Abstract
The impact of the Second World War on Britain is still clouded with some of the most powerful mythology in modern history. Phrases such as ‘the Dunkirk spirit’, ‘backs to the wall’ and ‘the finest hour’ have a profoundly iconographic quality which has survived more than forty years of mobilisation at every level from academic history to television drama. The war became more than just another series of events to be lived through: it became an historical ideal, against which to measure the values both of the period that had gone before and the period that has elapsed since. What is deemed to have happened in the war, and in 1940 in particular, has become central to the concept of British national identity, a belief that there exists a national family with a shared memory, a collective consciousness which cuts across class, gender and regional divides. The year 1940 has become a constant point of reference for what Britain could achieve, and of appeals for further effort, for further sacrifice, for further heroics to recapture that sublime ‘finest hour’.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
‘Cato’, Guilty Men (London, 1940).
Mass Observation, War Begins at Home (London, 1940).
See P. Miles and M. Smith, Cinema, Literature and Society: Elite and Mass Culture in Britain Between the Wars (London, 1987).
The Times, London, 25 October 1940.
J.B. Priestley, Postscripts (London, 1940).
G. Orwell, ‘Poetry and the Microphone’, Collected Essays, Journals and Letters, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth, 1968).
T.H. O’Brien, Civil Defence (London, 1950).
R. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London, 1950).
A. Calder, The People’s War: Britain, 1939–1945 (London, 1969); T. Harrisson, Living through the Blitz (London, 1976).
R. Inman, Labour in the Munitions Industries (London, 1957).
J. Macnicol, ‘The Effect of Evacuation’ in H. A. L. Smith (ed.) War and Social Change (Manchester, 1986).
N. Longmate, The GIs (London, 1975).
J. Ellis, The Sharp End of War (London, 1982).
Mass Observation, The Journey Home (London, 1945); G. Braybon and P. Summerfield, Out of the Cage: Women’s Experiences in Two World Wars (London, 1987); M.R. Higgonet, Behind the Lines: Gender in the Two World Wars (New Haven, 1987); P. Summerfield, Women Workers in the Second World War (London, 1984).
P. Addison, The Road to 1945 (London, 1975); P. Adelman, British Politics in the 1930s and 1940s (Cambridge, 1987); R. Douglas, New Alliances (London, 1982).
E. Bevin, The Job to be Done (London, 1942).
M. Gowing. ‘The Organisation of Manpower during the Second World War’, Journal of Contemporary History (1976); Mass Observation, War Factory, (London, 1945).
A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 2 (London, 1967).
T. Carpenter, ‘Corporatism in Britain, 1930–1945’, Journal of Contemporary History (1976). 20. Herbert Morrisson, The State and Industry (London, 1944); A. Horne, Harold Macmillan (London, 1989) 21. J.M. Keynes, How to Pay for the War (London, 1940). 22. Cmd 6527, Employment Policy (London, 1944); see also A. Booth, ‘Economic advice at the Centre of British government, 1939–1941’, Historical Journal (1986); M. Stewart, Keynes and After (Harmondsworth, 1983).
Cmd 6404, Social Insurance and Allied Services (London, 1942).
Calder, p. 526; see also T. Cutler et al., Keynes, Beveridge and Beyond (London, 1986); K. Jefferys, ‘British Politics and Social Policy during the Second World War’, Historical Journal (1987); H. L. Smith, War and Social Change: British Society in the Second World War (Manchester, 1986).
See J. Harris, William Beveridge (Oxford, 1977); D.E. Ashford, The Emergence of the Welfare State (Oxford, 1986); R.C. Birch, The Shaping of the Welfare State (London, 1976); J. Macnicol, The Movement for Family Allowances (London, 1980).
K. Jeffereys, ‘R. A. Butler, the Board of Education and the 1944 Education Act’, History (1984).
M. Gilbert, Winston Churchill, vols. 6 and 7 (London, 1984, 1986); R. Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure, 1900–1939 (London, 1970); D. Kavanagh, Crisis, Charisma and the British Political Leadership (London, 1974); R. Thompson, Generalissimo Churchill (London, 1973).
J. Colville, The Fringes of Power (London, 1985). 30. M.E. Howard, The Mediterranean Strategy in World War (London, 1968); M. Kitchen, ‘Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union during the Second World War’, Historical Journal (1987).
Copyright information
© 1990 Malcolm Smith
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, M. (1990). The impact of the second world war. In: British Politics, Society and the State since the Late Nineteenth Century. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20938-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20938-5_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-45573-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-20938-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)