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. The SDF under Hyndman’s leadership

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. Perhaps the most revealing of the Secret Treaties was the one negotiated between Britain and France, otherwise known as the Sykes Picot agreement. As the map shows this agreement divided the Middle East between the two powers.

There were two revolutions in Russia in 1917 - the second which established the first Socialist State had profound repercussions throughout the world, but especially within Europe. The Russian Revolution inspired similar challenges to state power in Hungary, Germany, Italy and the UK.

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. Christabel returned from her self-imposed exile in Paris to campaign against the 'German Peril'. Both she, her mother and their supporters toured the country drumming up support for the recruitment campaign