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.
Bewdley in living memory were those in 1947, 1968 and 2000, where 140 properties were affected. Bewdley's long experience of dealing with flooding led to the setting up of the National Flood Forum in the town in 2002. Bewdley Bridge over the Severn was built in 1798 by Thomas Telford. It was erected to replace the 1483 medieval bridge which was swept away in the floods of 1795. A modern road bridge, opened to the south-east of the town at Blackstone in 1987 after many decades of campaigning, carries the Bewdley bypass across the river. The Tenbury and Bewdley Railway branched