205. The Empire at its peak, the country in the pits

In contrast to the last episode, where we saw how dire the state of the British economy was and how close to violent confrontation society was coming, this episode is the one where we find Britain reaching the peak of its imperial grandeur. It seems that power abroad doesn’t necessarily deliver either peace or prosperity at home.

Meanwhile, at home, political instability continued. There were two more elections, in 1923 and 1924, making it three in three years. The middle one was brought on by Stanley Baldwin decided he needed to go for tariff protection for British industry, and decided he needed a mandate for it from the electorate, much to the annoyance of many of his colleagues who felt there was no need to jeopardise their comfortable parliamentary majority just because the leader had decided his conscience needed a new election.

As it happened, he lost his bet, and ultimately the election resulted in the formation of the first ever Labour government. A minority government, vulnerable to any loss of support in the Commons, but a government all the same. Anyone, however, expecting radical change from it was in for a disappointment. Though, oddly enough, what brought it down was its supposed softness on communism.

Illustration: Ramsay MacDonald in court dress. Public Domain.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License