The First World War has often suffered from comparison to the Second, in terms of both public interest and the significance ascribed to it by scholars in the shaping of modern Britain. This is especially so for the relationship between the Left and these two wars. For the Left, the Second World War can be seen as a time of triumph: a united stand against fascism followed by a landslide election win and a radical, reforming Labour government. The First World War is more complex. Given the gratuitous cost in lives, the failure of a ‘fit country for heroes to live in’ to materialise, the deep recessions and unemployment of the inter-war years, and the botched peace settlements which served only to precipitate another war, the Left has tended to view the conflict as an unmitigated disaster and unpardonable waste. This has led to a tendency on the Left to see the later conflict as the ‘good’ war, fought against an obvious evil, and the earlier conflict as an imperialist blunder; the result of backroom scheming, secret pacts and a thirst for colonies. This book hopes to move away from a concentration on machinations at the elite levels of the labour movement, on events inside Parliament and intellectual developments; there is a focus on less well-visited material.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables and Graphs List of Illustrations Abbreviations Acknowledgements Introduction 1 ‘If this is to be a jingo, then I am a jingo’ – Labour Patriotism before 1914 2 ‘I’d sooner blackleg my union than blackleg my country’ – Labour Patriotism, 1914–18  August 1914  The Workers’ National Committee and Labour Support for the War  Who Were the Labour Patriots?  Workers and Trade Unions  Anti-Germanism  Labour Heroes 3 ‘Middle-class peace men?’– Labour and the Anti-War Agitation  Conscription, 1916–18  Wartime Strikes, 1915–18  The Anti-War Movement, 1915–18  The Leeds and Stockholm Conferences 4 ‘Our Platform is Broad Enough and our Movement Big Enough’ – The War and Recruits to Labour  The Conversion of Liberal and Conservative Elites  Labour, Soldiers, and Ex-Servicemen  The War and the Appeal to the New Electorate 5 ‘The experiments are not found wanting’ – Labour and the Wartime State  The Wartime Growth of the British State  Labour and the Workers during the War  The Impact of the War on the Relationship between the British Left and the State 6 ‘The greatest democratic force British politics have known’ – Labour Cohesion and the War  The Trade Unions and the Labour Party  Labour and Women’s Organisations  The Co-operative Movement and Labour  Socialist Societies and the Labour Party  The Rise and Decline of the Ultra-Patriots Conclusion Bibliography Index