Ireland and Scotland in the First World War: from the Dublin Rising to Red Clydeside

Abstract

The history of the British labour movement between 1910 and the early 1920’s has a special claim to our attention. These years mark a climax of class-conscious  self-activity among the workers, which in Britain, has not yet been surpassed...there is good reason to re-examine the last great revolutionary period in British history. The First World War precipitated an international revolutionary crisis.

That the climax had already occurred in the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 was far from apparent during the immediate post-war years. October was widely seen, both on the right and the left, as a beginning, not an end. Reasonable men could anticipate the Hungarian, Austrian, German, Italian, French and even British revolutions. It is an experience that deserves to be rescued from oblivion James Hinton, 1973.