Eighty Years Ago This Week

  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...

  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.