The image of the 1920s in popular imagination is a world liberated from war, a world in which jazz and modern art, girls with short skirts and bobbed hair, cars and planes, all contributed to a new sense of progress and experiment — a new age, which still influences the world we live in today.
This sense that the 1920s represented something positive and culturally adventurous after the ardour of a decade of crisis and war is real enough. Among artists, writers, musicians and scientists there was a self-conscious willingness to embrace new ideas and to transcend the conservative world of pre-1914; among the wider public, if they could afford it, the 1920s did open up the prospect of motor transport, international travel by the (still dangerous) new air routes, owning a radio or a gramophone.
For the younger generation, those who were too young to serve in or work for the war effort, it was important to place a distance between them and the damaged generation of 1914. Talk of war was not encouraged. Veterans crippled physically or psychologically, or both, were shunned as a reminder of the grim ordeal now over.
The material life of the 1920s was also transformed by the advent of a real consumer revolution and the modern media. In 1922 the BBC was established and within a decade the density of radio ownership in Britain was the highest in Europe. The cinema was everywhere and American films introduced the British public to a new kind of consumerism. Where high fashion had been the preserve of the upper and upper-middle classes before 1914, cheaper imitations were widely available in the 1920s.
The ideal of leisure, completely familiar to our contemporary world, became a possibility for millions for the first time, whether driving in the new cheap motor-cars pioneered by William Morris, Herbert Austin or the American Henry Ford (only the last has survived), or holidaying in British seaside resorts, or taking part in popular sports such as golf or tennis. Lifestyle — again a familiar 21st century concept — made its debut in the 1920s among those with enough money to indulge their taste.
The positive was in evidence not only at home but also abroad. Enshrined in the post-war settlement in 1919 was a commitment to a League of Nations which was supposed to establish “collective security” as a global system to prevent further warfare. The League was never severely tested in the 1920s and British people flocked to join the League of Nations Union established in 1918 in order to educate the public in the virtues of co-operation and collective action. By 1927, there were more than 600,000 members.
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