British History continued

The National government: economic crisis and political extremism.

The 1930s was a time of economic depression and guilty memories-guilt because of the shame of appeasing Hitler, inability to overcome social divisions or to protect significant sections of the popularion from mass unemployment. When Labour won the election in 1945, this is what voters remembered.

After 1940, people in Britain had no doubts about the guilty men who had appeased the dictators Chamberlain was discredited and Churchill was a hero. However in the 1930s Chamberlain was hugely popular and Churchill was on the fringes of politics.

The experience of life in Britain varied depending on where you lived, what class you belonged to, and whether you had a job. Where there was a concentration of older staple industries, working people were hit hard by the depression, Half the population out of work for years and the collapse ofthe local economy that had depended on now closed factories. where the…