In 1918 the Royal Naval Air Service was absorbed into the newly formed Royal Air Force. The term Fleet Air Arm was adopted in 1924 to describe those units that operated at sea under Admiralty control.
The issue of votes for women re-surfaced after World War I ended. Women had played their part in the factories and the movement started by Mrs. Pankhurst led to a limited voting franchise for women in 1918, and full equality with men in 1928.
Under Ramsay Macdonald's first Labour government in 1924 the working class became unionised, and labour relations deteriorated. The culmination was the General Strike in May 1926, when some 2 million key workers went on strike over plans to reduce wages and lengthen working hours. The General Strike itself failed, but it did make trades unionists realise that they could not lead British workers into a class war, but that the process of winning at the ballot box would give them real power to change the country.
In the 1930's Britain was focused on the continuing high unemployment at home. Then there was the shock of the abdication of Edward VIII who wished to marry an American divorcee in 1936.
Few saw the threat of Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Germany was re-arming at a frightening rate, but Britain had neither the inclination nor the money to follow Hitler's increased spending on armaments.
Eventually Hitler's expansion went too far. The German invasion of Poland led Britain by treaty to declare war on Germany. In 1939 World War II started.
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