Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was Deputy Prime Minister during the wartime coalition government under Winston Churchill, and served twice as Leader of the Opposition from 1935 to 1940 and from 1951 to 1955. Attlee remains the longest serving Labour leader and is widely considered by historians and members of the public through various polls to be one of the greatest Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, from May 1923 to January 1924, from November 1924 to June 1929, and from June 1935 to May 1937.
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health Service. He is also known for his wider contribution to the founding of the British welfare state. He was first elected as MP for Ebbw Vale in 1929, and used his Parliamentary platform to make a number of influential criticisms of Winston Churchill and his government during the Second World War. Before entering Parliament, Bevan was involved in miners' union politics and was a leading figure in the 1926 general strike. Bevan is widely regarded as one of the most influential left-wing politicians in British history.
The 1926 general strike in the United Kingdom was a general strike that lasted nine days, from 4 to 12 May 1926. It was called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful attempt to force the British government to act to prevent wage reductions and worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. Some 1.7 million workers went out, especially in transport and heavy industry.
Hansard is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printer to the Parliament at Westminster.
John Charles Walsham Reith, 1st Baron Reith,, was a British broadcasting executive who established the tradition of independent public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1922, he was employed by the BBC, then the British Broadcasting Company Ltd., as its general manager; in 1923 he became its managing director, and in 1927 he was employed as the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation created under a royal charter. His concept of broadcasting as a way of educating the masses marked for a long time the BBC and similar organisations around the world. An engineer by profession, and standing at 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) tall, he was a larger-than-life figure who was a pioneer in his field.
The Morning Star is a left-wing British daily newspaper with a focus on social, political and trade union issues. Originally founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), ownership was transferred from the CPGB to an independent readers' co-operative, the People's Press Printing Society, in 1945 and later renamed the Morning Star in 1966. The paper describes its editorial stance as in line with Britain's Road to Socialism, the programme of the Communist Party of Britain.
Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, CB was an officer of the Bengal Army and later the newly constituted British Indian Army. His military career began in the regular British Army but he soon transferred to the Presidency armies of India. As a temporary brigadier-general, he was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place on 13 April 1919 in Amritsar. He has been called "the Butcher of Amritsar", because of his order to fire on a large gathering of people. The official report stated that this resulted in the killing of at least 379 people and the injuring of over a thousand more. Some submissions to the official inquiry suggested a higher number of deaths.
William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford,, known as Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Bt, from 1919 to 1929 and popularly known as Jix, was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician.
Frederick Alexander Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell, was a British physicist who was prime scientific adviser to Winston Churchill in World War II.
An Phoblacht is a formerly weekly, and currently monthly newspaper published by Sinn Féin in Ireland. From early 2018 onwards, An Phoblacht has moved to a magazine format while remaining an online news platform. Editorially the paper takes a left-wing, Irish republican position and was supportive of the Northern Ireland peace process. Along with covering Irish political and trade union issues the newspaper frequently featured interviews with celebrities, musicians, artists, intellectuals and international activists. The paper sells an average of up to 15,000 copies every week. During the 1981 Irish hunger strike its sales soared to over 70,000 per week.
The Campbell Case of 1924 involved charges against a British communist newspaper editor, J. R. Campbell, for alleged "incitement to mutiny" caused by his publication of a provocative open letter to members of the military. The decision of the government of British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, who later suspended prosecution of the case ostensibly because of pressure from backbenchers in his Labour Party, proved to be instrumental in bringing down the short-lived first Labour government.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre, also known as the Amritsar massacre, took place on 13 April 1919. A large, peaceful crowd had gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, British India, to protest against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of pro-independence activists Saifuddin Kitchlu and Satyapal. In response to the public gathering, the temporary brigadier general R. E. H. Dyer, surrounded the people with his Gurkha, Baloch and the 59th Scinde Rifles of the British Indian Army. The Jallianwala Bagh could only be exited on one side, as its other three sides were enclosed by buildings. After blocking the exit with his troops, he ordered them to shoot at the crowd, continuing to fire even as the protestors tried to flee. The troops kept on firing until their ammunition was exhausted. Estimates of those killed vary from 379 to 1,500 or more people and over 1,200 other people were injured of whom 192 were seriously injured. Britain has never formally apologised for the massacre but expressed "deep regret" in 2019.
The Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies was a British right-wing movement, established in 1925 to provide volunteers in the event of a general strike. During the General Strike of 1926, it was taken over by the government to provide vital services, such as transport and communications.
This article documents the career of Winston Churchill in Parliament from its beginning in 1900 to the start of his term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in World War II.
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns.
The British Worker was a newspaper produced by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress for the duration of the 1926 United Kingdom General Strike. The first of eleven issues was printed on 5 May and publication stopped on 17 May after the official cessation of the strike. The principal objective of the newspaper was to circulate information and maintain the strikers' morale throughout the stoppage.
Winston Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924 and served until 1929. He presented five budgets during his chancellorship. He was initially sceptical about advice from the Bank of England and leading economists to implement a return to the gold standard. In April 1925, however, he agreed to include the measure in his first budget. It resulted in deflation and unemployment, and was a catalyst to the miners' strike that led to the General Strike of 1926. Churchill's other policies as Chancellor included free trade, a reduction in the rate of local taxation, lowering the pension age and support for coal miners and the mining industry.
