ABSTRACT
Between 1964 and 1969 expenditure on social services increased by 65 per cent. The cost of supplementary benefits and family allowances more than doubled. The Labour Government had set itself a target of 500,000 houses a year. This was not achieved, but as many as 2 million new houses were built while it was in office – about half of them in the local authority sector. Labour’s attitude to industry was equivocal. It needed the co-operation of the captains of industry in its plans for economic expansion, and in its prices and incomes policy, but there was still a traditional suspicion about the motives of capitalists. The Labour Government failed to arrest the national growth in unemployment, but, as a result of its regional policies of pumping assistance into the development areas, it managed to reduce the hitherto widening gap between employment in the richer and the poorer areas.
