Lloyd George's Post War Coalition 1918-22 was a Failure

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  • Created by: Stephanie
  • Created on: 07-04-15 14:23

Failures a Home

  • The coalmines were returned to private ownership without the modernisation which they desperately needed. This was to lead to a decade of serious industrial unrest in the mines.
  • LG's defeat of the 1921 miners strike left a bitter legacy leading eventually to 1926, whilst the defeat of miltancy only encouraged the Coalition Tories to demand savage spending cuts preventing much needed reform.
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In the Economy

  • LG's government failed to encourage the restructuring and reinvestment needed in Britain' old Staple Industries with the result that they were unable to face growing competition between the Wars. This in turn helped create the problem of mass, long term unemployment- 2m by 1922.
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In Finance

  • Although LG lessened the Geddes Cuts they still undermined his reforms in housing and education leading not only to disillusionment but setting the preceedent that Britain's economic problems could be solved at the expense of much needed social reform.
  • The council house building programme was severly cut back, whilst the part time education aim of the Fisher Act was abandoned.
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The Irish Problem

  • The Irish problem was solved from a British standpoint but not an Irish.
  • It took a bitter Anglo-Irish War to get a settlement. Even then partition and the 1921 Treaty led not only to the Irish Civil War but to constant tensions in Northern Ireland which became a repressive, one party State.
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The Post War Settlement

  • The settlemet left many problems and the seeds of a future War. Germany felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles and was determined to reverse it.
  • Too many small states were created in Central and Eastern Europe sandwiched between a potentially powerful Germany and Russia who aimed to destroy them.
  • Allowing Jewish migration to Palestine sowed the seeds of a bitter future.
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