1921: If Winter Comes — a ‘Masculine’ Novel

Abstract

1921 was an inauspicious year. The boom that followed peace came to an abrupt end. Trade slumped. Wage rates fell and a succession of stoppages and strikes swept the country. On 1 April the long-threatened miners’ strike broke out. A strike order to the railway and transport workers for midnight on 12 April was then postponed, and three days later the Triple Alliance called off the strike. 15 April, ‘Black Friday’, became a symbolic landmark in the social history of the decade. There was talk of an averted revolution. In June, unemployment reached 2,171,888, an ominous figure, not to be passed until the Great Depression.