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Although a Home Rule Bill, supporting the Irish Nationalist demand for independence, passed its final legislative stage in May 1914, it was not implemented as a result of the outbreak of war. Frustration over this situation led to an armed uprising in Dublin on Easter Sunday, 1916.By the following day some 2,000 supporters of the rising had taken up strategic positions around the city and nationalist leaders proclaimed Ireland a republic. The ris ... mehr
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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 ... mehr
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After the First World War the British Empire continued to grow. In addition to the self-governing Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, it included large tracts of Africa, Asia and parts of the Caribbean. It also included territories acquired by mandate following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which included Iraq and Palestine.Nationalist movements developed in strength in India, Egypt and in the Arab mandated terr ... mehr
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In September 1938 British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, met German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in Munich to settle the future of the Sudetenland. Hitler\'s demand that this Czechoslovak land be ceded to Germany was agreed because it was settled by Germans and would therefore be in line with the principle of national self-determination.Since coming to power in January 1933, Hitler had systematically sought to revise the terms of the Treaty of V ... mehr
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World War Two in Europe began on 3 September 1939 when Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitler had refused to abort his invasion of Poland, the territorial integrity of which had been guaranteed by Britain and France in March 1939. Following several months of \"phoney war\", Hitler invaded France and the BeNeLux countries, which fell to him in June 1940. Britain endured the Blitz and feared invasion until the Battle of Britain in ... mehr
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The Labour Party came to power in the general election of July 1945, with its first overall majority. In spite of the reforming enthusiasm and experience of many members of prime minister Clement Attlee\'s cabinet, however, this was still an era of austerity, as the devastating economic impact of the war became evident. The best remembered achievements of the Labour period include the founding of the National Health Service in 1946, and the na ... mehr
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The end of the Second World War brought a new Labour government and the expansion of the welfare state including the establishment of a National Health Service. The creation of an independent India and Pakistan heightened the desire for independence on behalf of almost all of Britain\'s colonies - although most retained ties with Britain through the Commonwealth.
Britain\'s economic position relative to many other industrialised countries contin ... mehr
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By the end of the Second World War, Britain had seen her pre-war status as a global superpower eroded. Britain, with her Imperial interests, remained a power, but not a superpower. Britain also emerged from the Second World War deeply in debt to the Americans, with rebuilding after the was and aspirations for social reform to be funded. Although Anglo-Americcan research had produced the atomic bombs which devastated Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the US ... mehr
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India had traditionally been regarded as the most valuable component of the British Empire, and its possession as proof of British world power. Yet the war had strained Britain\'s capacity to direct a global empire and this helps explain Britain\'s agreement to Indian self-government after the war.However the transition to independence was not smooth and Britain failed to achieve a constitutional settlement which both the Indian National Congress ... mehr
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The Conservative Party was returned to power with a small majority. It remained in office for thirteen years - increasing its majority when Anthony Eden replaced Churchill as prime minister in 1955. In 1957, Harold Macmillan replaced Eden following the Suez Crisis. \'Supermac\' as he was subsequently nicknamed, went on to win the election of 1959, and was briefly succeeded by Alec Douglas-Home in 1963. The early 1960s are remembered as an age of ... mehr
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George V (1910-36) was succeed by his eldest son, Edward VIII (1936). However, Edward wished to marry the twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson, and this precipitated a constitutional crisis where the king was forced to abdicate in favour of his brother, George VI (1936-52). Upon George\'s death in 1952, his eldest daughter Elizabeth (1952-present) became Queen.
Her eldest son, Charles, is heir to the throne. The Crown remains at the centre o ... mehr
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Considered to be the most significant turning point in post-war British foreign policy, the Suez Crisis refers to the British decision to join with France and Israel in a military intervention to attempt to prevent General Nasser from nationalising the Suez Canal in the autumn of 1956. Nasser was promoting Arab nationalism throughout the Middle East and had become an increasing source of irritation to the British and the French. The Anglo-French ... mehr
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In 1957, the Treaty of Rome was signed by six European countries (France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and this established the European Economic Community or the Common Market, which sought to abolish tariffs and trade restrictions between member countries. The dilemma for Britain lay in the fact that it retained considerable extra-European trading links and a strong relationship with the
Un ... mehr
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Labour came back to power in 1964 under the leadership of Harold Wilson, whose government was re-elected in 1966. The Wilson Governments instituted a series of permissive measures, broadly reflecting the changing social climate at home. These include the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which decriminalised homosexual practices above the age of consent; the 1967 Abortion Act, which legalised abortion under certain conditions; and the 1969 Divorce Reform ... mehr
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In Northern Ireland, over the summer of 1968, a civil rights movement established itself, with marches and demonstrations continuing to the end of the year. Rioting in Londonderry and Belfast in the following year led to the deployment of British troops on peacekeeping duties. As the violence escalated in the early 1970s, internment without trial began (in 1971), followed by widespread rioting. Thirteen demonstrators were shot dead by British t ... mehr
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Between 1970 and 1979 Britain was led by three prime ministers: Edward Heath (1970-74); Harold Wilson (1974-76); and James Callaghan (1976-79). The period was one of increasing unrest and discontent, as the economy continued to decline, and inflation seemed, at times, to be spiralling out of control. In December 1973, Heath introduced a three-day working week to attempt to restrict energy use during a period of acute power crisis (industrial outp ... mehr
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Following the 1979 general election, the Conservative Party gained power and Margaret Thatcher became Britain\'s first woman Prime Minister. During her period in office, which lasted until 1990, her style of leadership and the policies she promoted came to be known as Thatcherism. This was a loose concept which encompassed her policies of strengthening the powers of central government, curbing the powers of trades unions and local government, and ... mehr
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The British dependency of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic had been a subject of dispute between the UK and Argentina since Britain occupied the territory in the early nineteenth century. In April 1982, Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands. The invasion was condemned by the United Nations Security Council, which passed a resolution for Argentina to withdraw.Although the British Foreign Office was caught by surprise, the U ... mehr
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John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher as prime minister in 1990. Although Major\'s leadership of the Conservative Party and Cabinet was criticised in many quarters as weak, his administration was punctuated by a series of significant policy initiatives. Within months of taking office he successfully steered the government through conflict in the Gulf.In December 1991, he negotiated an opt-out for Britain at the later stages of the European Monet ... mehr
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Iraq has laid claims to Kuwait, a small oil-rich state in the Persian Gulf, ever since its creation in the late 1950s, when Britain granted it independence. Mounting war debts incurred by an internecine war with neighbouring Iran, the falling world price of oil, and the arguable provocation of a build-up of American troops in Saudi Arabia, led Iraq to invade and annex Kuwait on 2 August 1990. A coalition of 28 nations, led by the USA and includin ... mehr
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