What Were the Consequences of the First World War for the British People 1914 - 1924?

There were many consequences and changes to British society because of the war, both positive and negative, however if you look closely some of the changes such as women obtaining the right to vote could have happened naturally - war or no war.

The war provided many changes both socially, economically and politically. One such social change was the population of men declining drastically, this was of course because of the death toll as a result of the war. As a result of this the population of women went up from 595 per thousand to 638 per thousand and the proportion of widows went from 38% - 43% and there were also now 3.5 million orphans. (1) So since women now outnumbered men it would be harder to ignore them, which meant since they outnumbered men more than they used to, they would have to be treated better, since women were the ones who had to bring up all the kids to make up for the loss. The other consequence of the great loss of men is that children lost their fathers and people had lost friends and relatives. `It was virtually impossible to avoid losing a relative or close acquaintance' (2). The severe loss was the most important change in society. The sadness of losing loved ones would have been unbearable. It also had a knock on effect towards industry and unemployment, because some of the people who ran businesses or factories died, it meant they had to shut them down hence the people who had jobs there before were now unemployed. By 1921 unemployment had risen to 2 million. (1) Some businesses were losing trade as well, for instance the staple industries were slowly eroding away because after the war there wasn't such a need for them, they didn't have to make as many weapons or ships, so there wasn't as much investment in these industries as before / during the war. As these businesses were losing money they would have to make job cuts or reduce employer's wages, which further added to the unemployment problems. This was the start of an economic crisis. Spending money on weapons, supplies for men, extra first aid and other necessities for the war meant the government were spending a lot more money than they used to (Over 50% of GNP by 1918) (1) and due to Britain's inability to pay debts to countries including the USA, they had a lot on their plate to deal with financially.