Why Britons rejected fascism in the 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s were golden decades for extremism. Across Europe, dictators including Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini goose stepped their way into power. Yet in Britain it was a different story. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizzen for this episode of a History Extra podcast, Alwyn Turner explains why, with a little help from the football pools, the Women's Institute and the Lambeth Walk, parliamentary democracy reigned supreme. We're going to talk today about interwar Britain.

More specifically, why Britain didn't succumb to dictatorship and extremism in the 1920s and 30s? Now, before looking at the situation in Britain in more detail, I wonder if we could set the scene for our listeners by looking first at what was going on across continental Europe. We all know about the situation in Germany and Italy, but what strides was authoritarianism making elsewhere? Where in Europe? Perhaps in places we'd less expect it to?

Well, the original concerns in the 1920s was Italy first, but also there were problems in Spain. This is long before the Spanish Civil War. There was the rise of Ataturk in Turkey. There are whole swathe of countries right across continental Europe that seemed to be drifting into some form of dictatorship or authoritarian rule, and people concerned that democracy was a fragile flower that was possibly wilting.

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