British economy in the nineteen - fifties

The aim of this book is the same as that of The British Economy 1945-1950 which was edited ten years ago, and its general plan is similar, although there are differences in detail. While we asked our contributors to mention the principal events occurring in the fifties in their respective fields, the emphasis in most chapters is upon the analysis of problems of economic policy. An attempt is made in the Introduction to provide a consecutive narrative of the year-to-year changes and principal events.

When the earlier volume was written there were still important gaps in statistics-the official Monthly Digest of Statistics began publication only in 1947-and the volume of professional economic commentary on current developments was limited. Apart from any intrinsic merits, the 1945-1950 volume filled a gap in the literature. Such a claim can hardly be made for this volume: a recent biblio graphy lists eighty-six journal articles on the subject of the Rad cliffe Committee (1959) alone, not to mention four books which take into account the Radcliffe findings. This book must stand on its merits. As editors, however, we have felt less constrained to strive to cover everything: in particular, we have not included chapters on specifically industrial development, nor on the social services. The great extension of statistics during the fifties has not been an unmixed blessing for the authors. It is true that there are more, and more easily accessible, figures about more things: but there has been a continuous improvement in quality, entailing frequent, and sometimes substantial, revision of earlier estimates. The authors had to use the latest figures available at the time of writing. By the time of publication some parts of some chapters may already appear out-of-date. No one has suffered more in this respect than Mr. Hazlewood. When he wrote Chapter 6 he con cluded that the extent to which Britain's long-term capital outflow had been excessive (a highly controversial issue widely discussed in the fifties) appeared to turn on the assumptions made about a residual balancing item in the accounts. The specific conclusions of Chapter 6 may already require revision.