Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Industrialisation and war, 1776–1815
- Part II Assimilating the industrial revolution, 1815–51
- Part III The Victorian apogee, 1851–74
- Part IV Industrial maturity and the ending of pre-eminence, 1874–1914
- Part V Total war and troubled peace, 1914–39
- 14 The policy imperatives of war; the reconstruction debate and the dismantlement of control, 1914–21
- 15 The strains of nationalism: Wales, Scotland and Ireland
- 16 The advent of peacetime macro-economic management
- 17 Micro-management: the restructuring of industry and agriculture; the regions
- 18 Micro-management: the public sector
- 19 The business response
- 20 The political and industrial attitudes of labour
- 21 The welfare share: its elements and adequacy
- 22 Public policy by 1939
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - Micro-management: the restructuring of industry and agriculture; the regions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Industrialisation and war, 1776–1815
- Part II Assimilating the industrial revolution, 1815–51
- Part III The Victorian apogee, 1851–74
- Part IV Industrial maturity and the ending of pre-eminence, 1874–1914
- Part V Total war and troubled peace, 1914–39
- 14 The policy imperatives of war; the reconstruction debate and the dismantlement of control, 1914–21
- 15 The strains of nationalism: Wales, Scotland and Ireland
- 16 The advent of peacetime macro-economic management
- 17 Micro-management: the restructuring of industry and agriculture; the regions
- 18 Micro-management: the public sector
- 19 The business response
- 20 The political and industrial attitudes of labour
- 21 The welfare share: its elements and adequacy
- 22 Public policy by 1939
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The private and the public sectors
Micro-management, involving manipulation of units within the overall economy, chiefly its component industries, had an ancient pedigree from the mercantilist days of the seventeenth century. But micro-initiatives had largely been abandoned by the mid-nineteenth century. They had begun to revive from the 1880s, not under state initiative, however, but under the local authorities. The war compelled the state into the heart of industry, making it a regulator on a grand scale. In the peace the British state, in spite of its eager dismantlement of the wartime controls, was drawn into an attempt to restructure major parts of industry and agriculture. It also took its first effective steps in the development of regional policy and spatial planning.
Nationalisation versus rationalisation
There were available to the state two general ways of restructuring the older industries: nationalisation on the one hand, and rationalisation (together with market regulation) on the other. Nationalisation meant assuming outright ownership, and with it the permanent decision-taking role within the industry. It required the formation of new administrative structures for industries, of a more or less centralised nature. Moreover the relationship between such structures and the state and the trade unions had to be defined. Rationalisation, on the other hand, meant setting the conditions for self-reorganisation within each industry, such that surplus capacity could be cut out and efficiency improved, with or without arrangements for the control of markets.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- British and Public Policy 1776–1939An Economic, Social and Political Perspective, pp. 312 - 330Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1983