Interwar Britain Research Articles

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.

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.

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.

Creating the Citizen Juror in Interwar England and Wales

ABSTRACT This article assesses developments in the theory and practice of jury service in England and Wales between the two world wars. It argues that this was a transformative period in the English jury’s history, in which both public and administrative understandings of the system shifted away from a model predicated primarily on the possession of landed property of a certain value, and towards a model built around developing notions of citizenship. This was more generally a period in which understandings of citizenship, as distinct from mere subjecthood, were also developing. The article argues that developments in citizenship generally, and in the practicalities of jury service more specifically, are intimately connected. By analysing the interwar jury as a citizenship institution, we deepen our understanding both of citizenship practices and of the jury during this important period in the shift towards something approaching democratic forms of governance.

Labor Reallocation and Recessions: Re-evaluating Unemployment in Interwar Britain

Labor Reallocation and Recessions: Re-evaluating Unemployment in Interwar Britain

Anti-Bolshevism and the periodical press in interwar Britain: the case of the Saturday Review, 1933–6

Abstract Using the example of the Saturday Review under the ownership of Lady Houston, this article explores how anti-Bolshevism was constituted in interwar Britain, and how the paper embodied the immoderate views of the radical Right, acting as a de facto promotional hub for a multifarious network of disaffected Conservatives. It shows how the Review integrated conspiratorial anti-Bolshevism into editorial argument and ostensible news provision, and how this found an attentive readership for a short-lived period. The article further demonstrates the utility of the periodical press for broadening historians’ engagement with overarching trends in politics and society during the interwar period.

P. Morton Shand and the Promotion of Alvar Aalto

Abstract This article reconsiders the success of Alvar Aalto in interwar Britain through the perspective of P. Morton Shand. As a journalist fluent in French and German, Shand introduced European Modernism to British architects. From 1930, he focused his efforts on Aalto, leading to the seminal exhibition of the Finnish designer’s furniture in 1933. By viewing the exhibition through the lens of Shand, this article points to the role of critics as active participants in interwar design culture, leading the promotion of modern design and blurring the lines between journalism and commercialized propaganda. While historians are productively describing the roles of consumers, critics and other nondesigners in design history, Shand has remained unappreciated, despite operating at the heart of many interwar exchanges. With the use of an uncataloged collection of his correspondence, this article reveals his individual impact in popularizing the furniture of Aalto.

Measuring inflation expectations in interwar Britain

AbstractWhat caused the recovery from the British Great Depression? A leading explanation – the ‘expectations channel’ – suggests that a shift in expected inflation lowered real interest rates and stimulated consumption and investment. However, few studies have measured, or tested the economic consequences of, inflation expectations. In this paper, we collect high‐frequency information from primary and secondary sources to measure expected inflation in the United Kingdom between the wars. A high‐frequency vector autoregression suggests that inflation expectations were an important source of the early stages of economic recovery in interwar Britain.

The Crisis of Democracy in Interwar Britain

AbstractThis article reconstructs and examines the idea that democracy (in various senses) was fragile or, as some had it, in ‘crisis’ in interwar Britain. Recent scholarship on interwar political culture has generally emphasized its democratic or ‘democratizing’ character, in line with a conventional historical view of Britain as an exception to the instability and contestation of democracy in Europe. It is argued here that Britain's embroilment in a European ‘crisis’ of democracy was a commonplace of contemporary political thought, commentary, and argument; and that anxieties surrounding this prompted some of the initiatives that are conventionally seen as evidence of ‘democratization’. A properly historical understanding of those initiatives, and of interwar political culture in general, therefore appears to require that contemporary ideas of the weakness or ‘crisis’ of democracy in Britain are taken seriously (but not necessarily endorsed). In conclusion, the article suggests that interwar discussions of democracy gave rise to a tendency to equate democracy with a form of negative liberty, which registered and facilitated influential developments in politics and political thought beyond the interwar period; and that historical understanding of democracy in modern Britain might be enriched through an engagement with the political theorist Sheldon Wolin's concept of ‘fugitive democracy’.

The Experience of Employment in a 1930s East End Cinema

This article explores the employment experience of workers at the Eastern Palace Cinema in East London, in 1934. In August 1934, a member of staff murdered the cinema’s manager. The witness statements taken in the subsequent criminal investigation give a unique insight into the operations of 1930s cinemas and the working conditions of the people who were employed in them. The statements give voice to a group of service staff that had limited means of relating their lived experience. The article contrasts these statements with contemporary advice on cinema operations from guidebooks and trade papers to explore how trade advice translated into reality. It also draws on archival sources to excavate the backgrounds of cinema staff across roles. This adds to our understanding of the experience of staff employed in the most popular leisure industry of interwar Britain, an area that has not yet been extensively researched.

Promoting adaptative education for the Wongutha people:the influence of Anglo-American ideas for ‘Native Education’ in interwar Australia

ABSTRACT The question of ‘native’ education became urgent in interwar Britain in the context of imperial expansion in Africa. Simultaneously, debates concerning black education were central to a global pan-African nationalist movement demanding black rights and liberation. In this context, education became a site of competing ideas regarding black accommodation and rights. Missionaries drew connections between educating ‘black Africa’ and ‘negro America’ as adaptive education became part of a new civilising mission in Africa. This article explores the application of these ideas at Mt Margaret, a Protestant mission in Western Australia, in the interwar period. Drawing on missionary accounts it shows how their endeavours to promote adaptive education for Wongutha people were shaped by developments in the empire, particularly the Phelps Stokes Commissions in Africa. We see the transnational reach of this Anglo- American exchange and its vernacularisation in a settler colonial context where adaptive education was about building Indigenous citizens.