These three sources all tell us that because of Lloyd George the Welsh had more participation in the War then they ever would have been.
Source A4 is the Military Service Act of 1916 this is the biggest turning point of the First World War because it is effectively forcing every single able man that the country has to offer. The Military Service Act gave the men of Britain three choices, one was to enlist at once, two was to attest at once under the group system and the third choice was to wait and you would automatically be deemed to have enlisted on the 2nd of March 1916 and be placed in reserve to be called up when seen fit to under the Military Service Act. The main effect that this had on the war effort was that Britain had more men than ever before come up to the front line and as this was a static war, a war of attrition where whoever had the most men would clearly and advantage.
Another reason why this is a turning point for the war is because the country was plummeted into total war which means that as you finished school you were automatically sent to the western front thus showing the generals desperation for men on the front line. But this also has benefits as well as the downsides. For one it created more jobs for women so that they could gain a lot of independence but it also meant that as there was a lack of able men to go around the place the women could finally go into bars, restaurants and anywhere that they wanted without fear of being punished.
The Military Service Act was a major turning point in the war for everyone whether male or female, child or elder it really did not matter. All that matters is that everyone had to go into total war and it helped some causes out but yet made new problems when the old ones had disappeared.
Source A5 shows us that not everyone welcomed the Military Service Act with open arms in fact there were many peace protestors or conscientious objectors that refused to enlist or go to war. These reasons for their resistance, including international peace and brotherhood, but they were prepared to go through punishment, torture and unpopularity just to stand up for what they believe in. They also did not want to be told what to do under the Military Service Act.
The government’s recruiting policy was extremely successful, seeing by the end of 1914 the government had recruited over 1,000,000 men to go and fight on the Western Front. This was largely to do with the Pals Battalions concept which was the brain child of General Henry Rawlinson. The Pals battalions idea was one of that every one in a community would sign up with each other and form a battalion consisting of relative’s friends and families, thus forming a tight nit group in which everyone got along with each other in.
The propaganda used to recruit people during the war was used to immense efficiency and effectiveness as everyone and anyone would be affected by it. Here are some examples…
All of these examples encourage people at home to support the recruitment campaign by playing on their senses identify patriotism honour and pride. In the First and Second World Wars propaganda was extremely important to the government and still is today. Overall the government’s recruitment policy in 1914 – 1918 was successful with a few minor exceptions for example the conscientious objectors who disobeyed the government and let the country down. Never the less we were able to recruit enough men to fight for four years of war and defeat the German enemy.
Politics changed a lot during the First World War. First of all you have the Liberal party who weren’t very happy about having to introduce conscription and also because of the way the government used the press to imprint their war propaganda onto the public, and the way it has affected politics every since.
Source B2 shows a cartoon of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and is showing us him riding on a horse back carrying munitions from the factories to the western front. This cartoon was published in “Punch” magazine in April 1915 just before Lloyd George was appointed Minister of Munitions. This cartoon was published in 1915 and so there for is obviously under DORA, Defence Of the Realm Act, this enables the government to sensor the press for negative stories on the war effort and on the politicians and make them positive. Source B2 is saying “look at Lloyd Webber, the wonderful man is doing his bit for the war effort, in sending munitions over to save our men’s lives.” and shows him in a good positive light. This source is not reliable as it is published as a cartoon, cartons are created to show something in a certain way, and because it was published by a British magazine during the war and under DORA. There are better sources for information about Lloyd George written by bystanders who are not going to be biased.
The war had many side effects on politics during 1914 – 1918 especially on the Labour Party; Source B4 tries to explain this in many ways. Source B4 is part of a history guide called “A History Of Wales” and was published in 1993, it was written by John Davies a world renowned historian, and so can be heavily relied on but not too much as this was not written at the time.
Source B4 tells us that because of the war Party politics changed heavily. The war caused many changes but as much for any other party other than Labour. It also tells us that the war was a disaster for the Liberal party and as a result there has not been a Liberal Government since, up to 10/10/2004.
“Basic principals of the Liberal party had to be abandoned such as, Free Trade and voluntary military service among them. At the same time the party’s image was damaged by the split between the followers of Lloyd George and Asquith, which resulted from Lloyd George’s appointment as Prime Minister.”
