A Background Sketch of the Summer's Crisis

Home , September 1919

Introduction: A Background Sketch of the Summer’s Crisis

The trouble that was fermenting before the war, which broke upon a nation in which another crisis was rapidly germinating, is now coming fast to a head. A tremendous discontent possesses the soul of the people, and a violent passion to set things suddenly aright.1 ∵

With the acceptance of the first Sankey Report by the mfgb, the situation facing the government eased considerably, and Lloyd George was able to return to Paris to resume his place at the negotiating table. However, respite was temporary. By the beginning of July, he was back. The Sankey Commission had finished its investigation into nationalisation, and the country was once more entering a period of profound crisis. The crisis of the summer was composed of several elements. The optimism that had greeted Coalition promises of peace and reconstruction was rapidly dissipating. The transition from a war economy was proving difficult. Lloyd George privately admitted that a ‘burgeoning national debt, falling productiv- ity, loss of credit, and endemic strikes signalled Britain’s declining position’.2 Churchill’s support for the White armies in Russia was widely viewed as an act of base hypocrisy, undermining the idealistic rhetoric of the Versailles peace treaty. Liberals outside the government were outraged by the treaty itself. C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian, told Lloyd George that whilst he had ‘not the least objection to Coalition in itself’, he objected strongly to such ‘surrenders of principle’ as had taken place at Versailles.3 Liberal concerns increased tensions within the Coalition, and there was a sense that the government might not last. The government’s problems were compounded by renewed social and industrial unrest. There has perhaps been no more volatile summer in modern

1 South Wales Daily Post, 21 July 1919. 2 Middlemas 1979, p. 149. 3 Wilson 1970, p. 379.

British history than that of 1919. There was a hard edge of bitterness in what Hartshorn described as the ‘profound stirring of the masses’ which occurred in July and August.4 The national peace celebrations, which took place over the weekend of 19 and 20 July, only served to increase working class discontent. For many of the poorest sections of society, the military victory had been pyrrhic. Halfway through 1919, and a land fit for heroes was nowhere to be seen. The cost of living had continued to rise, food was still scarce in some places and of poor quality in many more, there was significant unemployment in some sectors of the economy, and nothing substantial had been achieved in the area of social reform. On top of all this was the continuation of conscription (another broken promise) and Churchill’s adventures against the infant Soviet Union. Taken together these created a sense of bitterness and betrayal that was as wide as it was deep. This dry social tinder was ignited by Peace Day riots which erupted in spectacular fashion in Luton, and then spread across Britain. Tension in Luton had been high since the Discharged Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Association had announced its withdrawal from official celebrations in protest at the refusal of the local authorities to allow it the use of Wardown Park for a memorial service. On the day of the celebrations, thousands of workers and soldiers gathered outside the Town Hall, hurling abuse at the Mayor. After some jostling with police, a section of the crowd attempted to charge into the building and wreck the Assembly Room where the Peace Banquet was to be held that evening. A pitched battle with the police continued well into the night, with the latter suffering sufficient casualties to force them to relinquish their defence of the Town Hall steps. The building was stormed, ransacked, and red flags were flown from windows and balconies before the whole edifice was torched and destroyed. It was not just Luton Town Hall which went up in smoke; so too did peace celebration images of national unity.5 Following Luton’s example, there developed serious rioting at Greenwich, Coventry, Edinburgh, Swindon, Hull, Wolverhampton and Liverpool, and nu- merous smaller clashes between crowds and police in other towns and cit- ies.6 Further research would be required to make a confident assessment of the political character of this non-industrial social protest in 1919. There is, unfortunately, no equivalent in British historiography of Ray Evans’s fascinating account of Australia’s ‘Red Flag Riots’ of the same period, which shows how ex- servicemen’s sense of betrayal could find political expression in either left-wing

4 South Wales News, 27 September 1919. 5 The Times, 21, 22 July 1919; Daily Herald, 21 July 1919. 6 Daily Herald, 1, 7, 23 July 1919; The Times, 23 July 1919.