Catalogue description Board of Trade: Wool Control Department: Papers

In July 1937 the Board of Trade requested the Wool Textile Delegation, representing the wool textile industry, to prepare a control scheme for the industry in time of war. A scheme was developed in detail and full control of the industry was assumed on 4 September 1939. The main objects of the control were to ensure adequate wool supplies for the needs of the armed forces and the essential civil requirements of the British Commonwealth and its allies (and to secure production of the various products required), to deny supplies to the enemy, to assist the economies of the Dominions by guaranteeing a market for exportable surpluses of wool, and to regulate consumption and control prices in accordance with any general plan for the whole United Kingdom economy. The control lasted until 1949.

In 1951 Sir Harry B Shackleton, Wool Controller 1939-1949, was invited by the Government to become Wool Controller-Designate, and entrusted with the preparation of a scheme for control of wool in the event of war, and to set up a shadow organisation of members of the industry to administer the Control if it became operative. The scheme was complete when in 1957 Shackleton was advised by the Government that in their general review of the Defence Plan they had decided that all work should cease on the preparation of schemes for raw material and production controls.