SECOND WORLD WAR

Why did the UK lose its status as a world power after the Second World War?

Why did the UK lose its status as a world power after the Second World War?

Introduction

One of the most frustrating characteristics of the British economy since the Second World War has been its malfunction to agree the growth performance of the other sophisticated industrialised countries. This relation down turn begun in the late nineteenth century when a number of European nations started to outstrip Britain. With the benefit of hindsight, although, there was not anything very appalling about this. The nations worried had just went into their phase of modern financial growth and were adept to achieve high growth rates easily by imitating production procedures and technologies already evolved in Britain and the joined States. In any case, Britain was still the wealthiest country in Europe (George, 1979).

During the troubled interwar years Britain's relation decline was, if any thing arrested. Britain also reconstructed her economy quickly after the Second World War, and in the late 1940s was still an extremely wealthy homeland in comparative terms. But from the early 1950s onwards Britain's growth afresh tended to lag behind the other industrialised countries. On this event, however, it became a larger source of anxiety, as step-by-step one homeland after another overtook her. The result was that by the late 1980s, although still rich in global terms, Britain had fallen well down the international living standards league (Stanley, 1983).

 

Explanations of Britain's smaller Growth

Why then has Britain failed to agree the development performance of the other industrialised nations since 1945? There are two very wide possibilities. The first, which we analyze in the following section, is that Britain has had, what some historians have termed, a reduced social capability. Social capability mentions to the ability of a country to exploit living technical and technological knowledge. It will be subject to a number of leverages, ranging from a country's learning system to the quality of its management. The other likelihood, which we address now, is that Britain has had a reduced development promise, because of her early financial start. Thus Britain, it is argued, has not been able to grow as rapidly as nations such as France, Germany and Japan, because she industrialised much previous and this left her at a disadvantage. There are a number of ways in which this might have happened (Pennell, 1918).

First, an early start might have boosted Britain to specialise in industries with a somewhat poor growth potential. There is some merit to this contention, but it is most assuring for the late Victorian period. At this time Britain had a hefty dependence upon the nineteenth century staple commerce, such as cotton fabric and coal, whose long-term development prospects were by then relatively poor. She was much less engaged with the new commerce of the second developed transformation, such as electrical items and man-made fibres, whose prospects were much better. This functional explanation, although, is less compelling for the post-war ...