ABSTRACT
The period between the wars was an unhappy one for the British people in general, and particularly for the majority who belonged to the industrial working class. Between 1914 and 1918 almost 900,000 British Empire soldiers had died in the trenches, most of them from the working class. In the 1920s the basic industries of coal, textiles and heavy engineering went into long-term decline. Major industrial centres such as Glasgow, South Wales, Lancashire and the Northeast coast collapsed inexorably. Eight years after the end of the war Britain experienced its only general strike, in defence of the miners. It was a dismal failure, and was followed by restrictive legislation against the unions and by victimization of many union activists. Fourteen years after the war there were almost three million unemployed, and in the North-East and South Wales at least one-third of all breadwinners were out of work and being steadily pushed onto the meagre relief provided by the Poor Law.
