Conclusion: 1961

Abstract

Identifying turning points in history is a risky business on which few historians agree for long. But within a clearly defined area of study, patterns do at times change together, in a way that affects the subsequent development of each: a conjunction. Compared with the Suez affair’s impact on Britain’s world standing, or with the results of the 1964 election, the year 1961 may not seem significant. But this volume ends there for sound reasons. From various causes, and according to different time-scales, each main participant in the history of industrial politics had by then become sufficiently disillusioned with the way that the post-war settlement operated, and in particular with governments’ economic management during the 1950s, to require radical reform.