Mark Connelly 
The Great War, Memory and Ritual [PDF ebook] 
Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916-1939

This detailed case study of a part of London seeks to show how both the survivors and the bereaved sought to come to terms with the losses and implications of the Great War.


The modern idea that the Great War was regarded as a futile waste of life by British society in the disillusioned 1920s and 1930s is here called into question by Mark Connelly. Through a detailed local study of a district containing a wide variety of religious, economic and social variations, he shows how both the survivors and the bereaved came to terms with the losses and implications of the Great War. His study illustrates the ways in which communitiesas diverse as the Irish Catholics of Wapping, the Jews of Stepney and the Presbyterian ex-patriate Scots of Ilford, thanks to the actions of the local agents of authority and influence – clergymen, rabbis, councillors, teachers and employers – shaped the memory of their dead and created a very definite history of the war. Close focus on the planning of, fund-raising for, and erection of war memorials expands to a wider examination of how those memorials became a focus for a continuing need to remember, particularly each year on Armistice Day.


Dr MARK CONNELLY is Reuters Lecturer in Media History, University of Kent.

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Introduction

The City, East London and metropolitan Essex

War shrines: the origins of the war memorials movement

War memorials in places of worship: seeking solace in religion

The alternative bonds of community: war memorials in placesof work, schools, colleges and clubs

Civic war memorials: public pride and private grief

Laying the foundations, 1919-1921

The years rich in imagery, 1922-1929

The years of flux, 1930-1935

Into battle, 1936-1939

The East End Jewish ex-service movement

Epilogue

Bibliography