Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-03T05:26:29.924Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

Introduction

David Monger
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Get access

Summary

This book discusses the National War Aims Committee (NWAC), a cross-party parliamentary organisation established to conduct propaganda within Britain, aimed at maintaining civilian morale in the last and most draining months of the First World War. By July 1917, British civilians had endured three years of disruption to their lives. Alongside anxiety for relatives and friends in the armed forces or other dangerous occupations, civilians had to contend with more intense pressures of work (not only longer hours or changing practices but also ideological associations of all work with the war effort); restrictions or curtailments of leisure; shortages of supplies of all kinds with concomitant economic pressure; and, for the first time in a Continental war, a credible prospect of wartime death or injury at home from enemy action. The new prime minister, David Lloyd George, was convinced by December 1916 that more was required to bolster civilian morale than ‘autonomous propaganda’ undertaken by the press and voluntary organisations. By the time the NWAC began operations in July 1917, Russia had experienced the first of two revolutions and Britain had witnessed several strikes over working conditions and the advocacy, at a socialist ‘convention’ at Leeds, of the creation of workers' and soldiers' councils, making the establishment of such an organisation appear all the more urgent. Over the last 15 months of the war, the NWAC held thousands of meetings and distributed over one hundred million publications, propagating a wide-ranging and flexible patriotic message reflective of the total-war environment in which civilians found themselves.

Type
Chapter
Information
Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain
The National War Aims Committee and Civilian Morale
, pp. 1 - 14
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • David Monger, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Book: Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317811.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • David Monger, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Book: Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317811.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • David Monger, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Book: Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain
  • Online publication: 05 April 2013
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/9781846317811.001
Available formats
×