Eighty Years Ago This Week

      22,000 servicemen and women and 500 military vehicles participated in the London Victory day parade which stretched for four miles.  There was a fly-past of 300 aircraft. Practically Britain's allies except for the Soviet Union were represented although the Polish involvement was held at a minimal level to appease Stalin.  The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem fled from France where he was being  kept under  surveillance. He was a leading opponent of Jewish settlement in Palestine and had been based in Germany throughout the war where he was highly paid to broadcast propaganda. He gave support to the Nazi recruitment of Muslims into the SS. He met Himmler and encouraged the killing of Jews. The British had requested his extradition from France as he was notionally a British subject but France had refused. He left France with the connivance of the government which hoped to curry favour with Arab nations. The young King of Thailand was shot dead. To this da...

    The referendum on the  Italian m onarchy gave a clear vote in favour of a republic: 54.3% to 45.7%. The poll was skewed regionally with monarchist support concentrated in the poorer South with scattered support in the dynasty's home in Savoy. The abdication of Victor Emmanuel III, who was heavily tainted by association with Mussolini,  had failed to save the House of Savoy. Umberto II left the country for exile after a few days, having reigned for only 34 days. France held an election for the legislative assembly following the rejection of a proposed new constitution. The new assembly was set to draft a new constitution. The centre right MRP party won the largest share of the vote with 28% displacing the Communists whose vote shrank to 26%. The socialist SFIO vote dropped to 21% so the parties of the left could no longer command a majority in the assembly. The MRP had campaigned against  the new constitution, claiming that the the abolition of the Senate to ...

  Britain granted i ndependence to Jordan (then called Transjordan) as an absolute monarchy. Since 1921 it had been an emirate carved out of the Ottoman empire under British "protection " recognised by the League of Nations. The new king Abdullah was one of four sons of Hussain Bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, the leader of the "Arab Revolt" against the Ottomans supported by the British in the First World War. Abdullah extended this loyalty into the Second World War. His grandson still rules as king. A nationwide strike in US coal mines led the President to bring them under state control so as to force a return to work. A similar move on strike-hit railways was averted with only minutes to spare when the rail unions accepted a government deal. Communist Klement Gottwald was appointed prime minister of Czechoslovakia. His party had emerged as the largest in the country with 38% of the vote in national elections held in March. He had supported vigorously the highly popular e...

  The British government announced that it was to introduce a system of financial support covering both tuition and maintenance costs for university students from families of modest means who had won scholarships. The level of the support was not disclosed but it would be available in full to students whose families earned less than £360 a year with diminishing amounts up to family income of £1500. Thus began the generous system from which generations of students benefited.  The bill nationalising the coal industry was finally passed after a prolonged and sometimes acrimonious debate. Opposition criticism focused on the proposed structured for controlling the industry once in state hands. Having an appointed board in charge was described as state capitalism; its members would be, at best, trustees, at worst, bureaucrats. Unspoken was the reality that coal mining would still be pursued as a business with the profits (such as they were) going to the workers rather than individua...

    Victor Emmanuel III abdicated as King of Italy in favour of his son Umberto II. A referendum had already been called on whether to make Italy a republic and the abdication offered the only way in which the monarchy might have been saved.  The removal of Mussolini and the armistice in 1943 had been designed more to protect Victor Emmanuel on the throne, but Umberto who had exerised most of his father's powers since 1944, had achieved little to rescue the monarchy from its tarnished image.  King since 1900, Victor Emmanuel  had appointed Mussolini and actively supported Fascism, making no attempt to restrain Mussolini's destructive policies. He had become Emperor of Ethiopia and King of Albania when Italy invaded these countries in 1935 and 1939 respectively. Senator McFarland's amendment to the bill approving to the US loan to Britain was defeated in the Senate by 45 votes to 40. McFarland had sought to make the loan conditional of the US being granted...

      A plan was announced for the  national trunk road network in Britain. The programme had started in 1937 when trunk roads were established as the responsibility of national government outwith local authority control but the onset of war meant that very few new roads were built. Britain had been a notable laggard in developing a road network suitable for motor vehicles. The scheme was subject to economic constraints with shortage of labour being mentioned in particular. Britain's desperate financial straits were an even greater impediment. In an apparently striking retreat from colonialism the British government announced the withdrawal of all its armed forces from Egypt. However a base was to be maintained to protect regional stability. The status of the Suez Canal was the chief preoccupation and what was to become the "Canal Zone" became a major bone of contention.   The proposed constitution for the new Republic in France was rejected in a national re...