ABSTRACT
The fair trade movement in Britain was a reaction against the protectionism of European industrial powers, and a perceived diminution in Britain's 'Great Power' status. The movement attempted to arrest this decline, by organizing the economic base of Britain on a new footing, and reorienting British commercial policy away from unilateral free trade. Fair trade was an important influence in Joseph Chamberlain's later tariff reform campaign, not least in challenging Chamberlain's personal assumptions as to the validity of free trade. The failure of fair trade was not inevitable. The fair trade movement was important, not least in demonstrating that free trade was not quite as secure as its protagonists claimed. A British protectionist tradition clearly survived, and proved adaptable to modern conditions of an expanding industrial economy. The failure of fair trade largely emanated from an unjustified association with the discredited agricultural protectionism of the 1840s.