[John Davies, a History of Wales (1993)]
Source B4 basically tells us that the war was good for the image of the Labour party but yet bad for the Liberal’s.
Sources B5 (i) and B5 (ii) show us that there was a change to the Voting system in December 1917, the commons voted whether to give the vote to women over the age 30. The votes went as follows, for – 385, against – 55 and for won by a majority of 330. This is an incredible important change in politics because Women finally had the vote. But why was this given to them? The answer is one of three possible reasons, and they are…
- Women were a majority of the population during the 1918 elections and so there fore are needed to vote.
- The suffragettes, an organized women rights group, had got there message across or,
- Women were working now and were being treated as men and so therefore deserved the right to vote.
Anyway this was a really important change to the voting system because it was showing equal rights for both men and women. It also means that the parties had to change their manifestos because not all women voted the same as their husbands and they also had different views. Also all the manifestos were relevant to men and not women. It also means that the Suffragettes had stopped their protest and Britain no longer had the problem of Suffragettes. This is why Sources B5 (i) and B5 (ii) were important to the world of Politics.
The main changes to politics during The Great War of 1914 – 1918 were…
- The formation of the Labour Party,
- The Split of the Liberal Party,
- The Liberal Party never being voted in as a government since 1918,
- Women over 30 gaining the vote,
- Lloyd George becoming PM,
- Lloyd George becoming Minister Of Munitions,
- The Health Act of 1919,
- The Education Act of 1918
- And The Housing Act of 1919.
These had the most effect on British Politics then during any other period in history.
Women until recently, in the past 100 years, never had the right to vote until 1917, and then they had to be over the age of 30. This is supported in sources B5 (i) and B5 (ii). In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fashion for women was to wear tight corsets and extremely non-practical dresses. Women until around 1915 always worked in houses and were not allowed out until the war started and hardly any men were left to carry out their jobs and so the women took over. This was the changing point for women and social circumstances to become what we now no as modern day equal rights and payment.
Source C2 is a passage taken from David Lloyd George’s war memoirs, and is talking about women demonstrators and the suffragette leader Emily Pankhurst, and how she organised a demonstration to receive their rights during the First World War. This representation of Mrs. Pankhurst can be viewed as maybe a slightly altered version of her as herself and Lloyd George were archenemies politically. The reliability of this source is to be questioned as I have pointed out before, the writer would have made himself seem in a superior position compared to his political enemy which is politically incorrect in fact they were both at the same level in their organizations and not at different ones.
Source C2 tells us that women wanted fair wage conditions that would safeguard their standard of living. This is true from what we know but did David Lloyd George really give it to tem? After all, this source is written 18 years after the described event and Lloyd George would have tried to make himself look better than he was at the time for publicity reasons. Also memoirs are never a good source of historical Information as the authors try to make themselves look better than then they were at the time, and most memoirs tend to have rather a lot of fiction, as it is that which sells books.
Source C3 and C4 are a very good portrayal of women’s roles in the war period, if you notice because of a lack of men to make munitions and keep the county running all attention turns towards the women of the country. The figures show that from July 1914 to July 1918 there has been a 424,000 increase in women in the metal trades that’s a 349.41% increase in just four years! If these are official figures of which they are they are extremely useful for working out the roles of women during the war period. We can tell a lot of things from these two sources about the roles of women and their change. For example source C4 can show to us that women no longer had just the housewife role but were also working women earning the same wage as men. We also know thanks to source C3 that fashion was changing for example they now had flat sensible working shoes and shorter more manoeuvrable skirts, this is important to the role of women as it shows that working clothes for women are now fit for purpose so that this maybe be a permanent position.
Women’s roles were changing constantly during the First World War, and source C5 (i) and source C5 (ii) help back this statement up in many different ways. First of all women were now going out on the town more often seeing as they were being paid more and because there were hardly any men left to stop them. We can back up this statement from Source C5 (i) as it is a daily mail article about the changing roles of women, isn’t it also ironic as the daily mirror was set up as a women’s newspaper in the pre-twentieth centaury.
Source C5 (ii) is a letter sent by rifleman H.V.Shawyer in 1916, and tells us about how he was on leave, and went into the local bar to find that most of the customers were women. The letter also tells us that when he goes to pay for a drink a woman stops him and pulls a wad of notes from her skirt which he tells us is ten times more than he earns as a full corporal. This shows that women are starting to gain the respect that they deserve and are well on their way to gain equal and fair rights.
