Britain's Prime and Britain's Decline. The British Economy 1870-1914 by Sidney PollardReview by: Keith TribeSocial History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Oct., 1990), pp. 399-402Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285882 .

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October99go Reviews 399

accept an uneven responsibility for child care, and that men's jobs are so structured on the premise that they are not responsible for child care, one suspects that the same dilemmas over what are appropriate strategies to improve women's position will continue into the next century.

Shirley Dex University of Keele

Sidney Pollard, Britain's Prime and Britain's Decline. The British Economy z870-z94 (1989) 27 + 45 (Edward Arnold, ?zs.oo).

Those who in taking up this book anticipate yet another variant of the 'century of decline' version of British economic history will be disappointed. Sidney Pollard's latest book is in many respects a detailed, argumentative and provocative complement to his earlier The Wasting of the British Economy (i 982), in which the economic problems of thq past forty years are at issue. Pollard's analysis of the period I870-1914 is consistent with his earlier polemic against the post-war failures of industry and government. He consequently carves out a position for himself which runs counter to the now-current convention shared by historians and cultural critics who identify late nineteenth-century Britain as the original source of the progressive slow-down in the ability of the British economy to equal the challenges of the modern world. The vigour with which Pollard argues against the convention of confounding change with decline is truly impressive, as is the range of material which he introduces. Not only is the breadth of his coverage of British material intimidating, he is also able to draw on relevant historical comparisons that place the British experience in a framework of international economic development.

Although the book is authoritative, it is by no means comprehensive - nor could it be, given the complexity of the economic structures and trends under examination. Instead, after an initial review of the statistical evidence for secular decline in the British economy, it focuses on three main areas: the volume and significance of overseas investment; the role of technical and scientific education in the development and innovation of new technologies; and the structure and function of the state with respect to economic performance.

The Introduction compresses a number of complicated arguments into outlines of the principal analytical options taken up by those who see in this period the roots of a steadily declining economic performance. These fall broadly into 'early start - early maturity - premature ageing' arguments on the one hand, and dysfunctional social and political structures on the other. While not mutually exclusive, the kinds of evidence adduced in either case tend to differ. Among the former arguments can be counted a commitment to technologies that became obsolete but whose continuing positive yields impeded decisions to replace them; the early run-down of agriculture and the consequent absence in the later part of the century of labour for redeployment; linked handicaps of limitations on scale in production and distribution; and the development of business and financial arrangements inimical to domestic technical innovation. The second socio-cultural line of argument is at once more diffuse but more complex, laying emphasis on an anti-industrial 'spirit', the

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400 Social History VOL. 15 NO. 3

traditionalist attitudes of labour, and the lack of a sensitive link between mass market demand and the responsiveness of the industrial base.

As Pollard suggests, all of these are explanations for the onset of a decline whose existence can be questioned; they therefore constitute hypothetical solutions to a disputable historical problem. His main line of argument in the fifty-seven pages reviewing the actual performance of the UK economy in the period under consideration is that, while there are shifts and changes in the UK economy, these are in no sense unidirectional or general. On the eve of the First World War the rate of growth of British exports was faster than that of imports, and Britain retained the largest share of world manufacturing exports. In chemicals, often cited as evidence of the failure of British producers to respond to new technologies, comparison of the British and German industries as a whole shows little significant variation. The familiar argument that Britain's over-reliance on basic, and imitable staples is countered by an analysis of the shifting structure of cotton exports, a paradigm case of a flexible niche marketing strategy. Given the size of the British economy it was inevitable that with the development of the international economy the USA and Germany would overtake it. None the less, in I9I4

the British economy was still a dominating force in the world economy, a fact that tends to be overlooked in many accounts.

However, the very complexity of the British economy, even in the later nineteenth century, renders any aggregated assessment of progress or decline inconclusive. Pollard therefore turns to two specific areas of debate: the question of the degree to which the substantial export of capital in this period diverted investment away from viable domestic projects; and the manner in which the British education system, especially scientific and technical education, failed to match that of our industrial competitors.

The standard neo-classical response to the phenomenon of large-scale capital export - that, all other things being equal, this has to indicate that expectations of rates of return overseas were greater than those anticipated at home - rests on a number of large assumptions and ignored circumstances. As Pollard admits, it is difficult to estimate a domestic 'requirement' independently of the actual new investment forthcoming. What does seem to have occurred is that financial institutions found it easier to channel funds overseas than to domestic projects. This was both because the city knew more about, say, Argentinian railway prospects than bicycle manufacturing in Nottingham. But this was in turn because there were few financial intermediaries through which such domestic communication could operate. Unlike German banks, that covered both long-term and short-term credit requirements of their industrial clients, smaller British entrepreneurs found difficulty in gaining backing from local banks or building societies. Much of the new investment in British industry was self-generated, and this points to serious imperfections in the British capital market. Existing estimates of the improvement to the overall rate of growth vary in their outcomes between an improvement to the level of national income in 1914 of between 25 and 70 per cent. Quite apart from such hypotheses, however, the wealth of detail on capital movements, investment opportunities and trade provided by Pollard indicates that no simple explanation can be given for the actual flows of British capital up to the First World War.

