Britain Between the Wars: Poverty or Affluence?

Britain between the Wars: Poverty or Affluence? Michael Rose shows that Britain was a land of stark contrasts in 1918-39. Introduction In 1936 George Orwell described beingness borne away by a train in Wigan through the fantastical scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. He espy a young woman kneeling in the rear end yard of a slum house poking a stick up a foul drainpipe. She had a discolor round face, the usual exhausted face of the slum young lady who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate hopeless expression I have ever seen. Orwells vision is symbolic of a traditional view of British society between the wars. Mention the Hungry thirties and kitchen ranges of Jarrow marchers, ragged children and slum houses crowd in upon us. Historians, however, are never content with traditional views. Over the last decades, another image of British life between the wars has been presented, one that sees the origins of affluence in this period. After all, Britain recovered relatively quickly from the Great Crash of 1929-31. mingled with 1932 and 1937, national income rose by 20%, industrial action by 40% and income per head of the population by 18%.

Employment and Wages The interwar years, and especially the 1930s, are associated with high unemployment. There is loyalty in this view. Unemployment never fell below 1 trillion insured workers in this period, and in 1932 it rose to 3 million. Jobs were confused especially in the depressed areas. Many jobs were lost in the shipyards of the north-east, in the cotton mills of Lancashire and in the coal mines of South Wales. On the other hand, the number of jobs in the motor industry grew from 227,000 in 1920 to 516,000 in 1938 (more than those in steel-making and ship-building put to provokeher). The number of workers in galvanising engineering almost doubled between the wars.... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

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