Thread by @mat8iou

It's worth looking into the causes of rationing post WW2.
We imported a lot and didn't have the foreign currency to pay for it.
By 1945 we were spending 52% of GDP on the military and had trouble adjusting to a peacetime economy.

https://twitter.com/SamCoatesTimes/status/1076046215949795328

In August 1945, the USA terminated Lend Lease, the program that had distributed food, oil, and materiel to the UK (amongst others). This happened very suddenly. Even his already in transit at that point now had to be paid for.

At this stage, the UK comment afford to pay for imports of food due to a lack of exports. In 1945, Britain's exports were ⅓ of their pre war level.
This also caused a shortage of USD, which were needed to service Britain's war debt and maintain imports from the United States.

Most of the UK's gold and currency reserves were depleted and the Government had already been forced to sell off the bulk of British overseas assets to fund the war effort.
The UK was forced to obtain a USD3.75 billion loan from the USA at 2% interest in December 1945.

One of the US loan conditions was that the UK made sterling convertible. Within a month, nations with sterling balances had drawn almost a billion dollars from our dollar reserves and we had to devalue, making imports more expensive.

Unfortunately, many of our foreign currency generating assets were sold for bargain prices early in the war to pay for US arms shipments (Cash and Carry was replaced with Lend-Lease when Britain was close to bankruptcy in 1941).

US/UK trade imbalance was now perilously high, forcing the extension of rationing to lessen the imbalance and preserve our limited USD to service loan repayments.
During the Clement Atlee government, many good things happened, but taxes were increased & industries nationalised

This was largely to help try to reduce the debt burden, although other new initiatives (NHS, state pensions & social security were also using money).

Rationing officially ended in 1954, but it was still hard to buy motor vehicles as almost all were exported. Factories couldn't afford to re-tool and compete with more modern production lines elsewhere. This limited both development and design.

In 1945, Britain (just) still had (most of) her empire & the USA once again regarded Britain as a rival, to be demolished.

After 1954, UK cheese production remained depressed for decades afterwards. Many indigenous varieties almost disappeared.
UK government controls on milk prices through the Milk Marketing Board continued to discourage production of other varieties of cheese until the mid 1980s.

The final payment on the loan from the USA was only made in 2006.

So - rationing was never so much due to shortage of production, but more to insufficient funds to inport what we didn't produce ourselves.
Those who say we need to be more self sufficient today, while they do things that potentially may crash the economy should perhaps heed this.

We have already weakened the pound, making imports cost more. Putting up trade barriers (by leaving existing FTAs) will also consume money.
The country is having a productivity crisis where old equipment needs to be modernised to compete internationally.

Now there is talk of rationing as a short term measure.
Presumably in 1941 people also thought it would be short term.
I don't remember any of this being in a ballot paper.
WW2 was an act we were drawn into. 2019 is an act we are manufacturing ourselves.

@threadreaderapp unroll please