Towards the end of the Great War two phrases were very common, 'The war to end all wars' and 'A land fit for heroes'. The public was sick of the war and convinced that things had to change, the fighting men should be treated better than they were pre-war when they came back. The government was worried about the course of events in Russia, the abolition of the monarchy in 1917 and the Bolshevik Revolution which destroyed the government in 1919. When 40,000 Clydeside workers, led by a local councillor, Manny Shinwell, marched in support of their claim for a 40 hour week in January 1919 the government panicked and sent troops and tanks to Glasgow to put down any general uprising. Willie Gallagher said later that if the aim had been revolution they would have marched on Maryhill Barracks. Troops were deployed but not tanks.
Events like this and a growing appreciation of the public mood convinced the coalition government that it would be a good thing to be seen as taking notice. In 1919 Parliament passed what became known as the Addison Act named after the then Minister of Housing Christopher Addison, a Liberal. This was the start of what we now know as 'Council Housing'. Addison resigned in July 1921 when a cabinet committee decided to halt the housing construction scheme altogether after the construction of 230,000 homes by councils subsidised by government grant. He subsequently became a strong critic of the government and joined the Labour Party.
The reason for this turn around in 1921 was that the government had realised that there was no great revolutionary fervour abroad and in effect they could go back to what had been the status quo pre-war, the working classes were under control and government could proceed as before, running the country for the benefit of the wealthy rather than pandering to popular opinion and the needs of the poorest voters. At the same time, in an effort to get back to what was described as 'Sound Money', again the mythical pre war status quo, disastrous economic policies took the country back onto the 'Gold Standard' and resulted in the greatest depression of modern times. Another mistake was when Parliament rejected the report of the Sankey Commission which recommended in 1919 that miner's wages should be improved and state control of the mines, brought in during the war to improve production, should be continued. This triggered industrial unrest and eventually led to the General Strike of 1926 which some saw as a revolution in disguise.
So, far from helping to make a land fit for heroes, the government, by misreading the situation and adopting the wrong policies, produced conditions far worse than pre war. The ultimate tragedy was that it took another war to re-vitalise the economy and drag the country out of depression. Far from being 'the war to end all wars' the Great war of 1914 to 1918 resulted in more misery and eventually World War Two in 1939.
Tanks in the cattle Market on Gallowgate in Glasgow in 1919