The war was an important factor in the change of women’s rights and there’s no debate against that it’s just fact. But some historians recon that if the suffragettes didn’t stop their protest, and the war didn’t intervene in the battle between the government and the women’s rights protesters, that women would have receive their right sooner, because the government were so close to cracking and giving in that just a couple more months would have done the trick but unfortunately that didn’t happen. And just flicking back through the sources here with a mug of coffee I can see their point.
The First World War had much an effect on the public and their standards of living, education and attitudes to world beliefs. And this part of my essay hopes to explore and
Sources D1 (i) and D2 (ii) show us that during the war period newspaper sales went up dramatically, this was always inevitable as because people want to hear about the war and what’s happening in it along with the obituary pages. D1 (i) shows us the dramatic incline in newspaper sales and also shows us that the daily mail was the most read newspaper in the UK at that current moment I time. Source D1 (ii) tells us about how many more people are supporting labour and reading their newspaper but they couldn’t understand it because it was written in Welsh and so they translated it into English, this shows that more people in the UK are becoming literate than at any other moment it time. Source D1 (ii) also tells us that the Welsh regret turning their labour paper from Welsh into English and how Welsh still remains the main speaking ordinary speech and the worship speech even though the English input into their lives is constantly on the growth.
Source D2 and D3 are two different accounts of how peoples social attitudes at the end of the First World War. The two sources can be fairly useful in some respects for determining people’s social reactions and changes, but on the other hand they can’t. They can’t be useful in a sense that Source D2 is a poem and therefore someone’s opinion and Source D3 is a book written 47 years after the end of the first world war and although he is a well trusted and heavily researched historian the book can be inaccurate and can only be trusted so much as it was written so many years after the event.
Source D2 is a poem written by the famous poet/soldier Siegfreid Sassoon, who was nick named “mad jack” for bombarding German trenches and because he later threw away his military cross, which was awarded to him for bravery. The poem describes how the population of Britain do not acknowledge their soldiers for risking their lives whilst they stayed at home safe and sound. This from what I can gather is a true representation for some of the population of Britain towards their soldiers but not all of them. The poem is also trying to get at the fact that the idle rich who were once not ashamed to be idle were now becoming more and idler and so they down casted the people who weren’t like the soldiers who lost their lives fighting.
Source D3 was written by A.J.P. Taylor the famous historian who also wrote the book England 1914-45, which was published in 1965, this source is taken from said book. A.J.P. Taylor is putting across the idea that the idle and lazy rich were ashamed to be so after the First World War. This is true from what we know and we also know that from the end of the war they had halve of the servants that they used to once have before 1914. Since this was written a long time after the war some mistakes have to be taken in to account, for example, maybe this could not be the case maybe the rich were still proud to be idle, but since the historian is heavily researched and trusted we can trust this to be a true representation of British social attitudes after the war.
We now know from both of the sources D2 and D3 that people were starting to less and less respect the rich and go for other jobs instead of helping them in their idleness.
According to source D4 the war affected the Welsh church extremely badly. Could this be because people were losing faith in the church after so many loved ones had perished? Or could it have been because so many people had perished that the church just couldn’t make up the numbers anymore?
Source D4 was written 63 years after the war and so some of the facts maybe historically incorrect, but then again you can easily get church registers from almost anywhere you want to these days. So in my opinion this source can be trusted for the information that we receive on the problems with the church after the First World War.
Even though the article, of which is Source D5, was published in 1996, it possesses a valid argument that the First World War made some improvements in peoples lives. This is because many of the poor families now found themselves in permanent full time/full wage employment. This is because of two reasons. One, because so many able men had died, that left a gap in the vacancies for people to find easy and doable work. And two is because women were well on their way to receive equal rights and they were able to keep the jobs they had during the war even if people had comeback. This is how the war made improvements in people’s lives.
In conclusion, even if millions perished at the expense of an Austro-Hungarian Arch Duke, the war did many good tings to the economy, politics, women’s rights and health and employment. But we shall never forget those brave men that gave up their lives so that we can sit here now in peace and harmony with no sense of insecurity or problems that affects the world. So I bow my head in respect whenever I think about what they had to give up for king and for country.