Nick Tiratsoo and Jim Tomlinson describe and assess the Labour Party's development of a policy of improving industrial efficiency. They concentrate on the debates and initiatives of the wartime period and subsequent implementation of policy under Attlee.The book modifies existing historiography in two ways - it shows that the Labour Party of 1945-51 was concerned mainly with industrial modernization, not with creating the Welfare State, and it tackles the consequently necessary re-evaluation of wider theories about Britain's economic decline.