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Published by EH.NET (June 2004)
Astrid Ringe, Neil Rollings and Roger Middleton, _Economic Policy
under the Conservatives, 1951-64: A Guide to Documents in the
National Archives of the UK_. London: Institute of Historical
Research and the National Archives, 2004. xxii + 325 pp. £25
(paper), ISBN: 1-871348-93-5.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Alan Booth, Department of History, University
of Exeter.
Over the past decade the University of Bristol has developed great
expertise in producing handbooks to twentieth century records in
economic and social policy at what used to be called the British
Public Records Office [hereafter PRO]. Astrid Ringe was Research
Fellow and Roger Middleton is Reader in History at the University.
Neil Rollings, who was Research Fellow for a previous handbook, is
now at the University of Glasgow. The whole project is led by Rodney
Lowe, Professor of Contemporary History at Bristol and Cabinet
Office historian and the series now numbers four volumes covering
economic and social policy from 1939 to 1964. The handbooks aim to
make researchers better informed of the range of materials held at
the PRO and better equipped to tackle the records on their research
visits.
Previous handbooks have adopted the same organization as the PRO's
own Guide on a department by department basis. That job is now done
by the PRO on-line catalogue, or at least could be done by
researchers with experience of using the on-line catalogue and a
thesaurus. The growing use of the on-line catalogue implied a rather
different way of organizing handbooks for researchers. This volume
and its companion on social welfare policy in the period 1951-64 are
accordingly organized initially by policy rather than by department.
It is divided into four parts. The first provides an introduction to
the economic trends of the period and the basic principles of
researching government policy using the PRO records. The second
deals with external economic policy, divided into separate
discussions of trade and external finance. The third section, the
first dealing with domestic policy, is concerned with macroeconomic
management, again divided into two, with separate chapters on
monetary and budgetary policies. The final part deals with
"supply-side policy," with a chapter each on labor market policies
and capital and product market policies. Thus there are seven
chapters in all, six of them dealing with the records.
Within each of these chapters, there is an introduction to the main
policy issues followed by a survey of the administration of the
policy during the period. The core of each chapter is a series of
thumbnail sketches of each aspect of policy and a brief description
of the relevant records. Thus the chapter dealing with foreign trade
considers first British policy towards GATT, proceeds via trade
policy with the dollar area to the policy discussions over trade
with Europe, trade policy with the Commonwealth countries (which
takes in more general questions of development aid) and finishes
with a survey of bilateral trade deals. The chapter on finance and
external monetary policy is organized in a very similar way, with
introductory discussions of Britain's place in the Bretton Woods
system and an extremely useful survey of the administration of
external financial policy followed by thumbnail sketches of sterling
area policy, relations with the IMF, financial relations with the
dollar area, policy towards the European Payments Union and the
European Monetary Agreement and the financing of overseas
development. Similarly, Chapter 4 on monetary policy covers the
evolution of policy before the establishment of the Radcliffe
Committee (the Committee on the Working of the Monetary System,
perhaps the single most important assessment of policy during the
Conservative years), the impact of Radcliffe, and finally debt
management policy. Chapter 5 on demand management moves from the
policy process to short- and long-term management of public spending
and thence to taxation. The only noteworthy point in the other
chapters is the inclusion of regional policy under the labor market
rather than on product and capital markets, which reflect the way
the policy operated in the period.
Much depends on the quality of the thumbnail sketches, which vary
significantly in sophistication and length. In the space available,
the complexity of the policy process is impossible to convey, but
some sections work much more easily than others. Those on external
policy are extremely informative and suggestive, those on labor and
product/capital market policies much more limited. The précis of
macro-management work better as brief, limited essays on policy
rather than as a signpost to issues and records. The sections
guiding researchers to records are restricted to PRO papers. This is
a trite comment about a PRO handbook, but the authors suggest that
the formal organization of government, with decisions made in
Cabinet and implemented in departments, and overall financial control
vested in the Treasury, is problematic for the 1950s and 1960s.
Policy formulation and implementation depended also on more diffuse
policy networks embracing individuals and groups from a wide range
of public and private organizations as well as politicians and civil
servants. The authors claim that the hollowing out of the British
state, hitherto associated with Thatcherism in the 1980s, was indeed
evident under this earlier generation of Conservative leaders. Any
reader expecting references not only to PRO documents but to
archives of other organizations and individuals -- the volume claims
to be a guide to records in the National Archives, comprising those
under the control of the Historical Manuscripts Commission as well
as at the PRO -- will be frustrated. The authors give only the
broadest possible indications of other archival deposits. The
thumbnail sketches of policy are organized as if conforming to the
traditional view of policy-making, with both policy and record
descriptions beginning with Cabinet, followed by the Treasury and
ending with departments. Two of the four appendices reflect this
formal approach. Appendix 2 lists senior civil servants engaged in
economic policy, but makes no mention of significant others in
policy networks, apart from a couple of "outside" economists.
Appendix 4 lists the personnel and terms of reference of all the
important Cabinet committees on economic policy. There could be no
deeper genuflection to the formal approach to economic policy making
than a long list of Cabinet committees. My own preference would have
been to cut at least Appendix 4 and use the space for a much more
thorough and useful index. The volume is very helpfully organized
for those wishing to research a conventional policy, identifiably
under the control of a single department. But those interested in
more diverse projects (government policies on productivity or
prices, for example) would be forced to rely either on the wholly
inadequate index or be forced back to the PRO on-line index with all
its quirks. This is less the fault of the authors, who have clearly
labored massively on this volume, but a lack of imagination by the
publisher. It cries out for an electronic format to enable fast and
effective searches.
In short, this is an extremely useful guide for new postgraduates
about to embark upon work on conventional policy areas at the PRO.
Those who expect a guide to the economic policy papers in the
British National Archives, as currently defined, might claim that
the volume has been improperly titled. Those who know the recent
work of some of the research team and are keen to investigate policy
networks will hope that the authors might find a less restrictive
format than a PRO handbook to develop this methodology and the
archival strategies that will give it effect.
Alan Booth, Reader in Economic History, University of Exeter is
currently working on British government and automation in the 1950s
and 1960s.
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EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone:
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