Britain in 1921
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t was a year of hope. It was a year of
regret. It was a time of boundless
optimism at the possibilities offered
by peace. It was a time of almost
unimaginable grief at the ravages of
the First World War. It was a “roar-
ing” year of dancing and decadence,
flappers and frivolity. It was a year of social
unrest and guerrilla war. It was a brave new
world of motor cars and disposable income.
It was a world of grinding poverty and
industrial collapse.
1921 may appear ever more distant as we
advance further into the 21st century. Yet this
January that year will be thrown into sharp
focus once more – thanks to the release into
the public domain of the 1921 census for
England and Wales.
The census promises to unlock a treasure
trove of information about what life was like
in Britain a century ago. It was the largest
survey of its kind yet, posing Britons ques-
tions about everything from their profession-
al occupation and educational background to
marital status. And the government didn’t
intend to simply collect this information and
set it aside to gather dust. Instead, it promised
to use that information as a force for good,
announcing (rather grandly) that the census
would facilitate plans “for the betterment of
social and national conditions”, informing
policy on every thing from pensions and
unemployment insurance to housing, schools
and transport.
Not everyone was thrilled at the prospect
of offering up personal information to
faceless government officials. Yet, for all that,
the press and public in 1921 do appear to have
been genuinely fascinated by what the census
would reveal about their country. One
newspaper even declared that “we want to
know where we stand after years of war such
as were never experienced before”.
And it’s that very sentiment that makes
1921 such a fascinating year to look back
upon from today’s perspective. Where did
Britain stand as it attempted to come to terms
with one of the most traumatic conflicts in its
history? What was the mood of a populace
grappling with the issues of commemoration
and grief, while looking to strike out and grab
the opportunities provided by the postwar
world? And did Britain really “roar” at the
dawn of the 1920s?Emblem of the fallen
Whatever hopes Britons invested in the
future, there was no escaping the fact that
700,000 men had lost their lives during four
years of conflict. Surely no section of
the 1921 census captures the human cost of
the war better than the one that asked which
Britons had suffered the death of a parent.November 1921, the Royal British Legion sold
9 million red poppies as an “emblem of the
fallen” in the run-up to armistice day.
Formed six months earlier as an amalgama-
tion of existing ex-servicemen groups, the
Legion provided support for ex-service
personnel (of whom 1.75 million lived with
injuries or disability) and their families.
A sharp economic downturn and rising
unemployment levels in the immediate
postwar years meant that many of those
who had served in the armed forces were out
of work in the early 1920s. “The longed-for
and dearly bought peace was a profound
disappointment,” observed the author and
war poet RH Mottram, capturing the dissat-
isfaction felt by many ex-servicemen that
their peacetime jobs were not accompanied
by a higher status or wage. In response,
ex-servicemen’s associations, charities and
government schemes aimed to support
veterans’ rehabilitation into society.
Although personal remembrance of the
fallen had begun long before the war ended,
it was in the early 1920s that official com-
memorations became part of the fabric of
public life. Local communities, churches
and schools unveiled plaques and monu-
ments and, in November 1920, the Cenotaph
was unveiled on Whitehall. That same
year, the unknown warrior was buried in
Westminster Abbey, while the Belgian marbleNo section of the
census captures
the terrible cost
of the war more
than the one
dedicated to the
death of a parent
The death toll was inevitably reflected in one
of the census’s headline findings: population
size. The census established that the popula-
tion in England and Wales (the just-formed
Northern Ireland had no census that year and
Scotland had a separate census) stood at
around 38 million – the largest ever
recorded. However, this was only a 1.8 million
increase on 1911, the smallest growth in a
century – a product of the death toll and
lower birth rate brought about by the disrup-
tion of the war years.
With the death toll being so high, it was
surely inevitable that remembrance would
become an integral part of British life. InFaces of the future
Pupils at a Manchester school in 1921. The government
promised that the census would inform policy on
everything from pensions and housing to education