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Following the conclusion of the First World War, the war-time coalition government, led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, was returned to power, promising to build \'a land fit for heroes to live in\'. However, after a brief spell of post-war prosperity, industrial profits and wages began to fall and demobilised soldiers found it difficult or impossible to find jobs.By the summer of 1921 there were over 2,000,000 people unemployed and strikes were on the increase. There was widespread suffering and deprivation. The Lloyd George coalition government collapsed after a series of scandals in 1922 and the country\'s economic crisis continued to worsen. A series of short-term governments attempted to cope with the crisis (including, from 1924, Britain\'s first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald).
In support of a strike by coal miners over the issue of threatened wage cuts, the Trades Union Congress called a General Strike in early-May 1926. The strike only involved certain key industrial sectors (docks, electricity, gas, railways) but, in the face of well-organised government emergency measures and lack of real public support, it collapsed after nine days.The miners continued to strike but returned to work in August, accepting lower wages and longer hours. Trade union membership declined after the strike. Nevertheless, it provided the excuse for retaliatory measures against trades unions and led to the passage of the 1927 Trade Disputes Act, which restricted the ability of workers to strike.The worst period of the Depression followed the crash of the Wall Street Financial Markets in 1929.
In Britain, unemployment peaked just below 3,000,000 in 1932. A year before, in August, the Labour government had resigned and been replaced by a Conservative-dominated National Government. Although the British economy stabilised under the National Government and unemployment began a steady decline after 1935, it was only with re-armament in the period immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War that the worst of the Depression could be said to be over.
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