The Unemployment Policy of the National Government, 1931–1936

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Abstract
The British response to the mass unemployment of the 1930s was in striking contrast to that of the other major industrialized countries. Only in Britain was a policy of accepting the apparent logic of capitalism, and waiting out the slump, successfully maintained in a reasonably stable, democratic setting. In an article on ‘The New Deal, National Socialism and the Great Depression’, John A. Garraty wrote that ‘in both Roosevelt's America and Hitler's Germany economic objectives were subordinated whenever necessary to political aims’. In neither country was there ‘any consistently held theory about either the causes of the depression or how to end it’ Britain under the National government represents almost precisely the opposite case. First, the government's policy of minimal direct intervention to relieve unemployment was directed towards achieving its central objective of ensuring that the depression would cause no fundamental changes in existing economic and social relationships. Immediate political considerations were subordinated to this overriding goal, Secondly, the government's approach, though not all of its particular actions, was based on a rational, comprehensive and widely accepted theoretical foundation.

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