 Hello. Between World War I and World War II, England and the rest of Europe had a time of great economic peril. In the United States this is called the Great Depression. In England it was sometimes called the Great Slump, and the European Depression began much earlier than the U.S. Depression, starting in the early 20s. It didn't hit the United States until 1929. But the United States Great Depression was largely caused by the European Depression that was already happening. In Europe the Depression was of great concern because many people became quite desperate. And as people became desperate, they began looking at extremist measures of relieving themselves from the economic morass. If we look at England during the Great Depression, as we would call them in the United States, this economic depression that lasted about ten years, they call the Great Slump. It's no surprise, considering what you've read in class so far, that the northeastern part of the country, the old industrial mining part of the country, was considered pretty poor and pretty bad off. And by looking at the films Love on the Dole, by reading Orwell's The Road to Wiccan Pier, that area around Manchester and Liverpool leads in those areas were pretty bad off. And in Jero it was one of the cities that had really been hurt, and it was called the town that was murdered. Their shipyard was sold and then the plant closed in 1935. And this employed most of the men in Jero. And so there began a march organized by their member of parliament, Ellen Wilkinson, to come down to London to present a petition to parliament about their problems. And this is a photograph from this. It wanted to bring attention to the neglect that they felt. And Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to meet with them, however, so many consider this a slap in the face from the government. And some of the factors that contributed to the economic downturn, of course, our own United States stock market crashed, which lowered the price on American goods, which began flooding Europe with cheaper goods, thus driving out their own goods. So our problems affected them. There was a trade imbalance, which resulted from this, and already existed. Most countries began closing their borders to cheaper products from other countries to try to boost their own economy. And this caused gold to flow from European banks to the United States, which also hurt. The fact that there were on the gold standard contributed to trade imbalances, because you had places like Great Britain and France on the gold standard making their currency stronger. The United States tried to maintain the gold standard, but eventually we left the gold standard so that undervalued our currency a bit, although made more in circulation. And there was also a problem with international banking and credit. Places like Germany, Austria, and Hungary shouldered with the burden of reparations from World War I, they weren't able to make that, and so they defaulted. And this caused an international banking crisis. And as you can see from this illustration, what had happened is that Germany was paying reparations to France, which was paying back the U.S. Treasury for loans during the war. Germany was also paying Great Britain reparations, which was also used in that to pay the United States Treasury. On the other hand, Wall Street bankers and investors were pouring money into Germany. Well, when Germany stopped paying reparations, this circle, almost like the old saying, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, fell apart. And so this hurt the international banking and credit establishment. And so the effects of the Great Slump. Northern England suffered the most, and this included Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, partially because they were old industry. They were outdated. They were very labor intensive, and they couldn't stand up to competition from abroad in areas like coal, iron and steel. Unemployment grew to about 25%. This was about 2.5 million. The South, on the other hand, the southern part of England benefited. Most of these were newer industries, lighter industries, automobiles. Prices went down, and people could afford to buy more. And so there was better employment in higher wages in southern areas, so the country was divided in more ways than one. In the national elections, in August of 1931, you have a new national government. And if you look at some of these people, they become important later on. Lord Reading, Neville Chamberlain at the top, the bottom, you have Snowden, Lord Snowden, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsey McDonald, Herbert Samuel, Lord Sankey. All of these people were very important during the 1930s and early 1940s. The government in response to the Great Depression, to their depression, was a mixed bag. First of all, there were some harmful things. They raised the income tax, which many people couldn't afford to pay at all. They also cut employment pay, the so-called dole, and you see the results of that in the film Love on the Dole when they stopped paying people. The May Report had recommended this. There was also the development of a means test. If you were able to have some income, then they said, well, you weren't eligible for the dole anymore. So this means test, very hated test, which based your benefits, based upon your need, was reviled by many people. And they also raised import taxes, so only the wealthy could afford to buy imports. On the other hand, there were some good things that came about new housing. They established millions of new housing units and put local councils in charge of finding poor people to go into this housing. There was a free school milk. There were a special areas act, which was really beneficial to the South to bring light industry to the stressed areas, so rather than the heavy old labor-intensive industries to bring more modern industry into areas to hopefully provide more jobs. And there was also a centralization of public services. And this is like electricity and the London Transport, which is the metro system and the bus system, to better serve the people and not put it on a private owner. During 1933 to 1936, the nation was on its way to recovery. There were some reforms. They left the gold standard. This devalued the pound, but it also put more pounds in circulation. They lowered interest rates, so more people would be spending money rather than hoarding it. Unemployment started to go down, especially in the South, which was doing better anyway. Slum clearance and the housing boom replacing rundown poor houses, like you saw in Wigan Pier, with much better houses with these government houses. This helped the economy a lot as well. And there was some government assistance for poor people, and especially for industry. And then this Vacation Act, a holiday with pay act of 1938, also encouraged people to spend more money. We also have to look at the rise of fascism in Great Britain. You're going to read an article on this about the man pictured here, Oswald Mosley, who had very close ties to Germany, was friends with some of the high-ranking officials like Goebbels and the Nazi party. And he started the British Union a fascist. They had originally called it the new party that fell apart, and then they started the BUF. And there was a lot of violence associated with them. You'll read about the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. There was also the Olympia Incident, and so Great Britain passed a law about violence and marches in 1937 with the Public Order Act. The other person who was actually closely tied, or at least popular perception had him closely tied with the Nazis, was King Edward himself. King George V died in January of 1936. Edward the Eighth came to the throne. He was the one who was married to an American divorcee named Wallace Simpson. And in fact, she may have been still married at the time that she and Edward the Eighth got married. And so there was a potential crisis, and Edward, out of love for his wife, decided to abdicate the throne. And so his brother, Albert, came to the throne, taking the name George the Sixth.