The government's aim was tranquillity at home and abroad, and to remedy the dislocation caused by the war through a return to the prewar world.Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), p. 196.A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (1965), pp. 221-224. The 1925 Locarno Treaties, an attempt at reconciliation between France and Germany, were hailed as the harbinger of a new era of peace and it was hoped that the return to the gold standard (at the prewar parity) in 1925 would lead to the restoration of prewar conditions and prosperity.Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), p. 199.A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (1965), pp. 223-224. The government aimed to reduce class conflict and ameliorate social conditions; when in March 1925 a Conservative backbencher introduced a bill to abolish the trade unions' political levy, Baldwin killed the bill with a speech in which he pleaded: "Give peace in our time, O Lord".A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (1965), pp. 227, 236.Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), pp. 289-290. The government also expanded social services such as unemployment benefit and old age pensions.A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (1965), pp. 236-237.Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), pp. 338-339. However, the government failed to avert the 1926 general strike, which lasted for nine days in May. The general strike marked the end a period of industrial strife: after the strike the number of days lost to strikes fell and trade union membership declined.A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (1965), p. 248.Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (1955), pp. 284, 331.
