The political economy of state controls in the transition from war to peace, c.1945-55

This thesis uses a detailed study of industrial economic controls to examine the broader relationship between popular politics and economic policy in Britain between 1945 and 1955. Combining the personal insights of administrators with a high level intellectual history, it begins by analysing the relationship between controls and attempts to manage the economy during and after the Second World War. After tracing these developments in administration and usage, it will demonstrate that the ambiguous nature of individual controls allowed for the system as a whole to be used as a symbolic device within an intensely political debate. Indeed, far from raising entirely technical questions, it will show that controls were able to reduce complex economics into a simple form and provide a tangible link between everyday economics and potent philosophical critiques. They were, in this sense, able to symbolise both administrative inefficiencies and a rhetorical ‘choice between two ways of life’. Nevertheless, acknowledging the inherent artificiality of a debate that had imbued individual controls with an undue sense of significance, it will be argued that this discussion testified to certain shared ‘high level’ assumptions and did little to clarify confusions within the system. Thus, although the debates could be politically advantageous in the short term, it will be shown that they made little difference to the actual mechanisms of control and served to entrench barriers between the public and policy formers to which all were ostensibly dedicated to overcome.