‘Intractable, Obscure and Baffling’: The Incomes Policy of the Conservative Government, 1957–64

Abstract

The study of British incomes policy has been hampered by the difficulty of developing a coherent overall analysis of the reasons for its appeal and effects. Historians have usually been interested in the details of party political disputation and policy-making. Political scientists and economists have instead explained the adoption and failure of such policies by reference to the structure of British democracy and the British economy. This article attempts to utilise both traditions to explain why the Conservative governments of the period 1957–64 turned to incomes policy as a solution to economic difficulties, and why it failed to solve those problems.