First Steps Towards a Solution

Abstract

In the winter of 1975 and the spring of 1976 it became clear that several members of the British Labour government saw Britain’s economic predicament in terms very similar to those set out in this book and the previously published ‘Declining Britain’ articles. On 20 November 1975 Mr Harold Wilson made his celebrated Eastbourne speech where he said that British local government had seen a considerable increase in the number of chiefs working for it at the expense of the Indians, ‘the people who are doing the work on the spot’.¹ On 25 February 1976, the Chancellor Mr Healey said in a major speech that:

The TUC and Labour party are united in believing that the steady contraction in our manufacturing industry is the main reason for our disappointing economic performance since the war. This contraction must be halted and reversed. But we cannot reverse the trend if we plan to take more resources into the public services.

It is not just the question of material resources. In recent years our competitors have increased the manpower in their manufacturing industry; we have seen a massive shift of manpower out of manufacturing into the public services. Local authority manpower alone rose from 1,250,000 in 1960 to nearly 3,000,000 in 1975. We cannot afford to continue eroding the foundation of our prosperity in this way.²