It has been asserted that the British Companies Act 1947 was part of the postwar
response to a national emergency which created an ethos of greater social
responsibility. The paper examines the validity of this contention. The 1947 Act
is placed in the context of the debate which began in the 1920s about the role
of accounting disclosure in corporate governance. From the 1920s onwards, there
were calls for reform to improve accountability to investors, as well as a
tenacious opposition to any reduction in the discretionary powers of directors.
The British Labour Party made wider-ranging proposals for reform but these were
dropped from its agenda in the 1930s. The paper concludes that the 1947 Act was
not a product of Labour's programme of social legislation. Instead, it was a
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