Tom Austin wrote:On the 16th of October the Labour Party of Harold Wilson took over from the Conservatives who had been in Government since 1959.
Labour:317 seats
Conservative:304 seats
Liberals:9 seats.
One thing that did not change was the Tory appointed Governor of the Bank of England:Lord Cromer. He was not so concerned with implementing the Labour Manifesto, no, his great worry was the huge deficit in the balance of payments left by the previous administration. Some £800 million.
I mention this as background to what Wilson had to say about the arguments he had at that time with Cromer...
"Not for the first time, I said that we had now reached the situation where a newly elected Government with a mandate from the people was being told, not so much by the Governor of the BoE but by international speculators, that the policies on which we had fought the election could not be implemented;that the Government was to be forced into the adoption of Tory policies to which it was fundamentally opposed. The Governor confirmed that that was in fact the case...
[Genuinely shocked, Wilson drew the political conclusions...]
I asked him if this meant that it was impossible for any government, whatever its party label, whatever its manifesto or the policies on which it fought an election, to continue, unless it immediately reverted to full-scale Tory policies. He had to admit that that was what his argument meant, because of the3 sheer compulsion of the economic dictation of those who exercised economic power."
Wilson then, I read, threatened that in the circumstances he would be left with no alternative but to call another election, one which he predicted would result in a landslide victory for Labour...a deal was done to offset this eventuality.
P.S.
Way back then Fiscal Profligacy was known as, 'Doing a Maudling', no wonder so much emphasis is placed on blaming G Brown.
[The above is an extract from Paul Foot's book 'The Vote']
You are getting very desperate Tom to quote Paul Foot - nearly as bonkers as his dad who was, at least, a honourable if misguided man.
The sad thing about the period of Conservative government in the 50's was their lack of self confidence and excessive willingness to do no more than hold back the tide of socialism rather than reverse it. A trend followed by Heath. Mrs T was the one who corrected that and reversed the steady post war decline.
What you are trying to claim would be better illustrated by using Heath incidentally. The fact is though - the facts of history do not support the point you are making anyway as a comparison between Labour and Tory governments. Think - the 'golden legacy' (Mr T Blair commenting on his economic inheritance) - you can go back further, 200 years in fact as well. You cannot illustrate any period of Labour government that has left any kind of 'golden legacy' an economic crisis every time.