ABSTRACT
This chapter deals the pay pause and the guiding light, while Black by notes that the National Incomes Commission (NIC) had a short and rather undistinguished life, and certainly did not succeed in focusing the wrath of public opinion on excessive wage awards. Recourse to an incomes policy also raised new issues and problems for Ministers during the early 1960s, and ultimately undermined this putative new approach to economic management. The relevant files at the National Archives detail Ministerial discussions concerning dozens of pay claims for individual industries, professions or specific sectors of the economy. Although general questions concerning incomes policy remained within the remit of the Cabinets Economic Policy Committee. Ultimately, in rejecting the options of allowing unfettered and unrestrained free collective bargaining, imposing statutory pay curbs, permitting a deflationary increase in unemployment, or introducing trade union legislation, Ministers were left with only one feasible option, namely some form of long-term voluntary incomes policy.
