Up to 1935 when tariffs were reintroduced to protect the output of British farmers, Britain operated on a free trade system dating back to 1840. Free trade was thought to encourage growth as part of a self-regulatory economy. It came seriously unstuck and Britain’s island status became a serious threat to its populace when, in the first world war, the economy had become predominantly import based and Germany invented the U Boat.
By the early 20th Century we were no longer living in crowded insanitary inner city slums, murdering our unintended children and sending those who didn’t die of atrophy to work in the mills, or climb up chimneys as soon as they could walk. That’s of course if we managed not to die of Cholera, Dysentery, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Diphtheria, Scarlet Fever or good old malnutrition and could actually see each other, much less breathe from the belched fallout of millions of chimneys. By the virtue of mere survival, the average Brit from working class stock has every reason to be proud of the nation of world leading industrialists and inventors they helped create. If British national pride was built solely on this, then I for one could never doubt it.