The British Army and Internal Security 1919–1939

Abstract

Systematic military policy-making towards internal security in Great Britain dates from the period immediately following the First World War. It was stimulated above all by widespread fears of possible revolution, sharpened by a belief in the collective incapacity of police forces to deal with civil disorder. Many, although by no means all, politicians and senior officials felt that the labour militancy of the 1920s was simply the harbinger of ‘red’ revolt, and preparations were made accordingly. Following the trade unions’ defeat in the general strike of 1926 fears of revolution subsided, although the War Office continued to revise the plans it had made in the early 1920s. Throughout the entire inter-war period, nevertheless, the general staff displayed an extreme reluctance to commit the army to internal security duties. Almost without exception, it seems, military men shared Lord Ironside’s opinion that ‘for a soldier there is no more distasteful duty than that of aiding the Civil Power’.