This organisation was established in 1916 when for the first time in British history, the government introduced conscription for all men. Over 3,000,000 men volunteered to serve in the British Armed Forces during the first two years of the war.
The BSP was formed in 1911. It was not the only Socialist Party in Britain. There was a great deal of factional struggle between it and the Social Democratic Federation, formed by H.M. Hyndman in 1908. The two organisations maintained an uneasy co-existence until 1916 when the Hyndman faction was defeated and the BSP was left to pursue its anti-war policy unhindered.
Both the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente engaged in the negotiation of secret treaties throughout the duration of the war. The majority of these were revealed only after the Russian Revolution when the new Soviet Republic was keen to expose both the duplicity of the Tsarist regime and the nature of the Imperialist Powers.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 propelled the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) away from feminism in favour of patriotism. It suspended its activities on the suffrage in order to focus attention on the war effort, leaving the East London Federation as almost the only active group in the suffrage campaign.
