In the first scholarly examination of education in current affairs and citizenship within the British Army in the twentieth century, S.P. MacKenzie charts the development of army education from its beginnings in the First World War, to its heyday in the Second World War, and analyses its final demise in the early 1950s.
Based on extensive research, the book analyses the thinking which lay behind the establishment of army education schemes, their function and their effects. In particular, it explores the controversial question of the part played in Labour's 1945 election victory by the rank and file of the British Army, often asserted to have absorbed the left-wing attitudes of the Army Bureau of Current Affairs and the Army Educational Corps. This is a comprehensive and rigorous study, which makes an important contribution to the history of the modern British Army.
Morale and the origins of current affairs and citizenship work, 1917-1919; the effects of army education, 1917-1919; the rise and fall of the Army Educational Corps, 1919-1939; civilian and military initiatives, 1939-1941; the coming of ABCA, 1941-1942; British way and purpose, 1942-1943; further conflicts and developments in army education, 1943-1945; army education and the 1945 general election; the decline of current affairs and citizenship education, 1945-1950.
