University College London
Department of History

Spring Term 2000
British History 1850-1990 (HIST 1219)

Termpaper

by

Rohland Schuknecht

Social and Cultural Effects of the 

First World War on British Society

Contents

I. Introduction 3

II. Images of the ,,Great War" in British Society 3

III. Women and the War 6

IV. The War and the British Working Class 9

V. Conclusion 10

Bibliography 12

I. Introduction

The First World War is commonly viewed as a major historical break. In cultural terms the war marks the definite dawn of the modern age. Artists, writers and poets were among the first to recognise that the "old" had ended and something "new" emerged. Gertrude Stein noted in 1920: "After the war we had the Twentieth century".¹ Old values and preconceptions had been shattered, traditional lines of thinking declared invalid. The unprecedented scale of the butchery - the first "total" war in Europe since 1815 - its economic, social and political implications affected almost every part of society. The purpose of this essay is to investigate the nature and scale of cultural and social change in Britain during and after the war. Can we refer to the war as a "paradigm shift in culture"², a fundamental re-structuring of social values and British society as a whole? How "revolutionary" were the changes set in motion during the war and did the war create them? It appears to be difficult, if not impossible, to "measure" social and cultural change objectively. Therefore the following argument will be limited to three particular issues: the perception and image of the war itself and the impact of the war on the British working class and on women. A short analysis of these subjects should provide a useful approach to the question whether the war altered British culture and society in a truly radical way.

II. Images of the "Great War" in British Society

It is beyond question that the First World War had a significant impact on British culture which becomes most recognisable if we compare popular images of war itself as they existed before and after the conflict. Like most of the European powers, Britain expected a short campaign, a war of quick, decisive movements, a short performance of national strength. The British experience of war was based on "small wars" - colonial conflicts of limited scale, fought by a small professional army against hopelessly inferior enemies. Nobody knew what it would be like to fight a total war, nobody within the military establishment knew how to direct armies of millions, and it was only after the first disastrous effects of heavy artillery at the Western front that cavalry units were retreated from the battlefields.³ The high numbers of volunteers, following Kitchener′s call to arms during the first months of enlistment, indicate not only the success of propaganda, patriotic and nationalistic ideology but a serious lack of knowledge concerning the nature of the war.⁴

The incredible amount of casualties at the western front and the reality of an "inglorious" trench-war changed the idea of war at least among the active participants. Soldiers soon became to recognise that there was neither honour nor heroism nor chivalry in the trenches but only a desperate struggle to survive. Yet, at the "home front" the war was still portrayed along traditional lines through the images of war propaganda, the speeches of politicians and the media. There was no homogenous war experience. Even in the trenches the perception of war differed significantly due to individual personality, status and education. However the reality of death in unprecedented numbers and with unknown violence was inescapable. Death affected soldiers in their daily experience and their families through the loss of one ore more relatives at the front. 722.785 British servicemen – 6.7 per cent of all men mobilised – lost their life. Particularly the upper and upper middle classes suffered heavy losses – a quarter of all Oxford and Cambridge graduates who served in the armed forces died. On the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916 the British army’s casualties numbered 60.000 men of whom 20.000 had been killed. Over half a million men died on the battlefields of Verdun.⁵

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1 Cited from Frederick J. Hoffman, The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade, New York: Free Press, 1965, 222.

2 Malcolm Smith, ,,The War and British Culture", in Constantine/Kirby/Rose (eds.); The First World War in British History, London: Arnold, 1995, 169. Smith defines "culture" as "a system of thinking, [...] which displays itself in patterned regularity across the whole range of social values of a group, a class or a nation."

3 See Richard Holmes, "The Last Hurrah: Cavalry on the Western Front, August - September 1914" in Hugh Cecil/Peter Little (eds.), Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, London: Cooper, 1988, 278-298.

4 On popular images of war before 1914 see Gerard J. Degroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War, London/New York: Longman, 1996, 14-53; George L. Mosse, Gefallen für das Vaterland: Nationales Heldentum und namenloses Sterben, Suttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993, 69-88.

5 On the structure and the demographic impact of British war losses see J.M. Winter, The Great War and the British People, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, 71-99.