Context: Priestley, 1912 and 1945
Two Key Dates
An Inspector Calls was written in 1945 but set in 1912. Understanding both dates is essential to understanding the play. Priestley deliberately chose a setting two years before the First World War so that the audience — who had just lived through the Second World War — would recognise the dramatic irony in the characters’ confident predictions about the future.
Mr Birling predicts that war is impossible and that the Titanic is “unsinkable.” The 1945 audience knew both predictions were catastrophically wrong. Priestley uses this dramatic irony to undermine everything Birling represents: capitalism, self-interest and complacency.
1912: The Edwardian World
In 1912, Britain was divided by rigid class boundaries. The wealthy upper and middle classes enjoyed enormous privilege, while the working class — especially women — had few rights and little protection. There was no welfare state, no National Health Service and no unemployment benefit.
Women could not vote. Working-class women like Eva Smith had almost no power — they depended on employers for survival and had no legal recourse if they were sacked or exploited. The suffragette movement was growing but had not yet achieved change.
The Birling family represents the prosperous industrial middle class. Arthur Birling is a factory owner and former mayor. His wife Sybil comes from a higher social class and looks down on her husband’s origins. Gerald Croft’s family are old money — landed aristocracy. This social hierarchy matters because it determines how each character treats Eva Smith.
1945: The Post-War World
By 1945, Britain had endured two devastating world wars. Millions had died. The old class certainties had been shattered. People across all classes had sacrificed together, and there was a powerful mood for social change.
In the 1945 general election, the Labour Party won a landslide victory over Winston Churchill’s Conservatives. The new government created the welfare state: the NHS, national insurance, council housing and free secondary education. Priestley’s play directly supported this vision of a more equal, caring society.
Priestley was a committed socialist. He believed that people had a collective responsibility to look after one another. The Inspector is his mouthpiece — his final speech (“We are members of one body”) directly echoes Priestley’s own political beliefs.
J.B. Priestley’s Life and Beliefs
John Boynton Priestley was born in Bradford in 1894 into a middle-class family. He fought in the First World War and was badly injured. This experience shaped his political views: he saw how working-class soldiers sacrificed their lives while the wealthy profited from the war.
During the Second World War, Priestley made hugely popular radio broadcasts (“Postscripts”) calling for social justice and equality. He was so influential that the government took him off the air, fearing he was too left-wing. Priestley was a founder of the socialist Common Wealth Party and campaigned for nuclear disarmament.
Priestley was fascinated by theories of time. He wrote several “time plays” exploring the idea that past, present and future are connected. In An Inspector Calls, the Inspector seems to exist outside normal time — he knows about events before they happen and arrives before Eva Smith has actually died. This supernatural element reinforces Priestley’s message: if we do not learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
An Inspector Calls follows the conventions of a well-made play: it takes place in a single room on a single evening, building towards a climactic revelation. But Priestley subverts the form by leaving the ending ambiguous — the final phone call restarting the cycle of investigation suggests the characters (and society) have not learned their lesson.