British history and culture II

The 19th century ctd.

The Irish Question
Women suffrage
The First World War
 Ireland as the first colony of the English

• English presence in Ireland since 12th century

• Gradual growth of power of the Anglo-Irish lords
• Resistance to Tudor Reformation – wars and
uprisings, beginning of Protestant plantations in
Ulster – hence, later, Protestant majority in Ulster
• Discrimination of Catholics after the Glorious
Revolution – in consequence, pauperisation of the
Catholics, absentee landlords exploiting Catholic
tenants
 The Irish Question in 19th century

• Struggle of Irish nationalists for two goals:

1. Economic – land for the Irish peasants
2. Political – Home Rule i.e. Parliament in Dublin and
some measure of self-government
The Irish Party skillfully manipulated the House of
Commons to obtain those goals.
Religious polarisation vs political polarisation
Catholic vs Protestant and Nationalist vs Unionist
It is oversimplification to assume that all Catholics were
nationalist, and all Protestants were unionist.
 The Irish Question in 19th c. ctd

• 1829 – Catholic Emancipation Act – Catholics gain the right to

vote and sit in the House of Commons
• Daniel O’Connel – Before emancipation charismatic leader,
when in Parliament, concilliatory politics, cooperated with the
Whigs to win small concessions, gradually lost support of the
young, impatient nationalists.
• 1845-7 The Great Potato Famine – 12% of the population
starved to death and another 25% emigrated to Canada and
the USA
• 1860s – agrarian violence, clandestine organisations attacking
the property of landlords: Thrashers, the White Shirts
 Nationalist activities

• 1850s the Fenian Brotherhood set up in the USA, financial and

political support for the nationalists in Ireland, risings in Ireland,
violent incidents in England
• The PM W. Gladstone the first English politician to understand the
problem, concerned with the cost of keeping the army in Ireland
(greater than in India), determined to solve the problem
• Irish grievances: religious, economic, political
• 1879 Irish Land League (Michael Davitt) cooperated with Home
Rule Movement (Charles Stewart Parnell)
• Boycott – originally a name of a landowner who was the first to
experience such treatment, deserted by servants and labourers
for evicting a tenant
 Irish Party

• 1881 when Parnell as the leader of the Party came

close to success, Phoenix Park Murders ruined all
efforts (two British gov. officials stabbed in a park in
Dublin)
• 1886 Home Rule Bill defeated in the Commons when
the Protestants from Ulster objected (fear of
becoming a minority)
• 1890 Parnell’s political career destroyed by a divorce
trial
Stereotyping of the Irish in the British press
The Irish as ape-like creatures
The Irish as a monkey
 Home Rule

• The bill returned to Parliament in 1912 and 1913,

always rejected by the Lords, but in 1914 it was to
become law, only WWI broke out
• Two contrasting reactions of the nationalists: fight for
independence by the side of the British in France vs.
„England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”
• Irish Republican Brotherhood organised a rising
against the English – Easter 1916 (Dublin General
Post Office), but it wasn’t supported by the Irish and
the leaders were arrested and executed
 Consequences of the Rising

• Once executed the leaders became martyrs (Pearce,

Connoly, MacBride) and national symbols of „blood
sacrifice”
• 1918 general election success of Sinn Fein (Irish
Republican Army its military wing)
• 1919-21 Anglo-Irish war
• 1921 peace treaty, Irish Free State + Northern
Ireland, but part of the IRA refuse to accept the
partition – civil war till 1923.
 Republic of Ireland

• Full independence achieved only after WWII

• Very conservative governments, Catholic church
controls the lives of the people: censorship, strict
morality, divorce only in Rome
Northern Ireland
Fight for women suffrage: since 1870s to end
of World War I, suffragists, then suffragettes
 Edwardian Crisis:
Emily Davison (1872 – 1913), an English activist for women's suffrage, died when she was struck by King George V's
horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby.
 Votes for women

• The modern campaign to secure the right to vote for women began in the
mid-19th century.
• Women felt they should have the right to vote for many reasons,
particularly because they had to pay taxes and abide by the law, just as
men did. They believed they had an equal right to influence Parliament
and government by voting.
• Their aim was partially achieved with the Representation of the People
Act 1918, which allowed some women over the age of 30
to vote in national elections.The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act
followed later the same year and allowed women
to stand as Members of Parliament. It was not until the Equal Franchise
Act was passed in 1928 that women won the same voting rights as men.
• https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/womens-suffrage-timeline
 Britain in World War I 1914-18

