The world wars and votes for women

How the Great War began

The early twentieth century felt like a confident age for Britain. The country had a vast empire, a powerful navy and thriving industry, and it was introducing social reforms such as old-age pensions and free school meals. That confidence was shattered on 28 June 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated. The killing set off a chain of diplomatic and military decisions across Europe that led, within weeks, to the First World War.

The assassination was the trigger rather than the underlying cause. Rising nationalism, an arms race between the great powers, competing empires, and a Europe divided into two rival alliance systems had already created a dangerous situation. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia mobilised to support Serbia, and Germany then declared war on Russia and France. When Germany invaded Belgium to reach France, Britain, bound by treaty obligations and its own fears of German domination in Europe, declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914.

The war lasted from 1914 to 1918 and became known at the time as the Great War, since it drew in nations from every continent rather than staying confined to Europe. It ended at 11 a.m. on 11 November 1918, with victory for Britain and its allies. In Britain, the outbreak of war also forced the government to shelve a promised Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which would have given Ireland its own parliament while remaining part of the United Kingdom; the issue was postponed until after the war.

Britain and its allies

Britain fought as part of the Allied Powers, ranged against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and their partners. Its principal allies at the outbreak of war were France and Russia, joined by others including Belgium, Serbia and Japan. Italy, Romania and Greece later joined the Allied side, and the United States entered the war in 1917.

This was not simply a European war. The whole of the British Empire took part, and Britain drew heavily on troops from its colonies and dominions. More than a million Indian soldiers served on Britain's behalf in various theatres of the conflict, and around 40,000 of them were killed. Soldiers and resources also came from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other parts of the empire, which is part of why the conflict is remembered as a genuinely global war rather than a purely continental one.

Trench warfare

Much of the fighting on the Western Front, running through Belgium and France, became a grinding stalemate after the initial German advance was halted at the Battle of the Marne in 1914. Both sides dug lines of trenches for protection against shellfire and machine guns, and by November 1914 a continuous trench system stretched for hundreds of miles from the Swiss border to the North Sea. Troops lived in these trenches for extended periods in cramped, unsanitary and often waterlogged conditions.

A typical position was not a single ditch but a system of front-line, support and communication trenches, with the churned and dangerous ground between opposing lines known as no man's land. Attacks usually meant leaving the relative shelter of the trench to cross this open ground under fire, which produced enormous casualties for often minimal gains in territory. Major battles associated with this style of warfare include the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, both fought at devastating human cost.

The war also introduced new and more destructive technology. Poison gas was used on a large scale for the first time, and Britain introduced the tank at the Somme in September 1916 in an attempt to break the deadlock, though early tanks were unreliable and often became stuck in the mud. Trench warfare of this kind is generally reckoned to have lasted from late 1914 until the Allied breakthroughs of 1918, and it remains one of the defining and most remembered features of the First World War in Britain.

The Battle of the Somme

The Battle of the Somme took place in France between 1 July and 18 November 1916, during the First World War. It was intended as a joint British and French offensive to break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front, but German pressure on the French at Verdun meant that British and Empire forces took the leading role in the attack.

The first day, 1 July 1916, remains the worst single day in the history of the British Army. British forces suffered 57,470 casualties, of whom 19,240 were killed, mostly within the first hour of the attack. The battle continued for nearly five months and by its end had produced over a million casualties on both sides, while the British line had advanced only about seven miles.

The Somme has become a lasting symbol of the huge loss of life caused by the First World War and is central to how Britain remembers that conflict. Soldiers from across the British Empire fought in the battle alongside British troops, including men from Newfoundland and a contingent from Bermuda. The scale of the casualties, for such limited territorial gain, shaped public memory of the war and continues to be marked every year on Remembrance Day.

The Empire and Commonwealth at war

Both world wars were fought by the whole of the British Empire, not by Britain alone. In the First World War, troops from India, the West Indies, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada fought alongside British forces in campaigns across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. More than a million Indian soldiers served on behalf of Britain in several different countries, and around 40,000 of them were killed.

Men from the Caribbean served mainly in the British West Indies Regiment, raised in 1915, which worked as labourers under fire and, later in the war, saw combat in Palestine and Jordan. Soldiers and labourers from Africa also served in large numbers, in campaigns fought in East and West Africa as well as on other fronts. Dominions such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa raised their own large forces and suffered heavy losses; more than 600,000 Canadians and over 400,000 Australians served during the war.

