A Modern History of the Labour Party: The Labour Government 1964-70: "Let's Go with Labour"

Labour Briefing no. 74, 7 December 1988, p. 6

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

By-line as printed: Phil Hearse (Islington North CLP).

Labour won the 1964 General Election in the midst of a growing realisation that despite the unprecedented prosperity of the 1950s, British capitalism was stagnating. Labour's new Leader Harold Wilson fought the election on the promise that Labour would unleash the "white heat of the technological revolution".

The image of Labour as a modernising party, against the Tories' party of decline, was summed up in Labour's election slogan: "Let's Go with Labour — and we'll get things done."

Ruling class house journals like the Economist and Financial Times backed a Labour government.

Wilson's reputation as an old Bevanite with unilateralist sympathies excited expectations of a "left" Labour government. But just 18 months of Wilson disabused naive expectations.

Labour did repeal the hated Rent Act, giving tenants more security. A mild Race Relations Act was passed.

But on Polaris and NATO Wilson showed no signs of his supposed unilateralism: following the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, the threat of nuclear war was perceived to have retreated; and CND was in decline.

In 1965, the white settler government of Rhodesia, still a British colony, made a declaration of independence — "UDI". Wilson's government took no effective action.

Labour's parliamentary majority was just four. The attempt to renationalise steel was defeated by the defection of two right wing Labour MPs.

Majority

So Wilson went for a second election in 1966, winning a majority of 97, seen as a mandate to push through economic and social change.

Wilson and his Minister of Economic Affairs, George Brown, now presented their "National Plan", which, like the "planning agreements" of the 1970s, proposed an investment pact with capitalism.

Formal agreement of leading industrialists did not, however, produce the needed investment. And the national plan was based on the idea of a rapidly expanding economy, which did not exist.

In fact, the economy was in a massive balance of payments crisis, worsened by the international bankrolling of the Vietnam war. The National Plan was stillborn.

Instead, in return for International Monetary Fund (IMF) support, Wilson introduced a Prices and Incomes Bill with powers to limit and delay wage increases, and lurched towards devaluation of the pound, carried out by Chancellor Roy Jenkins in 1967.

The prices and incomes legislation caused the first major clash with the Labour left, and resulted in the resignation of Technology Minister Frank Cousins, former TGWU General Secretary.

But the real face of Wilson's austerity policy was revealed in 1966 when the government launched a witch-hunt against the striking seafarers.

The NUS called a national strike for a living wage. Wilson witch-hunted the NUS Strike Committee, which included Communist Party members and sympathisers, as "a small, tightly-knit group of politically motivated men." The red-scare witch-hunt broke the strike.

Austerity

Apart from austerity measures, the political price paid for IMF's support for the British economy was Labour's shameful support for the Vietnam war.

Following the first bombing of North Vietnam in 1964, Wilson came under left pressure to disassociate Britain from US actions. He refused. Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart lamely repeated all the propaganda of Lyndon Johnson's government about "Communist aggression".

The Parliamentary Labour left complained, but they were at a low ebb. The Tribunite left had still not recovered from the capitulation to the right by Nye Bevan a decade earlier.

Decline

Disillusionment with Wilsonism at this time led to a drastic decline of local Labour Parties, compounded by the lack of fight by the parliamentary left.

But the growing mobilisation of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and the rising student movement, were producing a new left, outside, and hostile to, the Labour Party.

The ultra-leftism of much of this movement, and its complete evacuation of the Labour Party, resulted in the almost unnoticed takeover of the Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) by the tiny Militant tendency in 1968.

The consequences of complete abandonment of Labour by the hard left were to allow Militant to play a disproportionate role in the late 1970s and beyond.

Three issues emerged at the end of Labour's period in office which highlighted the cycle of economic decline and social crisis in which British capitalism was locked.

• In 1968, Enoch Powell made his infamous "rivers of blood" speech, the first time a senior figure had openly raised the right wing racist flag in post-war mainstream politics.
• The growing civil rights movement in Northern Ireland was met in August 1969 with an RUC-Loyalist Belfast pogrom, in which dozens were killed and hundreds of Catholic houses burnt.

Failure

The failure of the old Cathal Goulding IRA to defend the nationalist areas led directly to the formation of the Provisional IRA. Home Secretary James Callaghan dispatched British troops, allegedly to "defend the Catholic areas".

• In 1968 came In Place of Strife, the first post-war attempt at anti-union legislation, devised by Wilson and his Bevanite chum Employment Secretary Barbara Castle.

Eventually, in face of trade union opposition and a hopelessly split cabinet, Wilson was forced to withdraw the legislation. But the affair was highly instructive about the future trend of British politics.

Wilson's government was defeated at the polls in June 1970, a failure not only in socialist terms but from the viewpoint of making any significant modernising change.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed (disassociate; "Wilson's ... George Brown, now presented their 'National Plan'"). Part of a series headed "A Modern History of the Labour Party"; this instalment's kicker is "The Labour Government 1964-70". The by-line (By Phil Hearse, Islington North CLP) is set between rules in the first column, below the bold standfirst. The paper's bullet points (•) are set as Markdown list items. The tight setting runs r and n together ("bumt", "modemising" at a glance); read as burnt and modernising, as the type elsewhere shows rn the same way - worth a glance if exactness matters. No jumps. Left out: the photo of Wilson with Lyndon B. Johnson and its caption; "Govan by-election: Labour Leaders turn ostrich" by Jim Niblock below.