The Politics of Crisis : An Interpretation of British Politics, 1931–1945

The Politics of Crisis is an interpretation of the most dramatic periods of modern British political history - the decade and a half between 1931 and 1945. Formed to sustain the British economy in the midst of the Great Depression, the National Governments of the 1930s achieved this and more, and electoral popularity unmatched since. Yet the conventional wisdom about those Governments is full of the unemployment that they inherited, as it is of the image of Neville Chamberlain trying and failing to buy peace from Hitler at Munich. For then comes the Second World War and Winston Churchill and victory of a kind for Britain, and a curious form of domestic politics that, with peace restored, witnesses the victor turned out of office. The Politics of Crisis clinically assesses the evidence and these events and provides a challenging and new interpretation of them. Front Matter....Pages i-ix The Ghosts in the Machine....Pages 1-3 ‘The Devil’s Decade’: Party Politics in the Era of the National Governments 1931–1940....Pages 4-47 ‘Waiting for a Miracle to Happen’?: The Economic and Social Policies of the National Governments 1931–1940....Pages 48-80 The ‘Guilty Men’ amidst ‘The Gathering Storm’: The Defence and Foreign Policies of the National Governments 1931–1940....Pages 81-132 War with Honour: Churchill and the British Conduct of the Second World War 1940–1945....Pages 133-169 Goodbye to All That: British Domestic Politics during the Second World War 1940–1945....Pages 170-209 Back Matter....Pages 210-304