Britain 1901-1950

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND

On Queen Victoria's death, her son Edward VII ( 1901-10 ) came to the throne. The last
decades of her reign had witnessed a decline in the economic activity, due to the
competition of the USA and Japan , the Boer war ( 1899-1902 ) which stimulated
uneasiness ( England won thanks to the Canadians and Australians who fought to defend
the empire. This war made England unpopular abroad, since it underlined its imperial
ambition, but it led to an increase in the efficiency of the army that proved to be important
in World war I ), the revival of socialism ,which began to be seen as an active force. In fact,
in 1883 the Fabian society was set up, it was an association of middle class intellectuals ,
including G.B. Shaw, which proved influential in organising the Labour Representation
Conference held in London in February 1900, here trade unionists and socialists agreed to
support the election of Labour members to British parliament, thus breaking the traditional
mould of British politics , the Labour party ( 1893 ) demanded electoral reform and social
justice, since there were inequalities in wealth distribution and social opportunities.
At the general elections in 1906 the Liberal party won and a series of reforms were made,
which brought to improvements in the living conditions of the lower classes whose wages
doubled, there were technical innovations such as gas heating and lighting that appeared
in the rich homes. Despite this there was still a wide gap between ruling and working
classes.
The end of the balance of power
The first decades of the 20 century saw the end of the balance of power in Europe that
had been favoured by Britain's foreign policy since the 18 century. Germany, with its
modern industries and powerful army and navy, was trying to extend its control over the
Balkan states. As a consequence in 1904 Britain allied itself with France in the so called
entente cordiale , and with Japan and Russia.
World War I
War broke out when in June 1914 the heir to the Austrian throne, the Archduke F.
Ferdinand, was murdered at Sarajevo, Serbia, during an official state visit. Austria and
Germany declared war on Serbia in July. France, Russia and Britain sided with Serbia
against Austria and Germany. In 1915 Italy joined France and Britain, in 1917 Russia
withdrew, after the Bolshevik revolution, the USA entered the war on Britain's side.
This war was unlike any previous one: the front stretched hundreds of miles across the
continent; it was fought night and day without cessation; the opposing armies faced each
other in the trenches of northern France , but fighting occurred in the Middle East as wellthe British fought against the Turks in Iraq and Palestine, on the Dardanelles- and at sea.
Countless men died, as generals and tacticians looked around for a solution to the
deadlock, scientists and engineers came to their aid, supplying new and terrifying
instruments of mass destruction. Cavalry horses were replaced by tanks; machine guns
were joined by gas; warships were helped by submarines and the skies were filled with
military aircraft.
The futility of trench warfare, with massive loss of life, haunted the minds of both the
combatants and future generation. This war destroyed the remaining traces of Victorian
optimism and contributed to deepening the crisis of belief brought about by scientific
discoveries. The events of the war intensified the distrust of the immediate past. Many of
the young men who had experienced the horrors of the war thought its causes lay in the
past. What is more, they saw the military and political leaders as men of the past and their
incompetent handling of the war as further proof of an obsolete generation. In addition,so
strong was the contrast between the realities of war and traditional values it was fought in
defence of that it was difficult to believe in the mercy of God.

WW I had important effects on European culture. The great war appeared as the climax of
the process of dissolution of the old society. It had also the connotation of a conflict
between the generation of the fathers and the sons, besides that of precise international
economic interests. The young men who went to fight in the French or Belgian trenches
were in revolt against their fathers and rejected their ideology ( the aggressive, war
mongering patriotism known as Jingoism,1878 ).
The War poets
They were young men who went to fight in the trenches, many of them died, the best
known among them are: Wilfred Owen ( who was killed in action on November 4, a week
before the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918 ) who in his poem Futility told about a
young man dead before his time, about the futility of life that can be cut short so pointlessly
by war. The real subject of his poem was the reality of war, not the glorification of it, the
poet's suffering and sadness at so much horror and death; he depicted war not as an
honourable sacrifice, but as a useless massacre.
Others were: Rupert Brooke, Rosenberg and Sassoon, the last wrote a poem They in
which he represented the war with all its horror and with a realistic language that was able
to awake the conscience of people who stayed at home and considered war in a romantic
way, fighting in a just cause for the greatness of one's country, for him the poet's role was
to tell the truth about the war horrors.
WWI ended on 11 Nov.1918, by that time over 750,000 British troops had died and 2
million had been seriously wounded. In June 1919 the peace treaty was signed at
Versailles; the treaty laid down punitive measures against Germany that would lead to
WWII. In 1919 the League of nations was also founded in Geneva, the forerunner of
modern UNO, with the aim of keeping peace all over the world and control difficult political
situations.