ABSTRACT
For many within the Party the record of the 1964-70 Labour governments demanded a fundamental reappraisal of the political economy that had underpinned its policies. The failure to arrest Britain’s relative economic decline, a deflationary response to sterling crises that destroyed any possibility of meeting the ambitious growth targets set by the National Plan, periodic public expenditure cuts, the failure of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation to effect a restructuring of British industry that would enhance its international competitiveness, a 60 per cent rise in unemployment, an increase in Britain’s international indebtedness and a rate of price inflation that rose from 3.3 per cent in 1964 to 6.4 per cent in 1970 all clearly indicated that there had been no forging of a ‘new Britain’ in the white heat of a technological revolution. Indeed for many it seemed, in this period, that the only new development was the virulence with which old problems were asserting themselves.
