Before Catastrophe: The State of Britain Before WW1

The years before 1914 were tumultuous and volatile for Britain. If anything, rather ironically, the announcement of the war was a chance for Britain to steady itself, as the issues that had plagued them tempered. There were three main forces that threatened the stability of Britain before August 1914: the workers, the women and the Irish. All three, individually, played crucial roles in shaking the foundations of the British state, and, in tandem, were a difficult storm for Britain to weather.

Firstly, throughout the years 1911-1914, Britain’s workforce were beginning to tear themselves apart. Over those years, known as ‘The Great Unrest’, the British industrial establishment saw over 3000 major revolts and strikes.

During the years 1873-1896, Britain had experienced a kind of Depression, and while it was followed by a small economic boom, workers’ wages stayed the same, as prices for goods rose, meaning that they quickly began to see their standard of living diminish. Alongside this, Britain began to reorganise their industry, looking for greater mechanisation.

With their jobs at risk, the workforce began to hotly protest this progression. Their Trade Unions were seemingly losing recognition in Parliament, and were unable to get anything passed. The Unions, having improved their organisation, had become very vocal and could, if need be, be very violent. This was met in kind by the British government, as evidenced by a confrontation in Llanelli in 1911. The entire town was put under siege by the military and, after a confrontation, led to the death of two striking railway workers.

This chaos, the loss of workers and work days, and the effectiveness of the Unions to amass large riots and strikes, was a threat to the very establishment of Britain. The stability of the country was at stake, and the position of the government and the traditionally established hierarchies of the nation at risk.

While this was happening, the increasingly militant movement of the Suffragettes was beginning to fight for the franchise of women. Set up in 1903, the Women’s Social and Political Union became one of the foremost organisations fighting for this cause. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, they endorsed ‘deeds not words’, advocating militant tactics, seeing it as one of the only ways to gain attention and to bring about their desired change.

From heckling politicians, their actions rapidly grew in violence and impact; including vandalism, assault, arson, and planting acid and explosives. Herbert Asquith, the Prime Minister was also targeted, with four Irish suffragettes attempting to attack him on two separate occasions on the same day. First, they threw a hatchet at his head that hit John Redmond, leader of the Irish Nationalist movement, instead, and then, later, they attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal during a packed lunchtime matinee.

Thousands of women would be arrested, hundreds would go on a hunger strike, forcing the government into an impossible position: they could let the Suffragettes die and become martyrs, but that reflected awfully on them; they could release the strikers, but that would put them right back into the fight; or they could try and force feed them, which could lead to

damage to the women’s circulatory system, digestive system and nervous system, with some women even developing pleurisy or pneumonia as a result of a misplaced tube. The government went with the latter, despite the harm it could cause the prisoners. As the women attempted to upset the structure of the British establishment, they threw it into turmoil. Matched with the worker’s strikes, chaos ruled the streets and the government was hard pressed to find a way out.

Looming over all of this was the spectre of civil war in Ireland. For years, Ireland had been heavily divided, between the Nationalists and the Unionists. The Irish Nationalists wanted Ireland to become either a fully independent nation, or with Home Rule, and a parliament in Dublin. The Unionists, who were based in Ulster, on the other hand, wanted to remain in the United Kingdom. Since the late 1800s, the Nationalists had been trying to get a Home Rule Bill passed in Parliament. In 1912, a third, and final Home Rule Bill was brought to the British government. Despite being passed through the House of Commons, it met stiff opposition in the House of Lords, getting suspended for two years. Nevertheless, the passing of the Bill by the Commons was hailed as a victory back in Ireland, and the leader of the Nationalists, John Redmond, was heralded as a hero.

Naturally, it had the opposite effect on the Unionists, who saw this as a threat to Ireland’s stability. Led by Sir Edward Carson, almost 500,000 Unionists signed the ‘Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant’, pledging themselves to the defence of Ireland and the defeat of this threat of Home Rule. While this paper was deeply symbolic, the unionists looked for a more powerful way to demonstrate their intent, forming the Ulster Volunteer Force in December 1912. In response, the Nationalists formed the Irish Volunteers; both sides now had a kind of army to support their position.

Throughout the early months of 1914, the British Army stationed in Ireland increased the tensions and made the instability worse. First, with a misunderstanding that became known as ‘The Curragh Mutiny’, which bolstered the Unionist position and enraged the Nationalist cause; then, with a botched attempt at halting an Irish Volunteers’ gun-running operation in Howth, which led to a violent confrontation with the group, the army showed themselves to be inept and heavy-handed; finally, at Bachelors Walk, the army, ‘promiscuously’ (according to the government inquest) fired on an angered crowd of Dubliners, leading to three deaths and 30 casualties. Patrick Pearse, one of the figureheads of the Nationalist movement, seized the opportunity and turned the event into an iconic moment to catalyse the cause. Ireland was now so close to the outbreak of a civil war that it would take the outbreak of a European war to momentarily diffuse the tensions.

The significance of these three factors cannot be understated. The power of the ‘Great Unrest’, the Suffragette movement and the threat of an Irish civil war, was enough to bring Britain to the brink. As Ronan Fanning has argued, it came close to destroying the parliamentary system and became a period in which violence and the threat of violence overshadowed democratic politics. It is a testament to just how bad the situation was, that it took the outbreak of the most cataclysmic war in British history to bring a semblance of stability back to Britain.

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Further Reading:

Catriona Pennell, A Kingdom United?: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland, (2012)

Douglas Newton, The Darkest Days: The Truth Behind Britain’s Rush to War, 1914 (2014)

Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution, 1912 – 1922 (2013)

Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012)

David Powell, The Edwardian Crisis: Britain, 1901-1914: Britain, 1901-14 (1996)