Power, Competition and the State

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Introduction: 1961

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 1-22

3. Consolidation or Reform? 1961–62

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 23-56

4. The Strategy of Growth

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 57-92

5. Labour’s Springtime

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 93-111

6. Labour’s Descensus Averni

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 112-149

7. Acting out the Plan

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 150-186

8. Coming to Terms: Economic Management

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 187-216

9. Social Democrats and Socialists

   • Keith Middlemas

   Pages 217-256

10. The Conservative Identity

    • Keith Middlemas

    Pages 257-293

11. A Quiet Revolution?

    • Keith Middlemas

    Pages 294-331

12. Typhoon

    • Keith Middlemas

    Pages 332-373

13. The Dolorous Departing

    • Keith Middlemas

    Pages 374-394

14. Back Matter

    Pages 395-469

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'An extraordinarily rich and suggestive work, full of illuminating asides and thought-provoking insights, backed by a formidable mastery of detail. This is a magnificent achievement.' David Marquand In the forefront of contemporary history, this volume displays the same breadth, originality and innovation as the first. The start of intense rivalry between industry, trade unions and the financial sector, to influence policy in postwar Britain, increased in the late 1950s. Macmillan's government succeeded briefly in restoring some of the original wartime consensus after 1961, only to see hopes for Conservative planning wither. Competition among interest groups to settle how the national interest should be defined made Wilson's attempt to create a Labour planned economy almost impossible. Despite the spur of relative decline, modernisation always fell far short of politicians' aims, putting in doubt the ability of even a modern state to achieve its ambitions. A series of crises exposed promises of breakthrough into growth, which governments blamed on the self-interest of institutions - without whose co-operation they still believed they could not govern.

• British Politics

KEITH MIDDLEMAS

Policies and ethics