ABSTRACT
The Social Contract between the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress lay at the core of the domestic programme of both the Wilson and Callaghan Governments between March 1974 and May 1979. The ups and downs of the always ‘contentious’ party-trade union alliance was to mirror the changing fortunes of the Labour movement during those adverse times. The Social Contract has so often been written off by its innumerable critics as a flawed, one-sided arrangement under which it is argued that the trade unions were provided with too much power by the state but in return they refused to shoulder much responsibility in helping to resolve the country’s intractable economic problems for no more than a limited period. The Conservatives, who were increasingly convinced that the control of the money supply was the key to effective economic management, used to argue that the Social Contract threatened the market economy and even brought the functioning of parliamentary democracy into serious question. For their part, many on the left denounced the TUC for its alleged collaborative involvement with a Labour Government. They regarded the Social Contract as a form of crony corporate capitalism that
sought to frustrate the militancy of a self-confident and aggressive trade union rank and file, intent on the pursuit of radical change.
