Eighty Years Ago This Week

      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...

  The US air force announced the existence of the experimental YB-35 flying wing bomber. It had been designed to bomb Europe from America had Britain fallen with a round trip capability of 10,000 miles. Supposedly it was faster than contemporary fighters. Only pre-production examples were to be built but it opened the era of ever-larger American bombers capable of attacking the Soviet Union. Desperate measures were brought in to address Britain's crippling shortage of wheat. Even before the widely flagged rationing of bread was introduced, the size of a standard loaf was cut to 1 3/4lb from 2lb with no corresponding price cut. It was assumed that this would translate directly  into reduced flour consumption. Beer production was also cut by 10% from prewar level. As the Soviet army withdrew from China after a brief occupation of Manchuria, it gave control of Harbin, the largest city in North East China, to Mao-Zedong's communists. It was to serve as a major centre for the ...

  The French constituent assembly voted through a new constitution for the country. In an almost unique system for a large nation there would only be a single legislative chamber which was intended to obviate (somehow) the ineffectiveness and instability of the Third Republic. As a mark of the break between the two constitutions and in recognition of the fact that Petain's Etat Francais had indeed existed, the new arrangement was dubbed the Fourth Republic. French troops finally withdrew entirely from Syria bringing to an end France's post-Versailles colonial, "mandatory" foray into the region. The date is still celebrated as a de facto day of independence. The British were still locked into their analagous role in Palestine. A joint anglo-american committee of inquiry had examined  the question in the hope that it would produce a settlement acceptable in the US. The committee delivered its report but recommended little more than pious platitude. The only positive con...

The French National Assembly passed a law table by deputy Felix Houphouët-Boigny abolishing the corvee (forced labour obligation on Africans) in France's African colonies. This was not just a step in dismantling colonialism but the removal of a custom that had its roots in the Ancien Regime.  Houphouët-Boigny went on to become President of the Ivory Coast following its independence.  The British Cabinet delegation met Moslem League leader Jinnah. They proposed a federal structure for post-independence India in which Pakistan would have considerable autonomy. At first the League accepted this and it seemed that an amicable solution might be possible. The confrontation between the Chinese Communists and the ruling  Kuomintan forces, which had bubbled under the surface throughout the war with Japan,  got fully underway in Manchuria. Communist forces moved into Changchun the strategic key to the region.

    The British government warned the public that it might be necessary to ration bread because of a poor harvest. Bread had remained off-ration throughout the war although propaganda encouraged people to eat less of it. With much of Europe in a state of near famine North American exports had to be sacrificed. Nonetheless this was a powerful sign that austerity had become more severe during peacetime. At a mass rally of the Moslem League, its leader Jinnah, gave a hard-line speech setting down a marker ahead of the  deliberations of the British Cabinet delegation in India to set a path to independence. He proclaimed that the League would not accept any proposal which derogated from the full sovereignty of Pakistan, then a broad term embracing the whole Muslim community of the sub-continent. He inisted that Pakistan's status would have to be established before talks began. He described the mainly Hindu Congress party as fascist. In practice he was demanding full partition....

  Strikes organized by the Greek communist party KKE strikes had been poorly supported and failed to reverse measures taken against it in the upshot of the civil war, notably the dissolution of the military wing ELAS. The KKE declared that it would not participate in the upcoming elections as the only means to fight "fraud and violence." Its prospects for electoral success were poor; even Royalist parties had come back from the margins. A non-communist coalition government was the most likely outcome. KKE abstention would allow the communists to claim that the government was not democratically legitimate and to continue to seek power by extra-parliamentary means. The USSR had backed away from outright conlict over Iran when it ordered its troops to withdraw but it continued the diplomatic fight. The  UN Security Council was still set to debate the Iranian motion which complained of Soviet behaviour and Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet delegate, attempted to delay the debat...