Industrial Relations

One of the key elements of the post war consensus was the influence of the trade unions. Since the war, all governments, conservative as well as labour, had seen it as essential to maintain full employment and to keep the unions happy. In opinion polls in the early 1960s, nearly 60% of people said they had a favourable view of the unions.

In 1964, Wilson made the trade unionist Frank Cousins minister of technology, and Wilson was relying heavily on union cooperation with his prices and incomes policies (the Prices and Incomes Board).

After the Price and Incomes Board had been set up, and relations between the government and unions were breaking down, a series of Dockers' and Seamens' strikes between 1966 and 1967 started to take place, causing economic problems to occur for the government. These strikes also seemed to demonstrate that old-style union bosses were losing some of their control. This was because a lot of strikes started with 'wildcat strikes' (sudden, unofficial strikes without reference to the national leadership), and they would not take orders from the national leadership. Wilson saw this as an attack by a group of Marxist extremists who he thought were exercising backstage pressures, endangering the security of industrial production and the economy of Britain.

Also in 1966, the Selective Employment Tax angered the workers, as employers paid a tax on every person employed, to force firms to modernise and reduce the amount of this tax paid. This meant that employers were decreasing workers' wages.

There were strikes within the car industry, even though their leaders had signed the Declaration of Intent, which was an agreement to hold down wages.

The Conservative opposition under Edward Heath anounced a policy that called it 'Fair Deal at Work'.

The EEC rejection in 1967, and the fact that the number of unofficial strikes was increasing, whilst the number of working days lost to strikes was increasing, causing production to decrease. This caused exports to fall, imports to rise, and a balance of payments crisis. In 1964, 2,277,000 days were lost to strikes, which had increased to 4,690,000 by 1968, and 10,980,000 by 1970. Wilson and his new employment minister, Barbara Castle, therefore started to talk strategies.