A New Plea for the Separation of Ireland

Abstract

The most recent representation of “British” economic development over the century from 1855, as given in Kuznets’ Modern Economic Growth, does not suggest much vitality in this important economy. This representation is not new. Since it became fashionable to villify the “Britain” of the 1950's and 1960's as the laggard country of Europe, attempts have been made to justify or rationalize recent British performance by claiming that recent slow growth rates have been long established. The justification is based merely on the fable of the tortoise and the hare: slow but steady growth in Britain versus the erratic path of foreigners. Kuznets’ picture of Britain over the past century would, however, suggest a country in which population growth competed only with France for lowest place among developed countries; omitting Netherlands from his list because of its limited period, Kuznets showed that the decade average rate of increase of British gross product, at 21.1 percent, was third lowest and only slightly above that of France with its special population experience; and British increase in product per head, at 14.1 percent decade average, ranked only above that of Australia, with its very low rate of growth at 8 percent. No race was being won here; rather the judgment on the recent past, from the perspective of a century of growth, is that Britain has always had it so bad. The question is whether this perspective is open to reasonable doubt.