In August 1917 the Lloyd George government created a Ministry of Reconstruction. Under the leadership of the reform-minded Liberal, Christopher Addison, it was charged with overseeing the task of rebuilding 'the national life on a better and more durable foundation' once the Great War was over. It set up a plethora of committees that investigated many aspects of life in Britain, ranging from housing and local government to labour relations and the post-war economy.

The original demobilisation scheme, drawn up in 1917 by the war secretary Lord Derby, proposed that the first men to be released from service should be those who held jobs in key branches of industry. However, as these men were invariably those who had been called up in the latter stages of the war, it meant that men with the longest service records were generally the last to be demobilised. Derby's scheme, as shown in 1918 by the small-scale mutinies at British army camps in Calais and Folkestone and by a demonstration of 3,000 soldiers in central London, was potentially a serious source of unrest.

Thus one of Churchill's first acts, after he was announced as the new war secretary in January 1919, was to introduce a new and more equitable demobilisation scheme. Based on age, length of service and the number of times a man had been wounded in battle, it ensured that the longest-serving soldiers were generally demobilised first. The new system defused an explosive situation.

Demobilisation, nonetheless, remained a difficult undertaking. Many ex-servicemen, promised a 'land fit for heroes' by the Lloyd George government, suffered when unemployment rose rapidly and the ambitious wartime programme of 'reconstruction' was shelved during the 1921 economic slump.

Some problems were caused by demobilised soldiers from the Dominions, who were often left waiting in Britain for long periods until transport could be found to ship them home. A mutiny at a camp for Canadian soldiers in Rhyl in March 1919, for example, was only suppressed after a number of men were killed. A few months later, rampaging Canadian soldiers broke into a police station in Epsom, killing one policeman and causing a serious riot.

Despite these flashpoints, however, demobilisation was a relatively trouble-free process. In November 1918, the British army had numbered almost 3.8 million men. Twelve months later, it had been reduced to slightly less than 900,000 and by 1922 to just over 230,000.

The majority of those who left the armed forces in this period were re-integrated successfully into the British economy. Whereas demobilisation in Germany created a mass of discontented ex-soldiers ready to support extremist paramilitary organisations, ex-servicemen in Britain generally eschewed political radicalism and gravitated towards the British Legion for support and like-minded comradeship. The extensive post-war turmoil that many had anticipated in 1917 never materialised.