The State, Redundancy Pay, and Economic Policy-Making in the Early 1960s

Abstract

The setting up of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC) and other reforms to the institutions of economic policy-making in the early 1960s are regarded by commentators as the first concerted attempt by government of confront the issue of Britain's relative economic decline. The general assessment of these reforms is that they failed, largely due to the 'possessive individualist' culture of British peak organizations. This article investigate these issues from the perspective of negotiations on financial provision for the unemployed - one of the first issues to be considered by the NEDC. It shows that in this area the main problem was the nature of the Whitehall policy-making process and the failure of government to co-ordinate its policy position. This caused both sides of industry to question government commitment to the tripartite process and seriously undermined the entire NEDC project at an early stage. These findings are consistent with recent theoretical analyses of British government which emphasize the complexity of the policy process and co-ordination problems within Whitehall.