Transcript Did everyone support the war?

Did everyone support the
war?
When war broke out thousands of
young Scots joined up to ‘do their bit’.
• Not everyone supported the
war effort.
• Not everybody believed the
propaganda and anti-German
feeling that was meant to
create ‘war fever’.
• There were many people in
Scotland who opposed the
war, and did not wish to
volunteer and then resisted
conscription.
The strongest political group to
oppose the war was the
Independent Labour Party (ILP).
• They immediately
attacked the
official Labour
Party for backing
Kitchener’s
recruitment
campaign.
The ILP’s newspaper called Forward
was often criticised and even closed
down for its persistent attacks on
government policy.
In the pro-war
atmosphere of autumn
1914 any voice that
asked for compromise
and rational thought
about how to stop the
war was shouted down as
unpatriotic and a threat
to Britain’s safety.
Anti-war opinion was not popular!
• In the first two weeks of the war Britain
suffered 20,000 casualties.
• Nevertheless the ILP and other socialists
continued to protest against the war.
• By the end of 1914, ILP membership had fallen
to 3,000 and the party was as a pacifist group
that threatened to dampen the war
enthusiasm of the nation.
What was the UDC?
• The Union of Democratic
Control was another
organisation that opposed
conscription and wartime
censorship along with other
restrictions on civil liberties.
• The UDC was not linked to any
one political party but as both
the Liberal and Conservative
parties actively supported the
war, the UDC became
dominated by left wing Liberal
and Labour activists.
Scottish political figures such as
Ramsay MacDonald, Tom Johnston
and David Kirkwood were members of
the UDC and became well known for
their radical policies and actions
during the war.
By 1915 the Union of Democratic
Control had 300,000 members and
was the most important of all the
anti-war organisations in Britain.
Members of the UDC were under constant
threat from members of the public who
believed the UDC was a cover organisation for
supporters of Germany during the war in
other words-traitors!
The Daily Express suggested that
the UDC was working for the
Germans government
• It published details of future UDC
meetings and encouraged its
readers to go and break them up.
• By the end of the war the UDC still
had 10,000 members, showing that
public opinion did not always support
the war, despite what government
propaganda would have liked the
people to believe.
In 1924 several members of
the UDC were in the new
Labour government that was
elected that year.
Why was conscription started in
Britain?