During the Great War, Webley & Scott made Webley revolvers.
Vickers, Sons & Maxim made Vickers Guns.
BSA and Savage made Lewis Guns.
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
When the War ended, everything not wrecked was taken home again and things went back to peacetime. There was a lot of ill-feeling at the time regarding "war profiteers" (very much whipped-up by a headline-seeking mass media), so the next nasty step was politically expedient in the terms of the time.
Government got up on its moral high horse and announced that none of THEM had had anything to do with war profiteering (liars!) and that they had come up with a Grand Solution to the terrible problem of profiting from a war: the Government would repair, develop and manufacture EVERYTHING it needed.
So the Gummint moved everythning to Enfield and Enfield, despite limited facilities, was awarded all this work which they hadn't asked for. So the BSA Lewis Guns were rebuilt and new parts made.... at Enfield. And the Savage Lewises were rebuilt and parts made.... at Enfield. And all the Vickers Guns were rebuilt and new parts and complete new guns were made.... at Enfield. And all the Webley revolvers were rebuilt and new parts were made and even a limited-production run of complete guns was made..... at Enfield. (This is where your gun comes into the tale!)
And this all kept on. The Army wanted a new revolver, so Webley & Scott did almost the entire design on the thing.... and Enfield made it. THIS really rankled, but W&S got even a few years later even after the court cheated them out of half the development costs for the gun they were not allowed to make. The Lanchester was copied from the Germanicon MP-28, but Enfield had to make it. The Bren was developed, but Enfield had to make it. The Oerlikon was adopted, but Enfield had to make it. The Hispano was adopted, but Enfield was supposed to make that also.
So that nice Mister Hitler put a few million of his heavily-armed buddies into Poland and then into Franceicon and the army had to pull out at Dunkirk and the Navy needed small arms and the RAF REALLY needed a whole huge pile of Brownings and Vickers Guns and Hispanos and the Army had hardly any reserve weapons because the peacenik politicians had been destroying freshly-rebuilt rifles up until about 4 years previously and Enfield was only partway set-up to make the Number 4 and didn't have the machines to build the SMLE any longer and the small shop just could not handle the fantastic demands and war production very nearly stopped entirely, right when it was needed most desperately.
In the end, everything worked out. BSA built lots of SMLEs and the majority of Number 4s and even set up a factory for the Bren and Oerlikons were built in one place and Hispanos in another, Vickers made Vickers Guns and Stens were made wherever there was a tinsmith shop (almost) and Webley & Scott were handed a huge contact to make their little Mark IV .38 which they had offered to the Army 10 or 12 years previously, only to have it rejected, but the guns were to be made as fast as possible and to Hades with the finish. So Webley & Scott got their revenge at last: they marked each revolver prominently with the words "WAR FINISH", just in case anyone might have thought that they did finishing THAT sloppy as part of their regular job!