In the Second World War, the Empire and Commonwealth again made a substantial contribution of people, raw materials, food and money to the British war effort. Servicemen and women from India, Africa, the Caribbean and the Dominions served in the armed forces, while colonies and Dominions supplied resources needed to sustain Britain's war economy. This shared effort meant that the two world wars were fought and remembered as conflicts involving people from across the Empire, a fact that is often underrepresented in popular memory of the fighting on the Western Front.

Life on the home front

The term 'home front' describes life in Britain during the two world wars, when the whole population, not just soldiers, was affected by the demands of war. Government control over daily life increased sharply. Rationing of food and other goods was introduced to make sure supplies were shared fairly and to cope with shortages caused by attacks on merchant shipping.

With so many men away fighting, women took on jobs that had previously been done mainly by men, working in factories, on farms and in other essential industries to keep the country running and to produce weapons and supplies for the forces. This experience of women taking on new economic roles during the First World War is closely linked to the campaign for women's suffrage, since their contribution to the war effort strengthened the case for extending the vote to women, which happened partly in 1918 and fully in 1928.

During the Second World War, civilians faced direct danger from bombing, particularly during the Blitz, when German aircraft bombed British cities. Children were evacuated from cities to the countryside to keep them safe, and blackout regulations required people to cover their windows at night so that lights could not guide enemy bombers. Many people also served as air raid wardens or in other civil defence roles, reflecting how the war effort depended on the whole population rather than only on those serving in the armed forces.

The suffragists and the case for a peaceful campaign

The suffragists were campaigners who wanted women to have the right to vote and who pursued this aim through lawful, peaceful means such as writing letters, holding meetings and presenting petitions to Parliament. The most important suffragist organisation was the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), formed in 1897 when a number of separate local and regional suffrage societies joined together. Its president from 1897, and formally from 1907, was Millicent Fawcett, who led the organisation until 1919.

The NUWSS grew into a very large movement. It brought together seventeen societies at its founding, and by 1913 nearly five hundred regional suffrage societies had affiliated to it. Its members believed that patient, constitutional campaigning, rather than lawbreaking, was the most effective and respectable way to win support for votes for women, and they continued this approach even as a more militant campaign, led by the suffragettes, took a different path.

The suffragettes and militant action

The suffragettes took a more confrontational approach than the suffragists. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) in Manchester, frustrated by decades of slow progress towards votes for women. The WSPU's members became known as suffragettes, a term originally used as an insult by a newspaper but later adopted proudly by the movement itself.

The WSPU's motto was deeds, not words, and its members used direct action to draw attention to their cause, including breaking windows, disrupting political meetings and, from 1912, arson. Many suffragettes were arrested and imprisoned, and several went on hunger strike in protest, enduring forced feeding while in custody. Under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act of 1913, known as the Cat and Mouse Act, hunger-striking prisoners could be released to recover before being reimprisoned once they regained some strength.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, Emmeline Pankhurst and the WSPU paused their militant campaign and turned instead to supporting the war effort, and the government released suffragette prisoners in response. This shift, together with women's visible contribution to wartime work, helped build the case for reform. In February 1918, the Representation of the People Act received royal assent, giving some women the vote in parliamentary elections for the first time, specifically those aged 30 or over who met a property qualification.

Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the suffragettes

Emmeline Pankhurst was born in Manchester in 1858. She became involved in the campaign for women's suffrage in 1880 and, in 1903, founded the Women's Social and Political Union after her local branch of the Independent Labour Party had refused to admit women members. She led the WSPU until it disbanded in 1918, believing that the vote would never be won through constitutional methods alone.

Pankhurst was imprisoned on numerous occasions for militant action and went on hunger strike in protest, and under the Cat and Mouse Act she was released and rearrested repeatedly within a single year. When the First World War began in 1914, she and her daughter Christabel called off the militant suffrage campaign and instead worked to mobilise women for the war effort, believing this was the best way to demonstrate that women deserved the vote.

The Representation of the People Act of 1918 gave some women the vote for the first time. Full equal voting rights for women, on the same terms as men, followed with the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act of 1928, which was passed shortly after Pankhurst's death in June that year.

