ABSTRACT
In the 1940s and 1950s Britain’s textile industry was still in its long retreat from the dominant export position it had held in the nineteenth century and up to the First World War. The wool industry maintained its position as a net exporter, but the cotton industry was fighting a strong rearguard action to protect its home market from the invasion of imports. One of the reasons for acceding to Commonwealth preference with the Ottawa agreements of 1932 was that Britain had hoped to retain its position as an exporter of manufactures to the Commonwealth against competition from Japan. But in the 1950s this system began to go into reverse; imports of cotton textiles from India, Pakistan and Hong Kong increased rapidly under the preferential rate of zero. In 1958 imports of cotton cloth into Britain became greater than exports (Briscoe 1971).
