Eighty years ago this week Czechoslovakia begins to expel the Sudetens

 

The Czechoslovak government began the expulsion of German speakers in line with a policy established by the government-in-exile in London during the war and supported by the then British government. The Sudetens were concentrated around the country's borders with Germany and Austria. Hitler's takeover of the Sudetenland under the Munich agreement of 1938 was a major step on the road to war and the move aimed to remove the risk of some future recurrence. The plan had been approved at the Potsdam Conference. Ultimately over 2m people would be forcibly resettled in US and Soviet zones of occupied Germany. 

 The first resolution passed by the UN general assembly established the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission to "to deal with the problems raised by the discovery of atomic energy." In particular it was to find ways of ensuring that atomic energy was to be used solely for peaceful purposes and to eliminate nuclear weapons from "national arsenals". The implicit aspiration for nuclear weapons (if they were to exist) to be under UN control echoed the various and futile attempts by the League of Nations to regulate bombing aircraft.

The British Labour government presented a bill to repeal entirely the 1927 law brought in in the wake of the General Strike of the previous year. Union members would again be forced to make an active decision to opt out of the political levy. It would be left open as to whether another general strike  would be legal or whether civil servants would be permitted to join unions affiliated to political parties.