HIST20114_272900

The podcast discusses the impact of the First World War on gender, class, and family relations in 1920s Britain. It explores how gender roles shifted following the war, with women becoming more involved in the public sphere. The legacy of the war also influenced employment competition and racial tensions, particularly in working-class communities. The case study of Liverpool demonstrates how racialized thinking and employment issues led to riots. Overall, the war's legacy had a lasting impact on race relations and the traditional British family roles. The arguments presented through case studies are convincing and highlight the complexity of these issues. During this podcast, I'll be discussing the key question about what was the legacy of the First World War in 1920s Britain, and the concerns of gender, class and family relations that were affected by both the legacy of the unsettling of established gender distinctions in the First World War, as well as competition for employment that veterans faced as they arrived back in England. The 1920s was met with huge upheavals as social and economic forces were trying to readjust to the new circumstances and situations that Britain was in. As the 1920s British cold introduced a receding international economy and a reduced market for its product, it faced new challenges for the country to deal with. Sue Broody in The Women and Men of 1926, A Gender and Social History of the Miners Lockout in South Wales, looked at gender and the family in her chapter two, where she zoomed in on shifting gender relations following World War I and the impact it had on smaller working class communities. She looked at the deeply patriarchal society of South Wales that rented male miners as the breadwinners, and their wives as their housekeepers. Interestingly, she shows how the foundation of marriage was a labour contract, even after the First World War, since sex trials were exaggerated and oppressive. Broody repeatedly uses statistics and first-hand oral histories as evidence for her points. She showed that in 1921, 12.5% of women in the coal mining area of Rhondda were recorded as in the labour field, which is a small mining town in South Wales, whereas in England and Wales there was 32.3%, a significantly lower statistic for a small coal mining community statistic. Maybe gender relations were not as dramatically undermined as the popular legacy of the First World War likes to remember them as, as transformative for gender and family relations. And she's highlighting that there's made potentially more continuity than change, which is kind of the traditional narrative to take following World War I. However, Rachel Selsman argued that the First World War was hugely undermined for gender relations and caused massive anxiety for it, as she emphasises change rather than Broody's continuity. Part of Broody's continuity lens may come from her contemporary context and experience with women and families now, residing much more in the public sphere than in the 1920s. Therefore, the comparison between modern day and shifts following the First World War may diminish the extent of slight changes in gender relations and their effect on communities. That she, who they had never experienced anything of the likes. As we can see, Broody takes this gender and class take on the legacy of the First World War. Michael Rowe looks at the competition for employment that emerged following the First World War through a class and race perspective. Similarly to Broody, Rowe uses a case study of Liverpool to demonstrate how tensions in the interwar period were largely rooted in racial tensions, as well as hierarchy where white working class men believed themselves to be entitled to the work of the city before anyone else. One section of Rowe's argument outlines how the race riot reflects the racialised thinking which had been developed during the previous century. So, to combine this, his view that the disorders were primarily actually about employment issues for veterans, and the black population taking up the belief space, belief right to space, is that the First World War acted as a catalyst for racial tension and riots that happened in Liverpool in 1919 and the following decade. Therefore, showing that the legacy of the First World War stained race relations in England out of anxiety surrounding the corruption of the traditional British family roles, specifically in working class communities, and fear of infiltration throughout the enemy that had been driven into the British throughout the war. Overall, I thought the use of the case study to structure and explore the arguments were extremely effective and convincing in translating their points to the reader as a way for interpreting perspectives that find a greater depth than if they were simply stating and explaining. Due to this, Rudy has definitely made me reconsider my initial view that gender relations entirely went underwent a transformation, but instead saw greater continuity in smaller work class areas rather than their middle class and the counterpart, which experienced more transformation. And Rowe has definitely exposed the interception of class, race and sex relations in controlling the atmosphere following the First World War, where tensions and threats caused a lot of violence in Liverpool and across the country between the white and black working classes.