W. Keith Hancock and Margaret M. Gowing

“ Yet it would be an exaggeration to say that complete unity of governmental direction had been established over the whole range of British war economy. The interpretations of economic data submitted by the Prime Minister's Statistical Branch, a small group of economists and statisticians organised under Lord Cherwell, frequently made a positive contribution to the formulation of policy on such diverse matters as food and shipping, the production of weapons and the size of the land forces. ”

“ Other countries sometimes had difficulty in understanding why Britain gave to the defence of the Middle East such high priority. But at the other end of the Suez Canal lay the approaches to the Indian Ocean. Apart altogether from the Iranian oil and the other valuable supplies that came from countries bordering this ocean, the security of its communications was held by the Chiefs of Staff to be an essential condition of the British Commonwealth's war effort and, indeed, its very existence. To hold an outer ring of defence was not enough ”

“ Modern wars cannot be fought, nor can their history be understood, without the aid of statistical measurement. In the period now to be recorded,the British Government refined its techniques of measurement and extended their use: in consequence, the historian of British war economy, prone though he may be to grumble about his data, is able to express an increasing part of it in numbers. ”

“ Sabotage and propaganda must be organised in enemy-held territories and Germany must be bombed. It might seem strange that the British, who had made no effective retaliation for Warsaw when they held the advantage of position, should decide to enter the bombing competition when their own cities were overlooked by the enemy's airfields on the Atlantic coast and the enemy's cities were screened by a wide belt of heavily defended territories. ”

“ The Germans would certainly once again attempt what they had so nearly achieved a generation earlier, the starvation and strangulation of Britain by cutting off her overseas supplies. This time the enemy was better based for his attack and could command a greater variety of means. He could launch aircraft as well as U-boats against ships at sea and could bombard British ports from the air. By March 1941, Britain's shipping difficulties had become her greatest danger. ”

“ Indeed, it was inevitable that British cities should for a long time suffer more heavily than German ones. But there was no other way of making the conquering Germans swallow in their own homeland the nasty medicine of war. 'The bombers alone', wrote the Prime Minister in the autumn of 1940, 'provide the means of victory. ”

“ Meanwhile, formal organisation at the centre still left a rather uncertain frontier athwart the territory where the strategical forces merged with the economic ones. In the days of the Production Executive, production problems arising directly from the strategical plans had in practice gone to the Minister of Defence and his experts, i.e. to the Defence Committee (Supply) , and afterwards there remained some uncertainty in the division of the field between the Lord President's Committee and the Ministry of Production. ”

“ The numbers and functions of most of the main civil committees had not been radically changed. Nevertheless, there were important new principles at work. Officials no longer held a high place in the system: for example, the 'two-decker' structure of the committees on food policy and economic policy disappeared by elimination of the sub-committees of officials. More important were the new methods whereby coordination was sought. When Mr. Chamberlain was Prime Minister, much reliance had been placed upon the Treasury's predominance in the system of civil committees. ”

“ In August, while the invasion forces across the Channel were awaiting the issue of the great air battles, the War Cabinet sent reinforcements of armour and artillery to General Wavell's Army of the Nile. In October, when the Battle of Britain had been won and the Germans were switching their bombers to the continuous night bombardment of British cities, it sent heavier reinforcements to Egypt. ”

“ During the first period of the war, the Government had been singularly lacking in appreciation of the overall design of the national economy. Economic and statistical experts outside government service had tried to assess the capacity of the country to meet the increasing demands of war ”

“ The present brief review of the institutions of economic policy-making should therefore close by emphasising once again the pre-eminence gain by the Lord President's Committee in determining, over a wide range, the manner in which specific economic problems were tackled. For the benefit of such ingenious political scientists as may be prone to pore too closely over organisation charts, one word of caution needs to be added. ”

“ Ernest Bevin either as an economic planner without any direct responsibility for controlling the nation's manpower, or as the mere instrument, in his departmental sphere, of a manpower policy laid down by a superior and aloof authority. Policy and executive responsibility could not be so easily divorced. ”

“ We must therefore develop the power to carry an increasing volume of explosives to Germany so as to pulverise the entire structure on which the war effort and economic life of the enemy depends.' Confidence in the ultimate effects of bombing grew and in 1941 the production target was raised, as has been seen, to a front line force of 4,000 heavy and medium bombers. ”

“ The ineffective Ministerial Priority Committee was replaced by a Production Council which was to determine priorities and generally to direct and oversee the production drive: the Council retain the existing sub-committees on priorities for materials, manpower, building and transport, and added to more—one on industrial capacity and another to report on the manpower requirements of production programmes. ”

“ For a nation that was encompassed by so many and great dangers, it was a brave act of faith even to envisage the frontal assault upon Hitler's European fortress and the final overthrow upon Continental battlefields of German military power. ”

“ On the civil side, remedies for the early shortcomings of central direction and control were not so easy to find. It was, nevertheless, very important to find them, and even while the battle was raging in Belgium the Prime Minister made his first experimental reorganisation. He wanted to reduce the number of committees which ministers were expected to attend and also to find some answer to the insistent criticism that there was no central direction of the economic effort. ”

“ These numbers could not be achieved merely by switching human and material resources from the lighter to the heavier types; they necessitated large increases in the total of aircraft production as well as in the establishment of the R.A.F. But the fixed boundary to the expansion of military and industrial manpower and other resources was already coming into sight: if a larger share were devoted to one Service, the requirements of the others would have to be severely scrutinised and possibly curtailed. ”

“ From all over the world came demands for more divisions, more army equipment, more air squadrons, more naval help and sometimes for all four at once. Early in June, the Chiefs of Staff were emphasising that only the most inexpensive of new commitments could be undertaken unless very grave risks were to be imposed upon the whole defensive system. ”

“ To clear the ground, he abolished both the Production Council and the Economic Policy Committee, diverting the Minister without Portfolio, who had been chairman of these two unwieldy and ineffective bodies, to the studies of post-war planning. In place of the Production Council, the Prime Minister instituted a small Production Executive [6] in which the Minister of Labour and National Service and the three ministers responsible for the Service programmes were the chief members. ”

“ There were many functions of economic policy still waiting to be bestowed. They were bestowed upon the Lord President's Committee. It still retained responsibility for 'steering' the business of the other civil committees. In addition, it now had committed to it those 'large questions of economic policy' that formerly had belonged to the Economic Policy Committee. The Prime Minister was anxious about these questions. 'They raise', he said, 'the most difficult and dangerous political issues. ”

“ And all the time it was essential to keep a proper balance between the nation's fighting and working strength. In the autumn of 1940, the Prime Minister had insisted upon a higher proportion of armoured divisions in the Army, no matter what the difficulties might be. ”

“ Victory in that battle, however, won time and as the war became calculable once again in months and years instead of weeks and days, the economic problems that had been listed did indeed become urgent. Upon their quick mastery depended the possibility of final victory in a still distant time. ”