Abstract
In February 1961, Thomas Balogh, the Oxford economist — and eminence grise of Labour Party economic thought — submitted a paper to that party’s economic policy committee. In it he summed up many of the perceived dangers, and many of the anxieties, inherent in Britain’s so-called ‘golden age’ of economic growth:
Unless we can increase our rate of growth … we shall have to stifle something. The Commonwealth has not been conspicuous in granting us … favourable markets … How are we to compensate ourselves then, in order to promote growth, for the advantages enjoyed both by the United States and the Common Market industrialists in their own protected markets? The traditional ‘free imports’ argument … doesn’t answer that question. If we can’t [compensate ourselves] then I suggest we shan’t enjoy cheap food. We shall not be able to pay for it … [because] the day is near, if it has not already been passed, when current output per head in Germany and France are higher than in England. This is what growth does.1
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Notes
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© 2012 Glen O’Hara
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O’Hara, G. (2012). The Use and Abuse of Foreign Archetypes in British Economic Policy. In: Governing Post-War Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230361270_2
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