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Economic Strategy and the Labour Party pp 53–84Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy

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Abstract

In early 1973 Richard Clements, the editor of Tribune, celebrated euphorically the development within the Labour party of a new set of policy proposals: ‘For the first time Labour has a comprehensive answer to the ills of our society. … it provides a real basis for challenging society.’1 A few months later when Labour’s Programme 1973 was published, Tribune pronounced with pleasure that Labour was ‘now in a position where public ownership has become the crux of its policies’.2 Tony Benn called it ‘the most radical programme the party has prepared since 1945’.3 By 1975, with the adoption of import controls, the new strategy came to comprise six distinct but inter-related elements. While one of these, reflation, was conventional, the others were original and radical. They included public ownership, economic planning, price controls, industrial democracy and import controls. They were presented together as an economic strategy aimed at regenerating the British economy and providing the basis for a society built on socialist values. Proponents claimed that economic efficiency was compatible with socialist aims such as equality and accountability.

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References

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  223. A point emphasised by Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London, Macmillan, 1987), p. 27.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol, UK

    Mark Wickham-Jones (Lecturer in Politics)

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© 1996 Mark Wickham-Jones

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Wickham-Jones, M. (1996). Labour’s Alternative Economic Strategy. In: Economic Strategy and the Labour Party. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230373679_4

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