Conclusions

Abstract

In this book we have traced government interventions in industry since the turn of the century, focusing on the use of industrial subsidies for purposes which may be described according to the allocative, stability and distributional functions of government. As we have seen, these interventions initially involved very little real subsidy and were small in scale, so that the pre-war measures in the Special Areas consisted of some makework schemes, physical measures and loans at commercial rates, but by the outbreak of war less than £2m had been disbursed in assistance from Treasury-backed funds. It is therefore only in the past fifty years that industry has been subsidized to any great extent, confirming that the use of industrial subsidies is truly a modern phenomenon.