• WWI – the Great War, enormous impact on British

sense of national identity, society, culture and
economy.
• International tension in Europe from the beginning of
the 20th c – sense that Europe is moving into a major
conflict anticipated by some politicians with great
enthusiasm (the war as cleansing )
• Britain entered an alliance with France, Russia,
Romania and Italy in order to confront the Central
Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria
 Early stages of the war

• June 1914 assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

and his wife in Sarajevo – Austria wants to police
Serbia, Russia steps in to protect Serbia, Germany
declares war on Russia and within days enters
Belgium, Britain threatens Germany with an
ultimatum and finds herself at war 4th August 1914
• Most statesmen involved believed that the war
would last a few weeks, maybe months.
Recruitment techniques: enthusiasm and encouragement.
 The 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington) East Lancashire Regiment, better known as the Accrington Pals, 1914.
The Accrington Pals is probably the best remembered of the battalions raised in the early months of the First World War in
response to Kitchener's call for a volunteer army. Groups of friends from all walks of life in Accrington and its neighbouring
towns enlisted together to form a battalion with a distinctively local identity. In its first major action, the battalion suffered
devastating losses in the attack on Serre on 1st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme. The losses were hard
to bear in a community where nearly everyone had a relative or friend who had been killed or wounded.
War of movement: the Battle of the Marne, September 6-13, 1914.
Western front
 Allied Offensive of 1915.
Soldiers wearing gas masks during the Second Battle of Ypres.
 Somme
Offensive:

Preparing to "hop the

bags" outside
Beaumont Hamel. 1st
Battalion, Lancashire
Fusliers. 1 July, 1916.
 Canadian 4th Division,
Passchendaele, 14
November, 1917.

Soldiers in mud holes. The

wettest summer in memory
made Haig's hope of a
breakthrough at
Passchendaele a nightmare
for those who endured the
battle.
 World War I the first modern war and the first
world war (The Great War)
• New technologies changed the nature of military conflicts,
instead of decisive battles and quick movement of the
armies – stalemate
• Machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas, telephone,
airplanes made it impossible to take the enemy by surprise
– trench warfare, suicidal attacks, very little territorial
gains, victory depends on the masses of soldiers that can
be sent to slaughter
• The war was fought all over the world (in the colonies,
Asia, Africa), but the situation in the Western frontnhad
the greatest impact on European imagination
 WWI and national identity

• British army consisted of volunteers till 1916, Canada, New

Zealand, Australia and other colonies sent their troops to
fight in Europe
• With time growing disillusionment and bitterness,
pointless carnage of young men, prolonged by politicians
and industrialists. Heroism and patriotism revised, high
incidence of war neurosis – shell shock.
• 1916 battle of the Somme July-November series of suicidal
attacks to wear out the Germans 21,000 British soldiers
killed on the first day. Total Germans 650,000; British
420,000; French 200,000
 Labouring war; colonial war.
In 1916, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig requested that 21,000 labourers be recruited to fill the manpower shortage caused
by casualties during World War I. The British and French governments signed agreements with the Chinese authorities to
supply men at around the same time.
 Final stages

• Russian Revolution changed the balance of powers in

1917, but the USA joined the allied forces then,
Germany worn out and torn by the Weimar
Revolution (1918)
• Armistice 11 November 1918, peace conference
Versailles in January 1919, Germany loses territories
in Europe and in the colonies, armaments strictly
limited, large reparations to be paid to the allies
• The break up of the Austria-Hungarian Empire –
nation states: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland etc.
 Social and cultural consequences

• Employment for women in factories and offices helps

the campaign for the vote for women (1918)
• Reforms of education – better education for the
working classes
• British economy in crisis after the war effort
• Art and culture – Modernism – crisis of values and
Western civilisation
• Cultural trauma which defines British identity until this
day - see the 2014 Christmas advertisement by
Sainsbury’s and the controversy it raised
 dada:
anti-war, anti-art
Hannah Hoch’s
Cut with the Kitchen Knife
Through the First Epoch of
the Weimar Beer-Belly
Culture (1919).

Hoch’s piece epitomizes the

Dada attitude towards war:

Chaos; the world gone mad;

war as craziness incarnate;
humanity’s destruction.
The Lost Generation, e.g. poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’