 controlled the manufacture and the transportation of a whole range of goods, including fine clothing. Cotton and wool could be grown and sheared in the colonies, but it had to be sent to England to be turned into clothing. This was a policy, a routine policy for England, and it's why until India achieved its independence in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi sat with his spinning wheel for his lectures and spun daily in his own home. It was, like his salt march, a protest against the colonial practice