The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation and the British Economic Policymaking Process

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The Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (IRC) was an entity established by Harold Wilson's government in 1966. TheIRC was given funds to promote mergers which it was hoped could help rationalise British industry. Almost all of the keyliterature on the topic was published in the 1980s, and with the exception of one 2017 paper, the IRC has received littleattention since the 1990s. The most comprehensive work on the IRC remains Hague and Wilkinson's monograph,published in 1983. A re-evaluation of the organisation which integrates recent developments in the historiography is longoverdue, particularly given that much of the existing work was written when the archives were still largely closed. Thoughthere are a number of other avenues for original research (as detailed in my full research proposal), the most potentiallikely lies in looking more closely at the process, rather than just the outcomes, of policymaking in the IRC. The typicalapproach of older works, which showed more interest in outcomes - essentially treating the IRC as a black box,examining inputs (money) and outputs (mergers), but leaving the process of turning these inputs into outputs a mystery -made sense before historians had access to the relevant papers for the IRC in the National Archives, which were openedin the early 2000s. This can now be improved upon, as through the IRC's archives, we can establish a betterunderstanding of the policymaking process, rather than just outcomes.