ABSTRACT
MSC staff cannot have been astonished, in the aftermath of the TUC’s rejection of ET at the 1988 Congress, at Norman Fowler’s announcement that the TC was itself to be wound up to be replaced by new national training arrangements. Any observer of government policy and its underpinning ideology might also have predicted the general thrust of the proposals contained in the White Paper, Employment in the 1990s, published just two months after the announcement of the TC’s abolition. It has already been argued that an interventionist and tripartite body such as the MSC had enjoyed a quite anomalous existence during the first decade of the Thatcher government, explicable mainly because it solved problems during a difficult era of transition which other agencies were unable to address. The government’s ideological preference for a free market in labour and training policy had long been evident, however, and with the setting up of training and managing agents in its youth and adult training schemes, the MSC was adopting a less dirigiste approach towards employers. Equally apparent to observers was the government’s predilection for American models for policymaking. This reflected ideological bonds between the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, as well as the government’s judgement that the United States was an example of the ‘enterprise culture’ which it wished to establish in Britain.