Britain between the wars

The years between the two world wars, from 1918 to 1939, brought huge social and political change to Britain. The old Liberal Party declined and the Labour Party grew to become the main challenger to the Conservatives, as working people gained a stronger political voice. Britain avoided a revolution of the kind seen in Russia and Germany, but the country faced serious economic difficulties, including periods of high unemployment.

The struggle for women's suffrage reached its first great success in this period. In 1918, Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act, which gave the vote to women aged 30 and over who met certain property qualifications, and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, which allowed women to stand for election to the House of Commons. This followed decades of campaigning by suffragists, who used peaceful methods such as lobbying, and suffragettes, who used more militant tactics that sometimes included unlawful acts. In 1928, the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act gave women the vote on the same terms as men, from the age of 21.

Social attitudes shifted too. Old class distinctions began to loosen and people started to question traditions that had gone unchallenged before the First World War. The government introduced further social reforms during this period, though full equality for women in working life and social status still lay some way ahead.

The partition of Ireland

Opposition to British rule in Ireland grew sharply in the early twentieth century. After the 1916 Easter Rising was suppressed, support grew for full Irish independence, and from 1919 the Irish Republican Army fought a guerrilla campaign against British forces known as the Irish War of Independence.

A truce was agreed in 1921, and in December of that year British and Irish representatives signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Under its terms, twenty-six counties in the south would leave the United Kingdom and become the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion within the British Commonwealth similar in status to Canada or Australia, while the six counties of Northern Ireland were given the choice of joining the new state or remaining part of the United Kingdom. The Parliament of Northern Ireland chose to stay within the United Kingdom, and the border drawn at that time still divides the island of Ireland today. The Irish Free State was formally established in December 1922, and Ireland's constitutional links with Britain were reduced further in later decades, eventually becoming the independent Republic of Ireland.

Economic depression

Britain suffered heavy losses of life and money during the First World War, though the country escaped serious physical damage at home. The 1920s and 1930s brought a global economic depression, and although Britain was not hit as hard as some other countries, certain regions endured prolonged unemployment and hardship, particularly mining areas and parts of Scotland and the north of England. These economic pressures shaped politics throughout the interwar period and reinforced the rise of the Labour Party as workers sought stronger representation for their interests.

The Depression years and the Jarrow March

The 1920s and 1930s were hard economic times across Britain. Traditional industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel and textiles went into decline, and many people lost their jobs. The situation worsened sharply after 1929, when the Wall Street Crash in the United States triggered a global economic downturn known as the Great Depression. British unemployment rose steeply, hitting industrial areas of northern England, Scotland and Wales especially hard.

One of the most striking symbols of this period was the Jarrow March of October 1936, sometimes called the Jarrow Crusade. Jarrow was a shipbuilding town in north-east England that had been devastated by the closure of its main shipyard. Around two hundred unemployed men walked from Jarrow to London to present a petition to Parliament asking for the town's industry to be restored and for help with unemployment. The march did not bring immediate results, but it became a lasting symbol of the hardship faced by industrial communities during the Depression and later fed into support for social reform.

The rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany

Germany suffered severe economic and political instability after the First World War. The Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, exploited this discontent, along with widespread resentment at the terms imposed on Germany after that war, to build support. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and he quickly moved to eliminate political opposition and establish a dictatorship, ending Germany's parliamentary democracy.

Once in power, Hitler pursued aggressive rearmament and expansionist foreign policy in defiance of the post-war settlement. He persecuted Jewish people and other groups through increasingly severe laws and violence, a persecution that would culminate in the Holocaust during the Second World War. Through the 1930s, Hitler annexed Austria and then Czechoslovakia, testing the willingness of Britain and other European powers to resist his ambitions by force.

How the Second World War began

Hitler's continued aggression brought Europe to the brink of war. Having already absorbed Austria and Czechoslovakia, he turned his attention to Poland, demanding territorial concessions. Britain and France had committed to guaranteeing Poland's independence, and when Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Britain issued an ultimatum demanding German withdrawal.

Germany did not respond, and on 3 September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany, with France doing the same the same day. This marked the start of the Second World War, a conflict that would eventually involve many nations across the world and last until 1945. Britain's declaration of war followed years of attempts to avoid conflict through diplomacy, including policies of appeasement towards Hitler's demands, which ultimately failed to prevent war.

