ABSTRACT
After a short and chaotic euphoria accompanying the cessation of hostilities at the end of 1918, the British economy fell into depression, just as it had after the Napoleonic Wars a century earlier as a consequence of the abrupt curtailment in demand for industrial production. Once again, large numbers of now surplus military personnel returned home looking for jobs; but the situation was exacerbated by the large numbers of women who, having been employed during the war in jobs not normally available to them, were not keen to return to the kitchen – and some of them would soon be able to vote. Whilst one outcome of a now more egalitarian society that was emerging from the trenches and factories of the First World War would be further extension of the franchise in 1928, the two decades before the Second World War would also see many more fundamental changes.
