ABSTRACT
For many in the late 1920s it seemed obvious that British industry must re-organise or be re-organised in order to revive, and this was supported by much of the material presented to, and reproduced in official form by, the Balfour Committee. The Government had intervened in new ways after the First World War exposed some of the shortcomings of British industry. In sum, whilst by the 1930s there had been a decisive break with the political economy of Victorian liberalism in the sphere of international economic policy (the gold standard and free trade), confidence in the capacity of private industry to deliver efficient production and employment. Economic policy in the 1920s was dominated by this desire to restore ‘normalcy’, a factor which underlay the return to gold in 1925. Even more significant for the development of policy on industry was the widespread if inchoate and often inconsistent enthusiasm for ‘rationalisation’ in industry.
