Abstract
This paper examines the development of regional policy in Britain between 1928 and 1945, and argues that the measures evolved during the Second World War were more important influences over the shape of post-war policy than has been thought hitherto. The experimental Special Areas programme of the 1930s and the radical pre-war proposals of the Barlow Report were comparatively less significant. At a more general level, the model of war as a relatively passive ‘accelerator’ of economic and social change is far too simple. It presupposes in pre-war thought a unity which certainly did not exist during the 1930s, and undervalues the part which war plays in exposing problems and offering radical new solutions.

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