A whole armoury of controls - thank heaven more controls than exist today - were operated by the party opposite, and they were associated with reserves slumping, first, to a Convertability Crisis, then to a devaluation crisis and, finally, to a runaway-from-Government crisis.

In 1947, there was the Convertability Crisis, after which a thorough inquiry which was undertaken showed, as might have been expected, that when there were thousands of holders of convertible sterling against a background of a dollar famine at that time the rate and extent of conversion of sterling into other currencies could be neither measured nor foreseen.