ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 covers the period 1964 to 1979 when historians have argued there was a continuing post-war consensus on broad economic and planning matters, but this did not apply to the question of compensation and betterment. The chapter identifies three distinct periods during which Labour sought on two occasions to reintroduce a tax on the unearned increment but each attempt was quickly repealed by incoming Conservative governments on ideological grounds in defence of private property: (1) 1964 to 1970, when Labour set up a Land Commission and introduced a betterment levy known as the Development Gains Tax; (2) 1970 to 1974, when the Conservatives abolished the Land Commission but retained a Development Gains Tax as a fiscal rather than a state-interventionist solution to the crisis of property speculation; and (3) 1974 to 1979, when Labour enacted the Community Land Act and introduced a Development Land Tax, at a time when the property market collapsed and there was the build up to the IMF crisis of 1976. Each attempt made by Labour to recover the ‘unearned increment’ underwent significant modification from their original manifesto commitments. As a result, the aim of radical state intervention was diluted.
