Contextual background 1919 – 1932
The background for the study that follows focusses on the social milieu of the interwar years, and the social atmosphere of the period is given some prominence. This was a mood influenced by fresh memories of the immediate past, by some strongly-voiced views about the current state of affairs and by fear of the future.
One of the most pertinent, recently-published accounts of the social and public life of interwar Britain, Overy’s The Morbid Age, subtitled ‘Britain and the crisis of civilization, 1919-1939’, with its first chapter called ‘Decline and Fall’, is an evocative and detailed picture which forcefully demonstrates that this was a period when there was a genuine and, as it transpired, justified fear for the future of civilization.
This predominant mood is also described as ‘pathological’ and ‘neurotic’, with strong images of disease, defectiveness and perversions. These terms applied to a general public mood, to a physically-defective population, to the state of capitalism in the West and to a moral bankruptcy. This introspective analysis of the state of the nation was partly stimulated by an increase in interest in psychology, and ‘neurosis was accepted as a reality of modern life’. Of all the fears expressed, that of war was the greatest anxiety, especially in the light of technological development in the direction of modern mass warfare. As early as 1934 there was reference to a Second World War, and, as attempts to use science and psychoanalysis to understand, explain and thus avoid war failed, the gloomy inevitability grew. Overy details the frantic activity of anti-war groups, which will be a major focus of this study.[1] …
[1] Richard Overy, ‘Morbid Age’ p. 3-4, 168, 114, 53, 144, 168, 175, 195, 10, 223
Britain in the 1930s 