Blighty: British Society in an Era of Great War

by Gerard J. DeGroot, Degroot

Because we assume momentous events must have momentous consequences, we too easily accept the conventional wisdom that the Great War of 1914-18 shook British society to its foundations, leaving nothing of the prewar world intact. We take it for granted that, along with a generation of its finest young men, the nation's old ways of life and thought perished in the mud of Flanders. Recent historiography, however, has shown a new sensitivity to the power of tradition in British society, and its ability to contain and neutralise radical social change. Now, in this impressive study - the first major treatment of the theme - Gerard DeGroot examines every aspect of society in the period (c. 1907-22) to understand what actually happened to the people of Britain during and after the trial by fire.
As well as incorporating the latest scholarship, he makes rich, and often very moving, use of primary sources - newspapers, poetry (both high and low), literature, memoirs and letters - to illuminate the attitudes of society at all its levels, not merely the elite and the articulate. He reveals the extent to which the dominant social force in Britain during the war was not change but continuity. The most urgent wish of most people for the postwar world was, poignantly, that life should return to the way it had been - and to a quite astonishing extent it did, despite the tide of technological change flowing towards a different world. It was the vacuum cleaner and the internal combustion engine that transformed Britain in the early twentieth century, not the sorrows, sacrifices and opportunities of the Great War.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, World War I

357 pages, Hardcover

First published June 21, 1996

About the author

Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Modern History at the University of St. Andrews.

Reviews

[Julie Bozza · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book sets out to look at the big picture, examine the full context, of the Great War - and to bust a few myths along the way. Which it does succeed at, more or less. Unfortunately this involved a lot of broad generalisations, so that "women" or "soldiers" or "officers" or "pacifists" were frequently spoken of as homogeneous groups - even after, for example, an acknowledgement that pacifists came to their beliefs from three [actually more!] very different backgrounds. I suppose that the big picture might demand such an approach, but I often found it disconcerting.

Something I appreciated was that each of the chapters in "Part Two: Total War" took a theme and addressed it from the start to finish of the war, so we got the whole theme in context over time, rather than in bits scattered throughout. That was very effective.

There were lots of useful and/or interesting facts in here, such as the exact number of rubber stamps issued over the length of the war: 51,107. I also appreciated learning about aspects of the war such as a toy shortage due to the cessation of German imports.

In terms of myth-busting, these facts and figures were used to put in context issues such as women working in factories, and so on. It is true that many women were already working in paid employment, and the additional numbers of workers weren't as significant as we might think. However, there was a big shift in the nature of the work, e.g. from domestic service to munitions. It is also true that there were many more men than women working in munitions and so on. So, in context, the numbers of women newly working are small. And DeGroot makes the point that the women were mostly expected to go back to domestic service, or quit work, at the end of the war, to make way for the returning servicemen. He points out that the total number of women in paid employment was significantly lower in the year after the war than in the year before. Britain generally held fast and returned to conservative, "traditional" ways of being.

It's true a portion of women were finally given the right to vote in legislation passed in 1918. However, this legislation also extended the right to vote to various groups of men who had been denied before - and in fact enfranchised significantly more men than women. So this wasn't an undiluted victory for women.

DeGroot makes all these points, and it's interesting to read. However, I still think that there are larger truths and changes here than are represented by the figures. Even if women were mostly pushed out of the masculine workplaces at the end of the war, they had still proved themselves ready, willing and able to perform and earn. Doesn't all progress involve two steps forward and one step back...? This was the one step back, but we were able to take another two steps forward from there at some stage in the decades after the war.

It's also true that, in terms of numbers, the pacifists and conscientious objectors were a very small minority. However, again I think their significance outweighs their numbers. To have had the courage to refuse to fight in these jingoistic times quite amazes me. I am assuming the numbers of those who actually did refuse might be the tip of the iceberg of those who were inclined towards pacifism.

Shifting from the big picture to the detail, DeGroot expresses a number of throwaway opinions that annoyed me. Committed pacifists were "all of them slightly deluded". The Bloomsburys were "silly". Vera Brittain was "egoist, elitist, mistress of self-pity". None of these views are supported by discussion; we are just expected to agree, I suppose.

And at times DeGroot is horribly callous. Of another woman who served as a nurse, he says, "For her, the illusions of noble war died quickly because she was exposed so directly to its carnage. Worn down by the war's refusal to conform to her ideals, she died of exhaustion on 24 July 1916. It was probably best that she passed away before the war turned REALLY dreadful." A foul quip that was totally unnecessary.

And yet towards the end of the book, he is capable of great compassion for all the survivors. "After the armistice, each survivor - civilian and combatant, male and female - had to shoulder an individual anguish. Some adjusted, others never did." DeGroot goes to some lengths to explore the real, ghastly impact the war had on many lives. I could have done with rather more of that fellow-feeling earlier in the tome.

I am wavering between two and three stars, but will round up. Lots of this book was good and useful. But much of it was quite the opposite.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustive (and slightly exhausting), this is a highly detailed book that is not afraid to challenge preconceptions. I just wish it didn't have an ever-so-slight undercurrenct of smugness in challenging myths about WWI...especially when it doesn't always offer its own theory, in place of others. In spite of the occasional irritation of tone, you will be hard-pressed to find a single volume that analyses the British home front during the war with such extactitude.

[Paul Nicolaou · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, however it is difficult to understand. Would not suggest this book as a fundamental read.