ABSTRACT

In the late 1970s the expectation remained that by helping to heal Britain's economic woes the North Sea bonanza would also repair the 'fiscal crisis of the welfare state'. Though Britain was experiencing a 'welfare peak' in the 1970s, there were some aspects, namely state-earnings-related pension (SERPS), Child Benefit, the Sex Discrimination Act in which Labour was still eager to build additional, innovative structures on top of that plateau. The Labour Party of 1974 offered traditional conservative virtues: calm, pragmatism and quiet reliability. By the end of the decade, the Conservative administration of 1970-74 and the Labour administration of 1974-79 felt like one long government. A distinct green movement had also emerged, with aspects of its message beginning to exert influence on governments throughout the 1970s. The Monetarists or sometimes the New Right – pragmatic, corporatist agreements between government, employers and unions felt like the only way of defending socialist territory.