Restructuring Traditional Industries In Great Britain Between The Two World Wars

Britain is the first country which took place the Industrial Revolution in the world,since then Britain had kept the industrial superiority for more than one hundred years.The first world war was one of the important turning-points of its industrial development history,with the end of the war,its industry was confronted with many problems,one was to return to the peacetime production order,one was to improve industrial productivity and competitiveness.These problems were generalized into the item "reorganization",it was one of the work which the government had begun to prepare when the war was still,it was also the necessity to solve the industrial problems after the war.However,the reorganization interwar Britain was very difficult,there were many troubles to be solved,and the process was complicated.At last before these problems had been solved,the second world war buried this process.This paper will discuss the issue in the following five parts:The first part will introduce how did the reorganization begin.On the one hand,reorganization was the necessity of the industry itself even before the first world war broke out,on the other hand,the changes and effects which the first world war brought to the industry was the direct reason to reorganize its industry.The second and third parts of this paper were the two phases of the reorganization.The first phase was the "rationalization"reorganization,which was according to Germany’s Ruhr industry’s improvement,it was conducted by Baldwin Government (1924-1929)and McDonald Labour government (1929-1931).The second phase was conducted by the National Government, as the broke out of the Great Depression,industry reorganization was subjected to the crisis’s solution.The fourth part contains the four traditional industries’reorganization. In this part,the details of the reorganization can be known,and some important data could explain the effects of the efforts.The fifth part was the conclusion of this paper.From these aspects,they were historical background,the traditional context of Britain, the policies of the government,we can see that just because of these reasons,the reorganization failed to achieve the expectation effects,though it got some achievements.At last,this paper gives some objective suggestions that may be useful in today’s world.