Towards the Washington Negotiations

Abstract

The immediate economic constraints facing postwar Britain derived from the legacy of the war which had seriously disrupted international production and thrown into chaos international trade and payments systems. On political as well as economic grounds the Attlee government had rejected a radical socialist approach to these problems. The principles adopted by the wartime coalition government of regulating the production and circulation of use-values on the basis of collective need were progressively dismantled by the Attlee administration as exhortations to production were directed towards the reconstruction of British imperialism and the concomitant subordination of the working class. The realisation of the Labour government’s programme of domestic reconstruction, which gave high rhetorical priority to the maintenance of full employment and the expansion of welfare, depended on the state overseeing rapid economic growth. But to achieve increased economic performance Britain needed to reconstruct an international payments system which would facilitate international trade and secure the regular import of essential commodities and raw materials.