A Survey of Progressive Economic Thought in Interwar Britain

Strengths and Gaps

Abstract

This paper looks at debates on the opposition to British government economic policy in the interwar years. It concentrates on the views emanating from the leading representatives of British industry and commerce and notes in the historiography a tendency to contrast a stream of progressive ideas in the 1920s with a more conservative approach in the following decade. This paper suggests that the contrasts may have been overstated and focuses on preliminary investigations into the series of lectures organised by B. Seebohm Rowntree throughout the interwar period. The article suggests that there were many continuities in business thought during the period, and that the main contribution of business to the ‘planning debates’ of both interwar decades was in the consolidation and systematisation of domestic and American ideas on management, especially the management of labour. The tendency to view participation of business leaders as contributions to economic policy, narrowly defined, is potentially misleading but our view of the scale of the planning debate of the 1930s needs to be revised to include significant changes in management theory.