Winston Churchill and the darkest hour

Winston Churchill became prime minister on 10 May 1940, at one of the most dangerous moments in British history. On the very day he took office, Germany invaded France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and within weeks France had collapsed and British forces were retreating to Dunkirk. Churchill led a coalition government drawing on all the main parties, and his speeches on the radio and in the House of Commons became famous for rallying the country against Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Churchill is remembered above all for his leadership through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz in 1940 and 1941, when Britain stood largely alone against Germany after the fall of France. He worked closely with Allied leaders, including US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in shaping strategy for the rest of the war. His wartime leadership is widely regarded as his greatest achievement, and many people consider him one of the greatest British prime ministers.

Despite this, Churchill's Conservative Party lost the general election of 1945, shortly after victory in Europe. He returned to serve a second term as prime minister from 1951 to 1955, before retiring due to poor health. He died in 1965 and was given a state funeral, a rare honour usually reserved for monarchs.

The Battle of Britain

After the fall of France in June 1940, Germany planned to invade Britain but first needed to destroy the Royal Air Force and gain control of the skies. This air campaign, fought mainly over southern England between July and October 1940, became known as the Battle of Britain. RAF Fighter Command, flying the Spitfire and the Hurricane, faced a much larger German air force, the Luftwaffe, which at the height of the battle had around 2,550 aircraft against roughly 749 available to the RAF.

The battle was fought almost entirely in the air, largely between fighter pilots, and the RAF ultimately prevented Germany from winning the control of the skies it needed for an invasion. This forced Hitler to abandon his invasion plans, marking Germany's first major setback of the war and a turning point in Britain's survival. Churchill paid tribute to the RAF pilots in a Commons speech, declaring that never had so much been owed by so many to so few, a line that gave the pilots their enduring name, the Few.

Victory came at a heavy cost: several hundred RAF aircrew were killed during the battle, alongside further losses among ground crew. Their success depended not only on the pilots themselves but also on a vast supporting effort, including radar operators, ground crews and the workers who kept new aircraft coming from the factories.

The Blitz

Having failed to defeat the RAF, Germany changed tactics from around September 1940 and began a sustained bombing campaign against British cities, aimed at breaking civilian morale. This period became known as the Blitz. London was bombed on many consecutive nights, and other major cities, including Coventry, Liverpool, Birmingham and Glasgow, were also heavily targeted.

The bombing killed tens of thousands of civilians and destroyed huge numbers of homes and buildings before the campaign eased in spring 1941. Ordinary people played a vital part in the response, serving as air raid wardens, firefighters and members of the Home Guard, while many children were evacuated from cities to safer areas in the countryside. Despite the destruction, the Blitz did not break civilian morale as Germany had hoped, and the experience became a lasting symbol of national resilience during the war.

Sending the children away

From September 1939, the government evacuated large numbers of children, and some mothers with young children, from cities to the countryside, to protect them from bombing. On 1 September 1939, with war imminent, the government began this scheme, which saw over 1.5 million people move from urban target areas, of whom 800,000 were children. Officials had planned for this since the late 1930s, dividing the country into evacuation, neutral and reception areas.

Children travelled from their schools, often carrying a small suitcase, a gas mask in a box and a label bearing their name. They were sent to live with families in areas thought safer from air raids, mainly in rural parts of Britain. A smaller overseas evacuation scheme sent children to countries such as Canada and Australia, but this was ended after a ship carrying evacuee children, the SS City of Benares, was sunk by a German submarine in 1940 with the loss of most of the children aboard.

Evacuation separated many children from their parents for months or years and placed them with strangers, sometimes in very different social circumstances from their own. Experiences varied widely: some children were treated with kindness, others were not. The scheme remains a well remembered part of British wartime life and features strongly in personal accounts and photographs of the period.

Sharing out scarce supplies

Rationing was introduced because Britain depended on imported food and other goods, and German attacks on merchant shipping threatened those supplies. Food rationing began in January 1940, and clothes rationing followed in mid-1941. Every person was issued with a ration book of coupons, which had to be used alongside money when buying controlled goods, and each household registered with particular shopkeepers so that supplies could be fairly shared out.

