Describe the affects of
The depression in Britain in the early 1930’s
At the beginning of the 1930’s just like America Britain had a major depression which affected almost everyone and everything in the country. But some people were affected worse than others depending on what industry they worked in. In most cases people who worked in the old industries were affected worst because the old industries like Shipbuilding, Textiles, Coal mining and Steel making suffered survirly. Ship building in particular was hit because if no one wanted to buy or sell goods abroad then ships had very little use so few new ones were made and so lots of people lost jobs. This then affected the steel industry because if there wereno ship to build then there was very little use for steel and so less steel was made and even more workers lost their jobs. So it seemed that shipbuilding was the cause of all the depression in the old industry as coal mining was another one that was affected by there being no ships as the ships ran on coal so no coal was sold and again more workers became unemployed and also German and polish coal was cheaper so they faced foreign competition. Then there was textiles which were also affected by foreign competition as while Britain had been at war other countries had introduced man made fibres which were better and so countries did not want Britain’s textiles and there was no ship to transport the goods so that was another problem. The textile industry dropped by 40% because of the man made fibres. Britain went into a depression because of the huge spending during the war. Britain had taken loans from America to help during the war and after when Britain went into depression then Britain could not apy back the loans which was a big part in why America had a depression.
