ABSTRACT
The fortunes of the British economy in the interwar period presents enormous contradictions. Regeneration of industries sits alongside the collapse of staple industries, rising employment in new industries alongside large-scale unemployment, state intervention alongside the reapplication of laissez-faire, and the rise of the modern world of motor cars and radio alongside overcrowded houses with outside toilets. Wartime emphasis on cereals, backed up by government subsidy and technical support, became a permanent policy in peacetime, and the government now regarded it as its duty to ensure the fertility of the land and maintain farms and farm buildings. Economic stability became the watchword, and the Ministry of Agriculture created a powerful administrative system to provide a wide variety of subsidies, incentives and directions to farmers by pumping large amounts of money into the rural economy. Even rural labourers wages had risen sharply since 1914, controlled by government wages boards which fostered stability and assured incomes.
