The election of the Wilson government in October 1964 was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. After more than a decade of Tory rule, for many the election heralded a new era. It certainly appeared time for a change. The Beatles had transformed music, and Labour it was hoped would transform Britain. The promises of Wilson to harness the scientific revolution and transform people’s lives caught the imagination of wide layers of the population, especially the youth. Talk about rational planning became fashionable. There were debates about automation and what people would do with their leisure time. The spread of television and programmes like Tomorrow’s World painted a future where modern technology would end the monotony of work and science would solve all our daily problems. In addition, the Nuclear Age would meet our energy needs for generations to come. Optimism was in the air, and the election of the new Labour government added to that confidence in the future.

However, as in the past, the attempt of the new government to work within the confines of capitalism, gave rise to grave problems. Soon after the election, Lord Cromer, the Governor of the Bank of England, approached Wilson demanding all-round cuts in government expenditure. He told him that the country could not afford Labour’s programme, and if he persisted with it, the government would face a financial ruin and a strike of capital.

Many years later Wilson revealed in his memoirs:

I asked him if this meant that it was impossible for any government, whatever its party label, whatever its manifesto or the policies on which it fought an election, to continue, unless it immediately reverted to full-scale Tory policies… We had now reached the situation where a newly elected government was being told by international speculators that the policy on which we had fought the election could not be implemented: that the government was to be forced into adoption of Tory policies to which it was fundamentally opposed… The Queen’s First Minister was being asked to bring down the curtain on parliamentary democracy by accepting the doctrine that an election in Britain was a farce, that the British people could not make a choice between policies.[1]

Instead of rallying the Labour movement and answering this corporate conspiracy with socialist policies, the working class was kept in the dark, and the Labour government bowed to the pressure of the City of London and the bankers. To restore the flagging competitiveness of British industry, old policies were dusted down and presented as something new. In the face of a serious balance of payments crisis inherited from the Tories, the government acted to reduce spending through orthodox cuts and the introduction of a “Prices and Incomes” policy. These traditional capitalist measures were combined with an attack on unofficial strikes and the declaration that workers needed to increase their productivity (i.e. work harder) in order to make Britain more competitive. In February 1965, the government established a Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, under Lord Donovan, to investigate industrial relations and make suitable recommendations for “reform”, in other words, changes more suitable to the needs of capitalism.

  1. Harold Wilson, The Labour government 1964-1970. A Personal Record, London, 1971, p.37

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