Great Depression Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===United Kingdom=== {{Main|Great Depression in the United Kingdom|Interwar Britain}} [[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-10246, England, Arbeitslose vor Gewerkschaftshaus.jpg|thumb|right|Unemployed people in front of a workhouse in London, 1930]] The World Depression broke at a time when the United Kingdom had still not fully recovered from the effects of the [[World War I|First World War]] more than a decade earlier. The country was driven off the [[gold standard]] in 1931. The world financial crisis began to overwhelm Britain in 1931; investors around the world started withdrawing their gold from London at the rate of £2.5 million per day.<ref name="David Williams 1963"/> Credits of £25 million each from the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an issue of £15 million fiduciary note slowed, but did not reverse the British crisis. The financial crisis now caused a major political crisis in Britain in August 1931. With deficits mounting, the bankers demanded a balanced budget; the divided cabinet of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government agreed; it proposed to raise taxes, cut spending and most controversially, to cut unemployment benefits by 20%. The attack on welfare was totally unacceptable to the Labour movement. MacDonald wanted to resign, but King George V insisted he remain and form an all-party coalition "[[National Government (United Kingdom)|National Government]]". The Conservative and Liberals parties signed on, along with a small cadre of Labour, but the vast majority of Labour leaders denounced MacDonald as a traitor for leading the new government. Britain went off the gold standard, and suffered relatively less than other major countries in the Great Depression. In the 1931 British election, the Labour Party was virtually destroyed, leaving MacDonald as prime minister for a largely Conservative coalition.<ref>Charles Loch Mowat, ''Britain between the wars, 1918–1940'' (1955) pp. 386–412.</ref><ref name="John Oxborrow 1976 pp. 67-73"/> The effects on the northern industrial areas of Britain were immediate and devastating, as demand for traditional industrial products collapsed. By the end of 1930 unemployment had more than doubled from 1 million to 2.5 million (20% of the insured workforce), and exports had fallen in value by 50%. In 1933, 30% of [[Glasgow|Glaswegians]] were unemployed due to the severe decline in heavy industry. In some towns and cities in the north east, unemployment reached as high as 70% as shipbuilding fell by 90%.<ref>[https://www.thegreatdepression.co.uk/unemployment-during-the-great-depression/ Unemployment During The Great Depression] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090124124118/https://thegreatdepression.co.uk/unemployment-during-the-great-depression |date=January 24, 2009 }}, thegreatdepression.co.uk</ref> The [[National Hunger March, 1932|National Hunger March]] of September–October 1932 was the largest<ref>Cook, Chris and Bewes, Diccon; ''What Happened Where: A Guide To Places And Events In Twentieth-Century History'' p. 115; Routledge, 1997 {{ISBN|1-85728-533-6}}</ref> of a series of [[hunger marches]] in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s. About 200,000 unemployed men were sent to the work camps, which continued in operation until 1939.<ref>[https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7842448.stm "Work camps that tackled Depression"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220106193754/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7842448.stm |date=January 6, 2022 }}, BBC News.</ref> In the less industrial [[English Midlands|Midlands]] and [[Southern England]], the effects were short-lived and the later 1930s were a prosperous time. Growth in modern manufacture of electrical goods and a boom in the motor car industry was helped by a growing southern population and an expanding [[middle class]]. Agriculture also saw a boom during this period.<ref name="Social Conditions in Britain 1918–1939">[[Stephen Constantine (historian)|Constantine, Stephen]] (1983), ''Social Conditions in Britain 1918–1939'', {{ISBN|0-416-36010-6}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page