Minorites, military service, and the legacies of post-war reconstruction in the British Isles, 1918-1939

Abstract

This thesis aims to create a greater understanding of democratic citizenship in post-First World War Britain as it relates to minority status in the period 1918-1939. Arguing that histories of interwar politics have been slow to recognise the role and experiences of Britain’s minority communities in shaping notions of citizenship during the first decades of British mass democracy, the thesis focuses on the role of military service in the formation of minority rights agendas. Scholarship on the political culture of the period has interrogated the nature of British democracy between the wars, but the position of minorities in these debates is less clear. While New Imperial histories have considered the legacies of claim-making on the part of non-white colonial subjects in this period, rarely has analysis been set in the context of post-war reconstruction, memory of wartime pledges, and the impact of military service on both the self-history and identity of minorities, and how they were perceived by others. After the First World War, British Governments faced an expectant mass citizenry, and a growing field of civic participation in the form of associations, clubs, and pressure groups: testament to the new politics of the post-war age. On this field, minority agendas were founded and articulated, while dominant notions of citizenship, what it meant to belong, were contested and reshaped. Contributing to a history of minorities, and interwar political culture more broadly, the thesis considers the formation of minority-focused ex-service organisations by Jewish and Irish veterans of the Great War.