ABSTRACT
The economic plans and policies for war of Asquith’s Liberal government have received scant attention from historians. The little work which has been done on them has tended to be highly critical of the government’s supposed unpreparedness to meet the economic problems the war produced. The government’s failure to make adequate preparations has been attributed to their adherence to laissez-faire principles. It has been argued that these principles made them reluctant to plan for widespread state controls over economic resources and manpower. Writing in 1924 E. M. H. Lloyd, formerly a senior civil servant at the War Office and the Ministry of Food, argued that the Liberals had been too deeply committed to the doctrines of free trade and individualism to make proper economic plans for war or to take decisive action during the first few months of the conflict. ‘It is not surprising [he wrote] that the necessity of State intervention was only gradually admitted by Ministers who had spent the greater part of their political careers in exploding the fallacies of Protectionism on the one hand and Socialism on the other.’ 1
