The 1924 and 1929 MacDonald governments
Professor Richard Toye, University of Exeter
12 noon on Thursday 10 April 2025
In many ways, the political economy of the 2020s looks very different from that of the 1920s. Today’s forecasters benefit from sophisticated computer models and work with economic concepts that were not available to their predecessors 100 years ago, while politicians must pay attention to organisations such as the Office for Budget Responsibility, which are of relatively recent invention. Nevertheless, there are some important similarities. The 1920s were a time of domestic economic crisis and electoral realignment in a multi-party setting; issues such as the cost of living were as relevant then as they are now, and economic and political tensions with the USA and Russia were major themes in politics—albeit in very different ways. In this talk, I will consider the economic challenges faced by Ramsay MacDonald’s 1924 and 1929 Labour governments, to explore what lessons can be learned from a period in which history, politics, and the economy were all in flux.
The 1964 Wilson government
Professor Jim Tomlinson, University of Aberdeen
12 noon on Thursday 22 May 2025
As in 2024, the new Labour government of 1964 was centrally concerned to raise the growth rate, and, externally, its most complex issue was relations with the USA. But behind those very broad similarities lay a starkly different policy-making world, in terms of context, structures and thinking about the economy.
Britain’s economic growth rate over the whole of the ‘50s and ‘60s was much higher than in the twenty-first century. This was mainly because of rapid productivity growth in the industrial sector, a sector which reached its peak size in both output and employment around this time. Labour aimed to raise the growth rate further by enhancing economic planning to drive technological change and higher investment.
The decade from around 1962 onwards was the peak period of expansion of the welfare state, but there was no great sense of fiscal pressures until the late 1960s. Even then, these pressures were largely subordinate to concerns about the balance of payments, the issue which dominated macroeconomic policy under Labour. Under the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system Britain was committed to maintaining a fixed rate for the pound. Pressures on this rate arose from balance of payments deficits, which were much affected by Britain’s heavy commitments to overseas military spending and liberal attitudes to capital exports. Attempts to gain support for the UK’s foreign exchange position led to complex international negotiations, especially with the USA, in which financial and strategic issues were entwined, notably Britain’s role ‘East of Suez’ and especially in Vietnam.
The 1974 Wilson government
Dr Duncan Needham, University of Cambridge
12 noon on Tuesday 17 June 2025
In March 1974, Harold Wilson returned to Downing Street at the head of a minority Labour government. The economy was in recession, inflation was at its highest peacetime level since 1920, the post-oil shock current account deficit was forecast at 5 per cent of GDP, and much of the country was on a three-day week. As the then Permanent Secretary pointed out ‘1974 was a year in which the immensity of the economic problems confronting the UK was probably greater than that of any post-war year’. Wilson had not expected to win the election; his Chief Secretary later commented that ‘we had worked out no short-, medium-, or long-term economic and financial policies’. Things got worse before they got better, with inflation peaking at 26.9 per cent in 1975 and another IMF loan in 1976. But things did get better, with Denis Healey later writing that that he was one of the few Chancellors ‘to preside over a growing economy, falling inflation, falling unemployment, and a balance of payments surplus’. This presentation will outline the Labour government’s economic inheritance in 1974, its economic policies and the constraints it faced in implementing them.
The 1945 Attlee government
Professor Jim Tomlinson, University of Aberdeen
12 noon on Thursday 11 December 2025
Contrary to wartime expectations, the 1945 government was faced not with the threat of a return to mass unemployment, but of excess demand coupled with huge balance of payments deficits. This was the macroeconomic context in which it sought simultaneously to reconstruct the industrial economy whilst pursuing a radical programme of social reform. In this session, we discuss the very particular context in which these dilemmas were addressed under Attlee, and the consequent evolution of policy and the thinking behind it.
