ABSTRACT
In 1932 Sunderland was in the grip of the inter-war depression. In the inter-war years, British industrial promotion was largely concerned with regeneration, the search for replacement industries in areas of depression. As the Sunderland application hinted, 'city' was a title which it was hoped would raise it in the international pecking order. This shift from city status as a confirmation of civic importance to a tool of civic promotion was relatively slow to take off. What Sunderland's unsuccessful application of 1932 reflected more than anything else of the inter-war years was the conflicting priorities of a Home Office trying to limit promotion to the really worthy, and a rising tide of applicants who came to view city status as a means of promoting their towns in a national and increasingly international context. Sunderland missed out in 1932, and Swansea unsuccessfully renewed its case in 1935 by asking for city status as a Silver Jubilee honour.
