The New Industries Between the Wars

From the vantage point of the sixties, the experience of the new industries1 in the inter-war years would seem to suggest that in their progress could be discerned the basis of a new industrial future for Britain. Strangely enough, the orthodox view on the subject gives the opposite impression: it argues that the central fact about the new industries’ development in this period was not that they were growing at a rapid rate, but rather that they were growing very slowly in relation to their position in other countries. More surprisingly, this judgement has been unanimous; scarcely anyone, overtly at least, has dissented from it. It is the purpose of this article to examine certain aspects in this judgement and to suggest that the expansion of the new industries between the wars was satisfactory, and consequently it is unnecessary to talk of Britain’s declining entrepreneurship, her slowness to innovate, or failure to exploit export markets to the full to account for non-existent backwardness. It is believed that the attempt to decry the role of these industries is a misunderstanding to be explained partly by the fact that its protagonists have emphasised the wrong issues and made irrelevant comparisons, but largely because they have ignored (or did not have at their disposal) important evidence in recent books and articles which conflicts with their interpretation.