To protect industry, the Government of the day introduced a series of import controls and tariff barriers. During this period, BCDTA helped its members survive by preparing submissions to Government highlighting cases of unfair competition from imported products. With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Association provided a clearing-house for vital information on the restrictions applying to shipments and the movement of goods. It also provided the main channel of communication between the wartime Government and the industry - being asked by the Ministry of Supply, for example, to organise the distribution of 22 Lend-Lease pharmaceutical products. During the war, BCDTA membership once again returned to more than 100 companies.
With the Allied victory in 1945 came a period of austerity. For six long years, the British economy had supported the war effort to the point of virtual exhaustion. In its aftermath, both industry and consumers were to suffer shortages. The chemical industry was no exception. Raw materials were in short supply and a return to peacetime conditions still a distant prospect. It took until 1958 for legislation imposing protective tariffs to be repealed and replaced by a single comprehensive measure, the Import Duties Act, which had long been advocated by the Association.
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