The reason for writing this preface
In 2011-13 I studied for a Masters degree in Modern History, writing a dissertation focussing on Britain in the 1930s, entitled ‘The Failure of Peace’. This concentrated, firstly, on the peace movements in the early part of the decade and, secondly, on British attitudes towards Spain and the Spanish Civil War towards the end, by which point there seemed to be a fatalistic acceptance that a second war could not be avoided. A middle section on British fascism, originally intended as a bridge between the two, was omitted in the submitted version because of the word limit.
In 2016 I started work on expanding the original text and re-instating the section on fascist views, and in 2017 decided to incorporate this lengthy new preface analysing comparisons between the 1930s and the present day. This was prompted by significant events in that year and explicit parallels being drawn in the press.[1] In addition, of the intervening decades, the midpoint of the 1970s could be viewed as showing some of the most positive trends and developments for the future. It could be claimed that the state we are in today is the result of subsequent reversal of these progressive movements. As this revised version is not intended for academic assessment, there is less need here to aim at standard academic objectivity, and this preface is a personal view. For this reason, many of the sources are drawn from non-academic publications such as the London Review of Books, though the reviewers quoted have solid academic credentials. Furthermore, some aspects of the 1930s and the present day are impossible to treat entirely dispassionately. ….
[1] For example, Paul Mason, in the Guardian 1/8/2016 ‘Are we living through another 1930s?’
Britain in the 1930s 