Yet as the crisis continued into 1921, the prospect of a revolution receded. At the beginning of the year, the resolve of the strikers appeared to weaken; the government enfeebled it further through a combination of threats, empty promises and the offer of slightly higher wages and shorter hours. Lloyd George was in a strong bargaining position; high unemployment meant that no alternative employment was available to the striking workers – the choice was between accepting the employers’ terms or semi-starvation on the dole. The prime minister had strengthened his position further at the end of 1920 by introducing an Emergency Powers Act: the coalition was now empowered to govern by decree should there be the threat of industrial action. In the circumstances, the strikers had little choice but to back down, and a general strike in support of the miners planned for 15 April was called off. The date became known as ‘Black Friday’, because many on the left regarded it as the last day on which a war against the capitalists and the government might have been fought and won.
Lloyd George emerged victorious from his battle with the Labour movement, but it was a pyrrhic victory. The alliance he had struck up with the unions during the war was broken beyond repair, and he could no longer pose as a ‘man of the people’. What chance did he and his coalition Liberals have of luring workingclass voters away from Labour, at a time when they were increasingly disappointed by the government’s failure to deliver on its promise to build a ‘fit country for heroes to live in’? While some progressive measures had been implemented, the most ambitious government projects were scaled down when the economic slump intervened. The 1919 Housing Act had offered local authorities the funds to build over 200,000 rental homes, yet when the slump arrived the building came to an abrupt halt with only half of the houses constructed.
In the middle of the slump, the coalition’s Unionist majority reminded the prime minister that national debt stood at £8,000 million – forty times higher than it had been in 1914. To the Unionists the slump was an opportunity to reduce the debt through public spending cuts, though this would have the effect of increasing unemployment and reducing aggregate demand in the economy. The alternative of raising income tax further seemed illogical, since Unionists regarded the rich as the productive classes on whom the economy depended. Allying itself with the popular ‘Anti-Waste’ campaign, which espoused the creed of efficiency and economy in government, the Unionist party promoted an emergency austerity programme that served as cover for their ideological aim of reducing public spending and general state intervention. Bowing to pressure, Lloyd George created a committee of businessmen to decide where the cuts should be made. The chosen victims included education, health and pensions, with the cuts amounting to £85 million. Labour politicians were quick to point out the prime minister’s hypocrisy: the man who posed as ‘the people’s champion’ had made the working class pay the nation’s debts.
16
England’s Irish question
While industrial action continued in England, another crisis broke out in Ireland. In truth Ireland had been in a permanent state of crisis ever since the Home Rule emergency of 1912–14, with the Easter Rising of 1916 followed by the anti-conscription protests of 1918. In 1919, the Sinn Féin-dominated Dáil in Dublin proclaimed a second Irish Republic, independent from the United Kingdom. Britain refused to acknowledge either the Republic or the Dáil, and ostensibly still oversaw the administration of the country from Dublin Castle. Yet the Dáil proceeded to bypass Britain’s colonial administration; they imposed taxes on the Irish people, directed local authorities and established their own courts of justice, police force and military, which was known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
This was a challenge to the empire, which at that point covered around a quarter of the earth’s land and incorporated a quarter of the world’s population. Yet the first two decades of the twentieth century had demonstrated that empire’s vulnerability, as well as Britain’s diminishing military and economic power. The Boer War and the Great War had severely tested the empire, while imperialism as an ideology was also under threat. The president of the United States had enshrined the principle of national self-determination in the Versailles Treaty, which encouraged many of Britain’s imperial territories to demand more autonomy. Independence movements flourished in Burma and Egypt, as well as in Ireland.
In India the National Congress was gaining in popularity under the leadership of Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi, a former London lawyer who demanded dominion status for the country. The Government of India Act 1919 increased the involvement of native Indians in provincial councils, which were given greater powers. But it was not enough to convince the population of the legitimacy of continued British rule; social tensions remained high, and martial law was imposed. The consequences of this decision were immediate. On 13 April 1919, large numbers of Sikhs gathered in a garden in Amritsar to celebrate a religious festival and stage a political protest. Following the orders of Colonel Dyer, British troops covered the exits of the garden and opened fire on the unarmed crowd. According to the colonel, it was not ‘a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view’ throughout India. Between 380 and 1,000 people were killed.
Dyer received praise from Tories in parliament and in the press for ‘saving the Empire’. Although he was eventually dismissed from the army, a public collection for him raised £26,000. Anger at the killings spread throughout India. How could the English now claim to bring civilization to their ‘benighted’ subjects? In 1906 the British viceroy of India had spoken of ‘subduing’ the people of India, ‘not to the law of the sword but to the rule of justice’; now those words sounded hollow. In the aftermath of the massacre, many more Indians decided to support the National Congress. The incident marked the beginning of the end of British rule.
It was within the context of an overstretched and anxious empire that events in Ireland unfolded. Ireland was nominally part of the United Kingdom; its proximity made it vital to England’s security and prosperity. Unlike India, Egypt or Burma, the country had been under English influence since the twelfth century. Among those most concerned by the rise of Irish nationalism were the Unionists who dominated Lloyd George’s government; during the Home Rule crisis of 1912–14 they had zealously defended the interests of Protestant Unionists in north-east Ulster, even at the risk of civil war. The Ulster Unionists now lived in a de facto Irish republic, governed from Dublin by men who were from a different political, ethnic and sectarian tradition. The administrative control of the new republic did not extend to the north-east of Ulster, where the presence of British forces remained high, but there was no guarantee the situation would not change.
The Irish nationalist movement was composed of diverse elements, with differing aims. Many in Sinn Féin espoused independence from Britain, to be secured by peaceful methods where possible. On the other hand, the recently formed IRA was ready to fight the British and defend the recently proclaimed republic by force. The army was led by Michael Collins, who had a genius for military strategy.