Rationed items included meat, sugar, butter, cheese, tea and eventually clothes and soap, though staples such as bread, fruit and vegetables were not rationed. Some groups received extra allowances: for example, pregnant women and young children were entitled to extra milk and eggs to protect their health. The government also encouraged people to grow their own food, notably through the Dig for Victory campaign, and to make do with what they already owned rather than buying new goods.

Rationing continued after the war ended in 1945 and some items remained rationed into the 1950s, reflecting the length of time it took Britain to rebuild its economy and trading links.

Women stepping into new roles

During both world wars, women took on work that had previously been done mainly by men, as millions of men left civilian jobs to serve in the armed forces. Women worked in factories making munitions and other war supplies, drove vehicles, and took up many roles in offices, transport and farming that had been closed to them before.

Women also served in uniformed organisations that supported the armed forces without taking combat roles on the same terms as men. These included the Auxiliary Territorial Service, which supported the army, the Women's Royal Naval Service, which supported the navy, and the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, which supported the air force. The Women's Land Army recruited women, often called Land Girls, to work on farms and keep up food production while male farm workers were away.

This wartime experience changed attitudes towards women's capabilities and their place in the workforce, and it fed into wider arguments for women's rights that had already been strengthened by the suffrage campaigns of the early twentieth century. Many women returned to domestic life after each war, but their wartime contribution is widely recognised as a significant part of Britain's history of women's changing role in society and the economy.

The Commonwealth's soldiers, sailors and airmen

Britain did not fight either world war alone. Millions of men and women from across the British Empire and the Commonwealth served alongside British forces, in the army, navy and air force, and in nursing, logistics and other support roles. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission commemorates around 1.7 million servicemen and women who died while serving with Commonwealth forces between 1914 and 1947, with graves and memorials at more than 23,000 sites in over 150 countries and territories.

In the First World War, over 3 million soldiers and labourers from across the empire and Commonwealth served alongside the British Army. More than 1.3 million soldiers from the Indian subcontinent served in that war, fighting in theatres such as the western front, Gallipoli and the Middle East. Soldiers also came from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and many other parts of the empire.

In the Second World War, this contribution grew further. The Indian Army alone reached 2.5 million members at its peak, making it the largest volunteer force in history. Troops from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and other Commonwealth and colonial territories fought in every major theatre of the war, from North Africa to Burma. This shared sacrifice is remembered every year at Remembrance Day services across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

The Holocaust

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany murdered six million Jewish men, women and children in a systematic genocide known as the Holocaust. The Nazis also persecuted and killed other groups they judged inferior or dangerous, including Roma people, disabled people, gay men and political and religious opponents.

Britain took in refugees fleeing this persecution before the war, including children brought to safety through the Kindertransport scheme. British and Allied forces later played a part in liberating concentration camps as they advanced through Europe in 1944 and 1945.

Holocaust Memorial Day is held on 27 January each year, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1945. It was established by the government in 2001 and is marked across the United Kingdom to remember the victims of the Holocaust and of later genocides.

D-Day and the liberation of Europe

D-Day, 6 June 1944, was the start of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, the largest seaborne invasion in history. Troops from Britain, the United States, Canada and other Allied nations landed on the beaches of Normandy, opening a new front in the campaign to defeat Germany in Western Europe.

The landings were followed by a hard-fought campaign through northern France. Paris was liberated in August 1944, and the Allied advance continued into Germany, contributing to the eventual German surrender and Victory in Europe Day on 8 May 1945.

VE Day and VJ Day: how the Second World War ended

The Second World War ended in two stages. Victory in Europe, known as VE Day, came on 8 May 1945, when Germany's surrender brought six years of fighting in Europe to a close. Winston Churchill announced the news to the nation in a broadcast, and celebrations broke out across Britain, with street parties, bunting and crowds gathering outside Buckingham Palace.

VE Day did not end the war everywhere. British and Commonwealth forces were still fighting Japan in the Far East, and thousands of service personnel remained engaged in that conflict for another three months. Victory over Japan, known as VJ Day, followed on 15 August 1945, after Japan's surrender. This finally brought the whole of the Second World War to an end.

VE Day and VJ Day are both marked in Britain today, with anniversary commemorations held for the armed forces and civilians who served and died during the war. The two dates are remembered as distinct moments: one for the end of fighting in Europe, the other for the end of the war in its entirety.