Striving for peace
Introduction
Overy’s ‘last chance to save civilization’ is epitomised by the frenetic activity to avoid war in the first part of the 1930s among a variety of peace movements, both formal associations and ad hoc groups. Evidence for these concerns can be found in a variety of sources. Firstly, the way in which the British press reported the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932 reveals something of the attitudes to an internationalist approach to collective security. The major political parties declared their positions in their election manifestoes between 1929 and 1935. The relationship between these official statements and public opinion can be gauged in the embryonic polling system that began in 1937. A major initiative to further test public views of peace and the threat of war can be seen in the Peace Ballot of 1934-35, instigated by the League of Nations Union (formed in 1918). The Peace Pledge Union split from the LNU over the failure of the League to act effectively. Further insight into social attitudes to these anti-war efforts can be found in letters to the press, most instructively for this study from a Catholic standpoint. Finally, this section will look at the policy of appeasement. …
Britain in the 1930s 