Context: 1912 vs 1945 & Priestley's Socialism
Why 1912 and 1945 Both Matter
An Inspector Calls was written by J.B. Priestley in 1945, during the final weeks of the Second World War, but it is set in 1912 — two years before the outbreak of the First World War. This dual time-frame is the engine of the entire play. Priestley deliberately chose 1912 because it was the peak of Edwardian complacency: the upper and middle classes were confident that their wealth, empire, and social position would last forever. By setting the play here, Priestley allows his 1945 audience — who had lived through two devastating world wars, mass unemployment, and the Blitz — to see exactly how wrong the Birlings were.
Arthur Birling's speech in Act 1 is the clearest example. He declares with total confidence that the Titanic is "unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable" and that war is impossible: "the Germans don't want war. Nobody wants war." A 1945 audience would recognise these statements as catastrophically wrong. The Titanic sank in April 1912. The First World War began in 1914. The Second World War followed in 1939. Priestley uses dramatic irony to demolish Birling's authority before the Inspector even arrives.
Birling's predictions — the Titanic is "unsinkable," war won't happen, and "we're in for a time of steadily increasing prosperity" — are all proven catastrophically wrong by history. Priestley uses dramatic irony to show that capitalist self-confidence is dangerously delusional.
Priestley's Socialism and the 1945 Context
J.B. Priestley was a committed socialist. During the war, he gave a series of hugely popular BBC radio broadcasts called Postscripts (1940), heard by up to 16 million listeners, in which he argued that the sacrifices of ordinary people during the war demanded a fairer society afterwards. His broadcasts were so politically powerful that the government eventually took them off the air. Priestley believed that the old Edwardian world of rigid class division and selfish capitalism must never return.
An Inspector Calls premiered in Moscow in 1945 and reached London in 1946 — the same year the Labour government began building the Welfare State. The NHS was created in 1948. Priestley's play was therefore not just a piece of entertainment: it was a political argument. The Inspector's final speech — "We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other" — is a direct appeal to the audience to support collective responsibility and reject the selfish individualism represented by Arthur and Sybil Birling.
Priestley's BBC Postscripts broadcasts (June–October 1940) reached millions during the darkest months of the Blitz. He spoke about ordinary people — shopkeepers, soldiers, factory workers — and argued that their courage and sacrifice entitled them to a better post-war Britain. Churchill reportedly grew uncomfortable with the broadcasts because Priestley was effectively making a case for socialism to a mass audience. When the broadcasts were cancelled, it only increased Priestley's reputation as a voice for social justice.
This context matters because the Inspector functions as Priestley's mouthpiece on stage. When he says "We don't live alone. We are members of one body," he is delivering the same message Priestley gave to millions over the radio: that selfishness and class division caused the wars, and only collective responsibility can prevent them happening again.
Edwardian England: Class, Gender, and Power
The play is set in Brumley, a fictional industrial city in the North Midlands. The Birlings are a prosperous upper-middle-class family: Arthur is a factory owner and former Lord Mayor who is desperate for a knighthood. The Edwardian class system was rigidly hierarchical. At the top were the landed aristocracy (represented by Gerald Croft's family — Birling says Lady Croft comes from "an old county family — landed people"). Below them were industrial capitalists like Birling. Below them were the working class — people like Eva Smith, who had no legal protection, no welfare safety net, and no vote (women did not gain full suffrage until 1928).
Eva exists at the intersection of class and gender oppression. As a working-class woman, she is entirely dependent on the goodwill of her employers and social superiors — and every Birling systematically removes that goodwill. Priestley shows that the class system is not just unfair but actively lethal: Eva's death is the direct consequence of how the privileged treat those beneath them.
By setting the play in 1912, Priestley achieves several things simultaneously. First, the dramatic irony — Birling's wrong predictions — makes the audience distrust his capitalist worldview from the start. Second, the 1945 audience can see themselves reflected: they have lived through the consequences of the selfishness Priestley depicts. Third, the setting creates a sense of urgency: if Britain returns to pre-war attitudes ("a man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own"), the same disasters will repeat. The cyclical ending of the play — a real Inspector is on the way — reinforces this warning. History repeats when people refuse to learn.
The Inspector's warning about "fire and blood and anguish" is both a reference to the two World Wars that followed 1912 and a threat about what will happen if the 1945 audience makes the same mistakes. Priestley is saying: you have been given a second chance. Don't waste it.
Priestley's dual time-frame (written 1945, set 1912) creates dramatic irony, discredits Birling's capitalism, and warns the post-war audience that history will repeat if they don't choose collective responsibility. The play is a political argument for the Welfare State.
The Play's First Performance
An Inspector Calls premiered at the Kamerny Theatre in Moscow in May 1945, before its London debut at the New Theatre on 1 October 1946. The Moscow premiere is significant: the Soviet Union was a socialist state, and Priestley's themes of collective responsibility and the critique of capitalism aligned with Soviet ideology. However, Priestley was not a communist — he was a democratic socialist who believed in reform within a capitalist system, not revolution. The play's message is that individuals must take personal moral responsibility, not that the state should control everything.
Stephen Daldry's landmark 1992 National Theatre production became the definitive modern staging, running for over 25 years in London's West End. Daldry set the Birling house on stilts above a bombed-out street — visually showing how the privileged live above and apart from the working class, and how their world eventually collapses. This staging reinforces Priestley's argument that ignoring social responsibility leads to destruction.