ABSTRACT
Although their disagreements were more marked, technocratic socialists were not alone in experiencing internal differences of opinion in the 1950s. Labour’s thirteen years of opposition saw the early signs of a future division within Keynesian socialism which was later to prove extremely damaging. The majority of Gaitskellite1 intellectuals, Gaitskell himself, Douglas Jay and Roy Jenkins, developed an increasingly liberal bias, stressing individual freedom, a predominantly free market economy and a broad equality of opportunity. Tony Crosland, often regarded as the Gaitskellites’ leading thinker and someone who certainly maintained a close personal friendship with the Party leader, developed rather different ideas.
