ABSTRACT

In the middle of 1940, the atmosphere of British public life changed radically. On the 25th May the British Expeditionary Force, under threat of entrapment and without adequate air support, began its retreat to the French coast. In the following ten days over 300,000 British and Free French servicemen were evacuated from Dunkirk. The initial reaction was mixed. There was confusion, some panic and, on the Left especially, a sense that the established political order was about to topple. Widespread anger was directed against the ‘Guilty Men’ who had governed Britain and appeased Germany in the 1930s and although the government did not fall, it was thereafter unable to contain the pressures for change which had built up over the preceding decade.