ABSTRACT
Twentieth-century Britain witnessed not only victory in two world wars but also political domination by the Conservative Party as a governing party. This study looks at the closest connection of these two phenomena, namely the First World War. Any history of modern Britain interested in society, culture or politics will deal in depth with the cataclysmic events of the years 1914-18. The war that embroiled all the great European powers during these years claimed over five million lives and shaped the future of European life for more than half a century, some would argue longer. It was a total war executed in novel ways and even for the lives it did not take, the conflict defined a generation. The civilian population – like its military counterpart – was ushered into an era of change, state control, and shifting definitions of citizenship. Political parties, too, were led into a world of new uncertainties and opportunities: a transformed relationship between the state and the individual, electoral reform unprecedented in its scale, industrial unrest unique in its stridency and the deliberate influencing of public opinion through state propaganda. Hardly surprisingly perhaps, these radical social and cultural changes brought about a radical restructuring of the political status quo. The Liberal Party – in power in 1914 and a governing party for some 80 years – exited the political stage, not to be permitted anything beyond a walk-on part for the remainder of the century. Meanwhile, the role of the Labour Party was broadened so much that it was able to play a major part in the political drama of the twentieth century. Largely because the spotlights have been upon these two dynamic actors, there has been an over-representation in historical literature of the Labour and Liberal parties.
