Explain How State Control Increased In Britain Ww1

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Explain how State Control increased in Britain during world war 1 The Liberals’ policy towards State Control before the First World War was ‘laissez faire’, a policy of the government having a very limited impact on life in the country. However, the First World War forced them to scrap this policy and increase State Control in order to successfully fight the war. They did this in a number of ways, and this answer will include: Conscription, Censorship, in the protection of the working class, food rationing and DORA. It will be argued that the most extensive increase in state control was in the protection of the working class. The most extensive increase in state control was in the protection of the working class. The Government needed the support of the workers to win the war, and so it needed the support of the trade unions. The trade unions agreed to work closely with employers to avoid strikes. In return, they demanded state controls on profits, rents and wages. This was to ensure that the working class would not be taken advantage of during the war. This meant that prices could not rise in order to make a profit. Also, rents could not be increased so that the working class could still afford to live at home. Another agreement was that employers could not put wages down to help themselves and exploit the poor, and the government also had to promise that workers who were away fighting would be able to get their old jobs back after the war. However, Britain was running out of workers, a problem which increased with the introduction of Conscription. Before 1914, Britain didn’t conscript men to serve in the armed forces bit relied on the incredibly successful ‘voluntarism’ campaign led by Lord Kitchener, the victor of the Boer war. His propaganda poster “Your country needs you” led to the raising of the largest volunteer army in history - “10,000 men
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