ABSTRACT
With hindsight, Crosland’s words have a hollow ring. He came last of the six contenders in the race to replace Harold Wilson as Labour leader in 1976 and less than a year later he died suddenly, aged only 58. Callaghan’s Government, battered and bruised by the IMF crisis and the ‘Winter of Discontent’, was crushingly defeated by Margaret Thatcher at the 1979 general election, heralding a long period in opposition for Labour and the end of the road for Croslandite socialism. Any notion of seeking to create a more equal society through the redistribution of income and high public spending on social services was thoroughly discredited; the era of Thatcherism beckoned.
