Bewdley the headquarters for the Free French officer cadets. The cadets consisted of 200 teenagers who undertook military training at Ribbesford House until they joined with other allied forces in the D Day invasion. Bewdley is now governed by three tiers of local government; in increasing order of size: Bewdley town council, Wyre Forest district council and Worcestershire county council. For many centuries Bewdley had its own Member of Parliament (MP), most famously the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who represented it from 1908–1937, but in 1950 the Bewdley constituency was abolished and the town was included in the Kidderminster constituency.
Tenbury and Bewdley Railway and was completed in August 1864. The railway was operated from opening by the GWR, who also took over the operation of the Tenbury Railway from that time. The Tenbury & Bewdley Railway ceased to exist as a separate company when ownership was fully transferred to the GWR in February 1870. From Bewdley the Wyre Forest line ran north from the GWR station on a single line track alongside the Severn Valley Railway for a distance of about a mile before diverging to the west to cross the river Severn at Dowles Bridge (). The intermediate stations on the Tenbury