The Politics of State Coercion in Inter-War Britain: The Mines Department of the Board of Trade, 1920–1942

One of the more remarkable features of the Second World War was the emergence of a ‘reforming consensus’ within the two major political parties in Britain. As Addison has pointed out ‘a massive new ground emerged in British polities’ and Conservative and Labour leaders alike openly began to espouse the case for ‘“pragmatic reform” in a mixed economy’. By 1945 the emphasis on social equity in ‘the people's war’ and the removal of lingering doubts as to Labour's fitness to govern, had combined with collective memories of the inter-war period, with its mass unemployment and social distress, to produce a new ‘left of centre’ consensus on the issue of postwar reconstruction. This applied not just to the maintenance of full employment and the inauguration of a ‘welfare state’, but also to the reorganization of certain industries. In this latter category by far the most appropriate illustration of the basic measure of agreement between the parties is provided by their approach to the reconstruction of the coalmining industry. As with other industrial sectors the Labour party was irrevocably committed to nationalization as the key element in its reconstruction programme. In this instance there was, of course, a major difference with the Conservatives who wished to retain, as far as possible, the basic principles of private enterprise. But divorced from the rhetoric of laissez-faire capitalism, what did this mean in practical terms? It is worth noting that the successive modifications during the thirties to the statutory cartel system instituted under part I of the Coal Mines Act, 1930, had been made at the instigation of a Conservative-dominated National government and had meant that the freedom of action of the individual colliery undertaking was severely circumscribed by 1939.