work, and on my research into the emergence of building products in interwar Britain, I look in detail at the Pella Rolscreen, a retractable fly screen made in a factory in Iowa, which makes an almost silent and invisible appearance in Bloomer’s 1996 essay ‘The Matter of Matter: A Longing for Gravity’. Like so many other commodities aimed at homeowners in the early decades of the twentieth century, Rolscreens were marketed both for their invisibility and for saving labour around the house. Advertising evoked idealised representations of the leisured housewife, but of course, work — like matter — never really disappears. Rolscreens and their many components were made and assembled by a waged labour force which, as it turns out, also included women.

“Car, car over all, it has taken a terrible hold of us”: Experiencing automobility in interwar Britain and Germany

This article seeks to tell an emotional history of car use through the genre of life-writing, a source whose use in historical mobility research has recently been advocated by Colin Pooley. It focuses on two diarists, Hugh Miller and Victor Klemperer, to uncover what automobility looked and felt like in interwar Britain and Germany, when modern mass motorisation was emerging. It highlights that experiences of automobility were heterogeneous and dependent on social position, combining the excitement and liberty popularly associated with interwar car use with the banal, frustrating and terrifying. Motorists like Miller and Klemperer felt conflicted about automobility and what it represented. Their inner ambivalence points to a unique emotional engagement with the car, which may help to explain its persistence in twentieth-century society and beyond.

‘Our Own People’: The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association in Interwar Britain and Ireland

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA) was originally founded in London in 1922 to aid ‘refugees’ in Britain. It also had an Irish sub-committee, and soon focussed its attention almost exclusively on those loyalists who remained in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated by diehard Conservatives and Irish unionists, SILRA demonstrates the longevity of the afterlife of the Irish Revolution for both of these groups – though both had experienced it very differently. As a non-violent reactionary movement that spanned Britain, Ireland, and the dominions, SILRA offers a useful transnational case-study of interwar counter-revolution in a British context. Moreover, SILRA's Irish committee highlights some of the ways in which the sternest southern loyalists and unionists – who found themselves among the ‘losers’ of the Irish Revolution – preserved allegiances and social solidarity in the IFS.

Nature on the airwaves: natural history and the BBC in interwar Britain, 1922–1939 (William T. Stearn Student Essay Prize 2021)

Archival and other historical evidence, including digitized issues of The Radio Times and files from the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Written Archives Centre, reveal the pivotal importance that natural history played in the BBC’s programming during the 1920s and 1930s. Beyond merely replicating the forms and styles that could be found across other forms of mass media, natural history broadcasts demonstrated to the British public what radio technology was capable of. At the same time, radio was not isolated from the media landscape of the period, and natural history broadcasts made full use of visual accompaniments such as magazines and pamphlets. Examining a variety of different broadcasts, this paper focuses on how expertise was fashioned behind the microphone, on “stunts” such as broadcasting the live sounds of animals, on audience participation, and on broadcasts aimed at young audiences. Broadcast lessons for schools, which are generally overlooked by historians, offer a rich opportunity for examining how natural history radio developed over the years. Children’s hour characters like the “Zoo Man” modelled an intimate, direct way of engaging with young audiences. Moreover, experiments in field ecology involving listeners in the collection of data showed that radio could act as a two-way medium. These broadcasts helped to shape the modern phenomenon of the nature documentary that would take off after 1945. While the origins of this phenomenon are usually traced either to the establishment of the BBC’s Natural History Unit in 1957, or in some cases to early nature films, there is a strong case for considering the BBC’s interwar broadcasts (1922–1939) as part of this trajectory.

Baldwin and a United Nation

Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative Party leader from 1923 to 1937, has been credited with the first use of the term “one nation” as a tenet of Conservative politics. But it is unlikely that he intended to invent a new phrase, and he was not a source for the modern conception of “One Nation Conservatism”. Nevertheless, during the severe difficulties of inter-war Britain and fears for the Conservative Party’s future, Baldwin did create a distinctive politics which emphasised national cohesion and Conservative classlessness. Unlike the later advocates of One Nation Conservatism, this did not turn on social and economic policies, but on political principles and moral values. It had two purposes: chiefly to help hold the political nation together, but also to shape its divisions to the advantage of the Conservative party.

The Early Political Thought and Publishing Career of V. K. Krishna Menon, 1928–1938

AbstractThis article assesses Indian activist V. K. Krishna Menon's early political thought, formed during his years in Britain prior to Indian independence. It argues that this was more nuanced than has been previously characterized, with a range of influences and foundations. To analyse the formation and evolution of Menon's political thought, it looks at his political actions from this period, which largely fall into three areas; the India League, his engagement with the British Left, and his publishing career. His editorial work is what often tied together these strands of political action and was where his political thought manifested and expressed itself. This article analyses Menon's publishing career from roughly 1928 to 1938, highlighting the engagement of the three strands of his political action, before undertaking a book history of the India League text Condition of India. The article is a continuation of the expansion of book histories of twentieth-century empire, and argues for a reassessment of anti-colonial texts and figures along these lines, whilst also contributing to the growing historiographical trend that seeks to recast modern Indian political thought, as well as the politics of internationalist activists in interwar Britain.

‘A Chamber of Noise Horrors’: sound, technology and the museum

This article examines the 1935 Science Museum temporary exhibition on Noise Abatement, situating it in the sound historical context of inter-war Britain, and making an argument that the ‘way of hearing’ it advanced was part of an attempt to shape auditory perception in the interests of a class-bound culture of acoustic civilization. Further, the article uses this exhibition to mount an argument that museum scholars should consider sound not simply as a medium of engagement, but also as a politically interested and socially active field.

No more parades? Navy Weeks, naval theatre and navalism, 1927–38

Abstract Despite calls for ‘no more parades’ following the First World War, and while the period was supposedly inhospitable to militaristic and martial ceremony, ‘naval theatre’, navalism and cultural displays of militarism all enjoyed significant resonance in the popular civic ritual of interwar Britain. One of the most prominent forms of naval theatre in this period was the annual celebration of Navy Weeks. First staged at Portsmouth, then extended to Plymouth and Chatham the following year, Navy Weeks were held between 1927 and 1938 and allowed members of the public to be brought into direct touch with the work, life and routine of the Royal Navy. Instituted to aid naval charities, the event also provided a public platform for the admiralty to promote the navy for the preservation of nation and empire, as well as encouraging naval education among the British public. Navy Weeks represented a site of modernity, technological innovation and military prestige. However, the event equally promoted naval heritage, tradition and the long-standing significance of the Royal Navy to Britain’s status as a maritime nation.