The 1930s in Britain still polarises opinion today. Was it the ‘devil’s decade’ - unimaginative government under the lazy leadership of ‘guilty men’, standing idly by in the face of the mass unemployment of the slump and then failing to prevent the nightmare descent in to another world war. Or was it a time of surprising economic resilience and adaptation, when new forms of economic and political life emerged, giving Britain the strength to stand up as a democratic nation to the existential threat from totalitarian Germany, and displaying, in the words of H.G.Wells’ prophetic book which became a popular film in 1936, ‘the shape of things to come’.
The ‘devil’s decade’ became entrenched as the image of the Thirties even before it had ended. The roots of this impression of it ran deep into literature and the arts as well as political life. But since the 1970s, with the post-war ‘welfarist’ consensus under challenge and the opening of public archives, historians have given increasing definition to the alternative view. The world depression ended all hopes for a return to the imagined glories of Britain’s Victorian and Edwardian past. The work of the thirties was therefore to construct a new economy and society for Britain’s fledgling democracy out of new materials in a radically different world. The responses to these challenges, which are the main focus of the course, are not only interesting in themselves, but also laid the ground for the transformation of Britain under Clement Attlee's Labour government after the Second World War.
Using contemporary memoirs, diaries and literature, and the fruits of early opinion surveys, we will consider some of the main ‘mentalities’ which shaped public life in the Thirties. We will go on to explore the evolution of Britain’s democratic politics, drawing on new work on the political culture of the National Government which held power for much of the decade. In succeeding weeks, we will look at the challenge to traditional liberal economics from which new thinking emerged, changes in health, welfare and educational provision out of which the post-war changes grew, new kinds of consumer goods and patterns of consumption, an altered media landscape, and new approaches to empire and armaments. What in many ways characterised the period were innovations at the frontier between public and private spheres, and the emergence of a more inclusive popular culture adapted to Britain’s emerging democracy.
We will re-examine the Thirties through talks on these themes and discussions in each class. A manageable amount of reading materials will be offered in advance so that students have time to assimilate it. Through written work, students will be able to deepen their own involvement with aspects of the decade which particularly interest them. The aim is to present the Thirties as no longer the empty glass, but a glass at least half full, and containing much of great of interest for the present day.