The Heath Government and External Economic Policy

Kiyoshi Hirowatari

Chapter 3 in Britain and European Monetary Cooperation, 1964–1979, 2015, pp 65-80 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Many explanations have been advanced for the failure of the Heath government. It seems, however, that both sides — those who denounce the government as a failure and those who view it with some sympathy for its unprecedented plight — agree that Heath’s U-turn from ‘quiet revolution’ to ‘new capitalism’ was largely responsible for its failure. On 22 May 1972, Labour MP Edmund Dell argued in the House of Commons: ‘Our pragmatic Prime Minister, having marched his troops up the hill to laissez-faire and disengagement, is marching down to selective intervention on a massive scale.’1 Harsh critics go so far as to suggest that the Heath government ‘gained neither political, social nor economic benefits from its policy reversals’.2 With Heath’s U-turn coming under fierce criticism from the Conservative Right and deepening the rift within the Conservative Party, the result was a bitter defeat in the election of February 1974.

Keywords: Exchange Rate; Current Account; Monetary Union; Basic Balance; Capital Account (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-1-137-49142-8_4

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137491428_4

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