1918-19 timeline

A battleship drops anchor close to a major British port to overcome a rebellion. Soldiers with fixed bayonets march through the city’s streets under attack from a wild mob throwing missiles. Tanks roll through looted streets to seize civic buildings and a key railway station - and no police in sight. This scene was surprisingly common in Britain in 1918/19 - London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast.

The official events of this dark period are all too familiar, from the outbreak of war and mounting casualties to a long-delayed Armistice Day and the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. Here is rather different list of hushed-up troubles, revealing the level of dissent at that time.

1918
Early 1918 - Guards Machine Gunners at Pirbright stage a mass walkout
The public protests on the steps of Helsinki Cathedral during the Civil War


28 January to 3 February - Strikes break out in Berlin as a result of the general decline in living conditions in Germany due to the total war economy and the Allied blockade
10 February - Soviet Russian Declaration of Peace. Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Leon Trotsky, declares the end of the war unilaterally, although a peace treaty had not yet been signed with the Central Powers
17 April - Irish Conscription. The British government introduce conscription in Ireland to help fill the ranks of the British army. The policy is unpopular and the Irish Nationalists withdraw from Parliament in Westminster in protest
16 May - US Sedition Act imposes severe penalties on anyone found guilty of making or conveying false statements which interfered with the prosecution of the war; wilfully employing disloyal, profane, or abusive language about the US form of government, the flag, the Constitution, or military or naval forces; urging the curtailed production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching, defending, or suggesting any such acts. The law is aimed primarily at Socialists and pacifists
6 July - A Social Revolutionary murders the German ambassador to Russia, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach, in Moscow


15 July - Ration books introduced for butter, margarine, lard, meat, and sugar
1 August - Education Act raises the school leaving age in England and Wales to 14
1 August - British anti-Bolshevik forces occupy Archangel, Russia. On 10 August their commander is told to help White Russians
4 August - Nearly 1,000 Liverpool City Police officers go on strike
26 August - The Turks mount a vigorous attack against the British occupying forces in Baku, beginning. The British evacuate the city on 14 September 
30 August - Fanny Kaplan shoots Lenin. Two bullets entered his body and it was too dangerous to remove them
30 August - 20,000 London policemen go on strike for increased pay and union recognition
27 October to 2 November - 2,200 deaths in London alone from Spanish Flu
31 October - A revolution breaks out in Hungary and Premier Kalman Tisza is assassinated
3 November - Upon hearing news that the German Navy planned one last naval raid, sailors at Kiel stage a mutiny and refuse to go to sea. The mutiny quickly spreads to Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck and engulfs north-western Germany. The revolutionaries form councils of workers and soldiers to take over control of local government
4 November - Wilfred Owen, poet, killed in action, just seven days before the war ended on 11 November


7-8 November - Revolutionary forces, led by Kurt Eisner, an independent Socialist, take over the government in Munich and the King of Bavaria abdicatesThe revolutionaries proclaim the Bavarian Republic and similar outbreaks spread to other German cities
13 November - Shoreham is the scene of a mutiny when men march out of the camp after a major had pushed a man up to his thighs in mud


13 November - General strike in Switzerland 
21 November - The Parliamentary Qualification of Women Act 1918 receives Royal Assent, giving women over 21 the right to stand as a Member of Parliament
14 November - Labour Party leaves the wartime coalition government
9-10 December - men of the Royal Artillery stationed at Le Havre Base burn down several depots in a riot
14 December - General election. It is the first national election in the United Kingdom at which women are entitled to vote or stand, and the male franchise is extended
23 December - The Sex Disqualification Removal Act is passed ensuring women's entry into the professions. For the first time women could become lawyers, vets, and civil servants
28 December - Constance Markievicz, while detained in Holloway Prison, becomes the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons

1919
3 January - news that men were to be sent back to France kindles a mutiny in Folkestone
6 January - more than 1,500 members of the Army Service Corps at Osterley (Isleworth) seize lorries and drive them into Whitehall, and shortly afterwards, 20,000 soldiers strike in Southampton and take over the docks
Mid-January - 500 RAF men of the Wireless Experimental Establishment at the South Camp of the famous 'Battle of Britain' airfield at Biggin Hill protest over appalling conditions


13 January - mutiny on the patrol boat 'Kilbride' at Milford Haven, where the red flag is hoisted
15 January - Spartacist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are captured, tortured and interrogated over their role in the opposition to the German National Assembly. They are later murdered
25 January - engineering and shipyard workers in Belfast go on strike


31 January - Battle of George Square: the army is called in to deal with riots and protests against working conditions in Glasgow
End January - men of the Army Ordnance and Mechanical Transport sections at the Val de Lievre camp mutinyover demobilisation issues and conditions
6-11 February - a general strike in Seattle closes all business
February 1919 - pro-Red Army men of the Yorkshire Regiment refuse to march on Seletskoe in Russia
4-5 March - Kinmel Park Riots:  troops of the Canadian Expeditionary Force awaiting repatriation at Kinmel Camp, Bodelwyddan, in North Wales mutiny. Five men are killed, 28 injured, and 25 convicted of mutiny
1 April - Tramworkers in Trondheim go on strike

19 April - In the Black Sea Mutiny, pro-Communist crews of the battleships Jean Bart and France, protest over the slow rate of their demobilisation and poor rations
31 July - Police strike in London and Liverpool for recognition of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers and more than 2,000 strikers are dismissed
August - Two companies of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Marines refuse duty over demobbing issues
September - October - Railway transport is paralysed for nine days by a strike. Eventually the Government intervened, and secured a settlement.


Captions: Helsinki public protest; Kiel mutiny, Swiss national strike, suffrage poster; Fanny Kaplan, rationing, Leon Trotsky; London police strike; German revolution; strike leader injured at the Battle of  George Square; Trondheim tramworkers' protest; Australian railworkers on strike.
All images courtesy Creative Commons