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A history of the
British Union (1933-1938) -1-


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Taken from The British Republic (1933-1938), by Julio Aróstegui; Crítica. 2008


Seventy five years after the proclamation of the British Union the debate over its history, its tragic end and how the republican experience shaped the present day United Kingdom is still open. In fact, it has been invigorated by a new wave of studies about the British Union. This new trend tries to offer alternative explanations about how the British Union was born and how it ended.

The British Union should have recovered and reinforced the British parlamentarian tradition and, at the same time, it should have modernized it. After the end of the Monarchy, damaged by the defeat in the Great War (1914-1921) and fatally wounded by its support to the coup d'etat of 1925, there was a general hope among the British people, specially among the middle class and the workers, who supported in mass the new regime. A reformist project, carefully thought and nurtured during the long years of the Great War and then during the Dictatorship, hoped to drastically change not only the British society, but also the Empire in a fully democratic way.

With this background, the British Union should have entered the pages of history as a modern and reformist regime, which, in part, it was. In fact, during the two first years of its short life, the British Union paved the way to most of the reforms and transformations that would be turned into reality during the recovery of democracy at the beginning of the 1980s. However, it was not to be. The "Red Scare"caused by the Second French Revolution of 1921 and the traumatic experience in the British Isles in 1925 were to prove a daunting obstacle that the British Union would be unable to overcome. Against it was also the foolishnes of those who wanted to overcome the Republican boundaries by rushing its reforms and threatened to cause a revolution.


-1- I'm using as a background for this TL the Kaiserreich verse, with all its good and bad points, that I will make even worse, I'm sure...
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