Next Pollard launches into a survey of the relation between education and economic progress in the British context. It is generally assumed today that there is a positive

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October 9ggo Reviews 401

relationship between investment in educational provision and the overall performance of the economy; moreover, that educational opportunities should be open at all levels of a differentiated labour force. Little time is spent by Pollard on this assumption, since its existence structures those arguments which attribute Britain's lagging economic perform- ance to failures of educational provision, and his chief concern is to demolish such arguments. Here again the analysis is detailed and well structured, and it has to be said that Pollard has given us here the best brief account of the later nineteenth-century British educational system so far written.

Most accounts of the evolution of the British educational system are either narrow and pedestrian or, when recognizing that the parts relate to an overall structure, they are nevertheless limited to one part of the system. Thus we have accounts of 'secondary' provision that deal with grammar schools but leave aside dissenting academies, private tuition, mechanics' institutions, vocational colleges, extension teaching, or the fact that the new university colleges taught part-time, mostly in the evening, and to students pursuing studies linked to external certificates and not defined by the colleges themselves. Part of the story of the development of the UK educational system is the manner in which, out of this sheer diversity, a clear division of primary, secondary and tertiary education developed in which age-bands were strictly associated with definite levels of study, and definite forms of transition between these levels were established. In this manner a conventionalized set of reference points was fixed and deemed to constitute the authentic educational structure, from which vocational, part-time and adult educational provision deviated.

Pollard breaks decisively with this form of analysis since he wishes to emphasize that the British system might have been chaotic when compared with those of our continental European competitors, but in some respects this was because British institutions were better adapted to the requirements of the economy. He is rightly sceptical of the rhetoric of educational reformers of the later nineteenth century who constantly harped on the manner in which the Prussians or the Belgians or the French did things better. That they did things in a more orderly manner and concentrated their resources in modern schools and colleges is clear; but in making comparisons with Britain reformers mistook the absence of equivalent institutions with an absence of instruction in the subjects taught. At times Pollard's account threatens to degenerate into lists of numbers and institutions, since it is so difficult to draw together the varied elements into a coherent whole. It is important, however, that he consistently seeks to emphasize the diversity of provision within an evolving set of demands and possibilities.

It is true, as he notes, that British employers were slow to recognize the new certificates from, for instance, the City and Guilds examinations. But the demand for educational expansion does not usually come from this direction: the 'demand' is here that of reformers and students, and a differentiated menu of certification is subsequently adopted by employers as the labour market adjusts to the given output of certified students. In short, the relationship between educational provision and the labour market is supply driven, not demand led.

The final substantive chapter considers the role of the state. A theme that runs through this is the general lack of representation of manufacturing interests in parliament, and central and local government, throughout the nineteenth century. However, this is dealt

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402 Social History VOL. I5 : NO. 3

with in a more varied way than normal, considering the social composition of institutions as well as the impact of the policies they pursued. Much of the 'new' legislation of the I 83os and I84os, for example, ran counter to manufacturing interests, but on the other hand this does not seem to have done them much harm. In assessing the impact of and response to state activity Pollard pays due attention to regional and local conditions, and suggests that here again we encounter the disjunction between finance and manufacture identified in the chapter on capital export: the fact that social mobility ran through commerce and finance, but not through manufacture, isolated the latter from the centres of decision-making. Monetary and commercial policy pursued in the latter part of the century reinforced this. Pollard concludes by noting that a puzzle exists here: the very sector that had propelled Britain to become a major industrial force in the world economy signally failed to elicit government assistance, or even benign negligence; on the contrary, it could not even prevent the government from acting against its interests.

As with the problems of capital and education, while Pollard insists that the real problems of the British economy surface in the period of post-1945 reconstruction, he isolates in the pre-i914 period those issues which are later to become problems. In part, his analysis hinges upon an unstated assumption: that the I9I4-I8 war marks a definite turning point for the British economy in that the role of the state in the economy undergoes a major transformation. Using government expenditure as a measure of state activity, the state's stature in the UK economy doubled from I913 to 1920. Increasingly, central government decision-making dictated the course and rhythms of economic activity. On the basis of Pollard's analysis of the evolution of Britain's economic decline, this was the fatal move, for it provided the UK economy with a dominant force whose predilections and social composition were negligent of the needs of industry.

Keith Tribe University of Keele

Nicholas Fishwick, English Football and Society, z9z0-z950 (I989), xii + 164 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, ?Zs.oo).

Stephen G. Jones, Sport, Politics and the Working Class. Organized Labour and Sport in Iter-war BRtain (I989), Xi + 2a8 (Manchester University Press, Man- chester, ?a5.00).

Wray Vamplew, Pay Up and Play the Game. Professional Sport in Britain z875-z9z4 (I988), xix + 39 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 30.00).

Until recently sport has not attracted the academic attention which it undoubtedly deserves. This is not to say that neglect has been total. For association football there have been noteworthy contributions over the last fifteen years or so by historians such as Walvin, Mason and Tischler, while sport in general has attracted serious sociological contributions, including Hargreaves's Sport, Power and Culture and Gruneau's Class, Sports and Social Development. Evidence that the subject is shedding its cinderella status and is becoming a legitimate area within economic and social history may be taken from the

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