As COVID-19 spreads across the UK and the rest of the world, not only are we facing a scary pandemic, the global economy is also at risk of collapse. In various ways – pandemic, economic collapse and now the threat of dictatorship – the first three months of this decade resemble the start of the 1920s. History almost seems to be repeating itself 100 years later.
The most obvious example is the coronavirus pandemic compared to the infamous ‘Spanish flu’ which lasted from 1918 to 1920 and infected around 500 million people, approximately one third of the world’s population at the time. Just like Coronavirus, it attacked the respiratory system and was transmitted by air. It also hit Spain severely, hence the name.
Although Spain is once again near the top of the casualty list, the development of science and medicine throughout the twentieth century, means we are all in a much better position now than we were then. By 1921, more people had died of influenza than were killed in the First World War.
The economy was under threat in 1920 as it is once again today. As we all know, lock down means shutting down most of the economy except for essential goods and services. On countries such as Italy and Spain which rely on non-essential activity such as tourism, the effects could be catastrophic. There was a similar situation in 1920, when depression hit the USA and other advanced capitalist nations in the aftermath of the Great War. But within a few years the economy bounced back so successfully that the decade became known as the Roaring Twenties.
Let’s hope this can happen to us, too; but without the Wall Street Crash which took a booming world economy by surprise in 1929.
As it was for much of the twentieth century, dictatorship is a threat to democracy once more. It looms largest in Hungary, where a state of emergency has been declared and parliament has handed over all power to the prime minister, ostensibly for the good of the nation. The rise of an authoritarian leader acting in the name of ‘the people’, sounds both alarming and familiar. There are echoes here of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. Hopefully enough people will see where this is heading – enough to stop the history of repression repeating itself in the twenty-first century.
