ABSTRACT
The period from 1945 has been one of profound change in the British economy. In the half-century since then the industrial base has been transformed, the major importing and exporting markets have shifted and growth has brought about a massive increase in consumer wealth and purchasing power. There have been periods of full employment and of high unemployment, of rapidly rising inflation and slow price increases, of high growth and low growth; there have even been periods where growth, inflation and employment have juxtaposed bewilderingly within and between one another so that high inflation has sometimes accompanied high growth but at other times the opposite, and low inflation has seen high levels of unemployment but also, as now, few job vacancies. Alongside these changes we have seen trade union power wax and wane, the pound decimalized (perhaps soon to be euro-ized) and footloose multinational corporations wield financial muscle that compares with many countries’ gross domestic product. Finally, a competing system as operated in the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries has been defeated, leaving, apparently, only one way of doing business.
