Times of change and strife are often the ones that stand out in history and the years between the wars were certainly filled with both. The men who came back from the Great War had been promised a land for for heroes, but what they got was very different. The war left behind both economic and political turmoil, and what peace there was, was uneasy. There were still wars being waged, the Turkish War of Independence, the Polish Soviet War, the Irish War of Independence, the Rif War, problems between the Italians and Libya, the Americans and Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic to mention just a few. Politically too, the world was changing, with the slow rise of both communism and fascism. America may have experienced a period of financial boom in the early 1920’s but Britain faced an unemployment crisis more persistent and severe than any since industrialisation. The ordinary, working-class men who had come back from the war faced terrible hardships. In Southampton, the men of the docks were some of the worst affected.
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