ABSTRACT
Clement Attlee’s first administration was faced immediately with a series of dilemmas in regard to employment and wages policy. In 1947 Chancellor Hugh Dalton’s November budget considerably reduced the excess of demand over supply, but little formal action was taken to strengthen wages policy until 1948. The working party specifically rejected Sir Stafford Cripps’s suggestion that all wages, prices and profits be frozen by statute for three to six months, both because of the administrative burden it implied and on the grounds of the political and legal burdens involved. Indeed a further thorough review of wages policy had been progressing in Whitehall for six months. Cripps and his successor Hugh Gaitskell, together with the Economic Section and the Central Economic Planning Staff were at the centre of the debate; Investigations were made into the wages policies in operation in Scandinavia.
