Britain and the Origins of the First World War

Within hours of the start of the First World War in August 1914 Sir Edward Grey's radical Liberal and Labour critics had begun to organise themselves into the Union of Democratic Control. They protested that his policy had led Britain into a war which they believed could and should have been avoided. Their wartime activities have been ably documented in M. Swartz, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971). They had little impact on Grey's policies during the rest of his tenure at the Foreign Office, but the debate they began on the reasons why Britain had entered the war is still being carried on today. The Union's wartime propaganda, and the post-war work of former supporters of the Union like the historian G.P. Gooch, who with H. Temperley edited the eleven invaluable volumes of documents, British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898-1914 (HMSO, 1926-1934), rejected Grey's contention that Britain had gone to war to defend Belgian neutrality.