ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the economic policy issues which were explicitly delegated to the Finance and Trade Committee and ‘the City group’; they included the Bank of England, monetary policy, national investment board, public works, stability of trade and industry, the stock exchange, taxation and ‘obstruction by vested interests’. Hugh Dalton, along with Herbert Morrison and 154 other Labour members, was returned to Parliament in 1935. The Labour opposition had voted against the Import Duties Act in 1932, but the party had remained neutral on the protection issue. Despite the resistance of some committee members, Dalton also sought further elucidation on employment policy, exchange rate policy and the connections between the two. The combination of the party’s overall policy of financial control and public development with its specific proposals for the distressed areas provided an integrated attack on the problems of structural unemployment. Foreign trade policy has always presented a problem to the Labour party’s policy makers.
