Kunz - The Battle for Britains Gold Standard in 1931

For my husband Tom
without whom this book could
not have been written.

This monograph grew out of an interest in international monetary relations which began during the seven years I spent working as a corporate lawyer on Wall Street. Participating in the sovereign debt struggles of the 1970s and early 1980s led me to an examination of how analagous events affected Great Britain and the world in 1931.

The transition from law to history which might have proved difficult has been a fulfilling one and for that I owe a great deal to various members of Oxford University. My thesis supervisor, Dr. R.A.C. Parker, was unfailingly helpful. He provided both encouragement and assistance in exactly the right proportions. Mr. Philip Waller was generous with time and critical advice on the art of historical writing. Dr. Stephen Stacey read the entire manuscript with great care and his suggestions proved of inestimable value.

This study was also read by Dr. Harold James of Cambridge University. For his comments, his support and for his continued willingness to discuss the events of 1931, I am very appreciative.

I was most fortunate in receiving invaluable assistance at various archives. Indeed, without the generous access to bankers records which I received, a study of this kind would not have been possible. In particular, Mr. Henry Gillett, archivist at the Bank of England, was indefatigably helpful. Far from resenting the many days I spent in his office, he always remained willing to find yet another file. Mr. Carl Backlund, archivist of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was also of great assistance as were the archivists at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, the National Archives, Washington, D.C. and Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

I was privileged to have been given full access to the archives of Morgan Grenfell Group PLC. Due to the kindness of Mr. Desmond Harney, Mr. Anthony Weighall and the staff of the Corporate Finance Files Department, perusing these crucial documents became a most pleasurable task.

Finally, Mary V. Roney and Joanne Parnes Shawhan deserve my thanks for their support and for always listening.

You have been kind enough to refer in your letter to the assistance given by means of these credits during the crisis of last year. For our part, we look back upon these transactions with great satisfaction .

George Harrison to

Montagu Norman

8 December 1932

Addressing the Anglo-American Conference of Historians in London on 13 July 1931, Ramsay MacDonald said:

When the road is made and the facts are settled, the historian comes along in a charabanc, as it were, informing the world - when the roadmaker is dead or forgotten - whether the passage was smooth or bumpy.[]

The Prime Ministers timing was flawless. The events about to unfold would be examined and debated not by coaches but by planeloads of historians fascinated by the British political and financial crisis of 1931.

While explanations of the departure of Great Britain from the gold standard were not long in coming ( The Times was first into the field with a series of articles published in early October) the first scholarly treatments of the events of 1931 appeared in the 1950s and 1960s. They fall into two categories. The first, to which Reginald Bassetts 1931 and Robert Skidelskys Politicians and the Slump were the most notable contributions, focused on the political events of the year.[] Valuable as they are, works of this kind are inevitably incomplete since the battle to maintain the British gold standard was waged primarily by bankers and not by politicians.

In the second category are books on central banks. Chief amongst them are Henry Clays biography of Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of ].