Susan Pedersen writes:

The account begins, appropriately, with the much less catastrophic story historians now tell of British economic performance in those years. This was, it’s true, a period of serious, even dire contraction in some heavy industrial sectors, but it saw expansion in light manufacturing and commerce. The deflationary policies of the 1920s worsened unemployment but they also brought down prices. The worldwide financial crisis hit some regions very hard after the abandonment of the gold standard in 1931, but Britain’s economy recovered more quickly and strongly than did those of its rivals. We remember the battles over unemployment benefits, but for the vast majority who remained in work, purchasing power expanded. And while free trade may have hit heavy industry hard, it kept food prices low. Even the advent of imperial protection in 1932 merely shifted the direction of imports, so that by the late 1930s two-thirds of imported food came from the empire – wheat from Canada, lamb from New Zealand, beef from Australia, sugar from Jamaica.

(LRB 6 November 2008)

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