The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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and
commerce’ then the country would be lost, ‘not perhaps to the extent of being
conquered and
reduced to a province, but undoubtedly to the extent of having to
give up the lead and ceasing to be a
first-rate power’.”21

Even
the approach of the so-called Great Depression in the 1870s did not change
the attitudes of the political
elite. All Liberals and most Conservatives led
themselves to believe that free trade was best; and, even
if more calculating
Tories, like Lord Randolph Churchill, watched the ‘Fair Trade’ agitation
with
interest, he soon concluded that protectionism was an electoral loser. Too many
sectors of the
economy saw the global market as so important that any attempt to
return to high tariffs would be viewed
by the political elite and newspaper editors
as challenging nature’s law.

Nevertheless, it could be said that in a way Britain’s decline was inevitable.
This is due to the
fact that one should always remember that “The other countries
would not remain permanently retarded
by the deleterious effects of those
eighteenth century wars, or stay constantly weak by internal
conflicts. It was still
less to be expected that Britain would remain eternally the only or even
the
greatest industrialised nation when others, with larger population, and more
resources, took the
same path.”22 2As Professor Mathias has put
it, ‘when half a
continent starts to develop then it can produce more than a small island.’
“23

Around the turn of the century evidence of Britain’s decline became more
visible. In 1870, for
example, the United Kingdom still contained 32% of the
world’s manufacturing capacity, this was down
to 15% by 1910; and while its
share of the world trade was 25% in 1870, by 1913 this had shrunk to
14%.

However, as was said earlier, the political elite did not usually concern
themselves in any intimate
way with economic trends. Their anxieties in most
cases were triggered off by feelings of shock and
dismay at political challenges,
such as the acquisition of colonies by other powers, or the heightened
pace of

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