Introduction

Abstract

The aim of this book is to describe and explain the great increase in the scale and scope of the public sector in the United Kingdom between the late nineteenth century and the second half of the twentieth century from little more than 10 per cent of national income (GDP) in the 1870s and 1880s to over 40 per cent by the 1960s and 1970s. By the decade prior to the First World War, public spending in the United Kingdom had rise to 15 per cent of GDP, and during the Great War that broke out in 1914 it rose to over 60 per cent of GDP as the government borrowed heavily to meet the cost of war.