ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the reasons why the Labour Government’s attempt failed in the end and from these draws conclusions, leading to proposals for a possible future prices and incomes policy. The Labour Government’s 1964–70 prices and incomes policy was the most technical and precise attempt, on paper anyway, to bring prices and incomes under some measure of control. Some economists say that a prices and incomes policy is too complicated to operate and that the old remedy of unemployment up to around 4 per cent is the only effective way to contain inflation at certain times in the economic cycle. The Equipartite Price and Wage Commission, consisting of representatives of labour and management, was set up on March 1957. Finally, in September 1963, to check inflationary pressures which were becoming evident in various sectors of the economy, the Government felt impelled to freeze producer prices for all industrial products at the level at which they stood on 31st August.
