Globalisation before the crash: the City of London and UK economic strategy

How Labour Made Neoliberalism

“…Writing of the period of Labour in government from 1974–79, McIlroy argues that ‘scrutiny of Labour policies illustrates the need to see in Thatcherism continuity as well as change’ (1995: 192). It was a period during which successive Labour governments responded to the twin challenges of a global economic crisis and the growing transnationalisation of capital, with austerity programmes on the one hand, and proposals for a radical extension of social democracy and nationalisation on the other (Lambie, 2013). While the latter programme was more aspirational than real, it was the former austerity measures that provided some of the material policy precursors for the more widespread neoliberalisation of the Thatcher years.…”

“…Nonetheless, there was considerable internal dissent within the Labour Party and the labour movement more generally to the government’s neoliberal austerity agenda. Significant sections of the movement coalesced behind radical social democratic/socialist forms of crisis response (Lambie, 2013). Moreover, the later admission by Callaghan in a BBC interview that the ‘IMF was a useful screen’ — by which he goes on to clarify that the conditionalities of the IMF gave the government cover for the austerity programme they felt necessary to implement anyway — suggests that he, and perhaps others in the Cabinet, felt neoliberal measures were necessary and enacted independent of any pressure brought to bear by the IMF (Cockerell, 1992).…”