ABSTRACT
In the controversies about Britain’s imperial economic policy during the nineteen-twenties, we find two battling points of view, those of the laissez-faire free traders and the Imperial Visionaries. The fight was not a party matter: important politicians in all three parties were devoted to free trade and to passivity with respect to the Empire, while the Conservatives and Labourites both included devotees of imperial development, overseas settlement, and a protective and preferential tariff system. Some of the most eminent, such as Lloyd George and Ramsay MacDonald, were not firmly committed to either viewpoint. Even Stanley Baldwin was only loosely settled in the Visionaries’ camp.
