It is clear from the evidence presented so far that interwar Britain faced a major problem of economic adjustment. Even before 1914 her relative share of world production and trade in manufactured goods had begun to decline; after the First World War she faced the added problem of an absolute stagnation in staple exports. For years past, Britain had lagged behind her major rivals in the development of those industrial sectors gaining the fastest hold in world markets (namely engineering, metal manufacturing, vehicles and chemicals). The potential for revitalizing uncompetitive and technologically backward industries by deliberate schemes of rationalization and reorganization was never fully realized; nor as we have seen would it have proved in itself a sufficient remedy, even at its best.

As chapter 1 indicated, the clearest manifestation of this struggle to contain the secular decline of traditional trades was to be found in the varying fortunes of Britain's oldest industrial regions. Their nineteenth-century developments had been based primarily upon a high degree of localization and specialization in precisely those sectors hardest hit by the post-1920 depression. Unemployment in areas such as Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire and Cheshire, Wales and Scotland remained disproportionately high throughout the interwar period, both in absolute terms and relative to the more favoured areas of the midlands and the south.