ABSTRACT
Though the link between planning, technology and Labour was largely the invention of Harold Wilson, it was of course not his creation alone. It built both upon Labour's long tradition of support for public ownership and state intervention and upon the fascination with technology and the fixation on the need to 'modernise' Britain that were so ubiquitous in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In forging the connection between these discourses and promising a 'socialist inspired scientific and technological revolution', Wilson accomplished a decisive shift, almost a reversal, in the political identities of Labour and its Tory rivals. 1 He also effected, perhaps without fully intending or realising it, a simultaneous redefinition of right and left within the Labour Party.
