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 Railway remained as an independent company until nationalisation in January 1948. The Tenbury Railway began at Tenbury Wells (Shropshire) (originally Tenbury) and continued via Easton Court (serving Little Hereford) to Woofferton. The remainder of the Wyre Forest Line was formed by the Tenbury and Bewdley Railway which began at Bewdley and 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 and Bewdley Railway were Wyre Forest, Cleobury