The industrial truce and its limitations

The limitations of a language of sacrifice had been neatly anticipated by the Daily Herald in the first week of the war: ‘The toilers may well be tired of sacrifices. All their life is a sacrifice.’ At the start, this newspaper, along with most of the Liberal press and much of the Conservative press was anticipating complete industrial collapse: there would be massive unemployment accompanied by shortages and inflation. August did indeed prove turbulent, but by September prices were stabilising, there were no widespread food shortages and a labour shortage in certain industries led rapidly to full employment. Although there was a good deal of criticism, the Prince of Wales Fund for the relief of distress sent a helpful signal to those suffering from economic dislocation that the middle and upper classes were not reacting with indifference to their plight. Yet even with these qualifications duly noted, the first half of the war saw a great deal of real hardship for the industrial workers. In these circumstances, the relative social peace of the first two years of the war came as a surprise.