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History > Britain from 1914 to the present > The political situation > Between the wars > Harsh peace and hard times

The peace treaty with Germany—drawn up far too rapidly and without German participation, between January and May 1919—went into effect on June 28. Even as peace with Germany was declared, the British people, as well as members of the government, were beginning to realize that the punitive treaty, burdening Germany with the responsibility and much of the cost of the war, was a mistake. Accordingly, British foreign policy for much of the decade of the 1920s aimed at rehabilitating Germany and bringing it back into the family of nations. In general, this attempt was opposed by France and resulted in a rupture between Britain and its wartime ally, forcing France into a position of isolation that would have prodigious consequences for Europe and indeed for the rest of the world with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s.

Lloyd George spent a great deal of time in the four postwar years of his administration on foreign affairs. As a consequence, issues within the United Kingdom, such as unemployment, poor housing, Irish separatism, and the revival of industry, were too frequently neglected. Many of the promises for reconstruction made in speeches and papers during the war were never carried out. The government, however, tried to diminish the habitual confrontation between newly powerful organized labour and industry. Unemployment insurance was extended to virtually all workers, and a serious attempt was made to begin a public housing program. Railroads were reorganized, and for three years after the war coal mines remained in public hands. This restructuring of industry, however, came to an end with the serious rise in unemployment that began in 1920 and culminated in 1921 in a full-scale industrial depression with nearly one-fourth of the labour force out of work. One of the factors in the depression was a disastrous coal strike in April 1921, caused in considerable measure by the collapse of world coal prices resulting from German coal reparations to France. The immediate effect of the economic depression was a demand by the Conservatives for government economy that the prime minister could not ignore.

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