Interwar Conservatives saw public works predominantly as electoral strategy

Evidence

In his memorandum on “Unemployment,” Baldwin’s home secretary, Sir William Joynson- Hicks, made clear that the only way for the Conservative government to escape “vilifi cation” at the general elections for “its insuffi cient unemployment policies” was a “comprehensive” stimulus through large publicly funded loans to extend the productive power of the dominions and “road construction on a fairly large scale” (HMSO 1929, 294– 300) that could compete with the ambitious proposals of the Labour and Liberal parties. — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1695

Categorization

• SEED: Reveals that even Tory stimulus proposals were framed against electoral threat from Labour/Liberals — a throughline for an essay on how class politics shaped interwar economic doctrine.