(from
Briefing) Richard Pryke, a Cambridge economist, brought in by chief economist Thomas Balogh as one of Wilson's economic advisers, recently resigned from this position when he found himself in complete disagreement with government policy. In an article in the new number of New Left Review, on sale at the Conference bookstall, he spells out the reasons for his disagreement in a telling indictment of the economic policies followed by the government since they came to power. His central criticism is that they failed entirely to stand up to the City, and that most of their mistaken decisions stem from this. Pryke concludes his article: "At the end of July, after a run on the pound which cost several hundred millions of pounds and a period of disastrous government confusion, during which it was stated that no deflationary measures were necessary, Wilson announced the most severe stopgo measures since the war. The government calculated that the direct effect of this would be to reduce domestic demand by £500 million. This was a stop with a vengeance. Unemployment will rise; production will stagnate or fall; the amount of idle machinery will increase; and productive investment, so necessary for the future, will dwindle. While this tragic waste of resources takes place, the balance of payments will improve temporarily as imports fall away. Once again the economy is being sacrificed on the altar of the pound sterling, but this time it is a Labour high priest who is performing the ceremony." Why did the government act as it did, in defiance of all economic reason? The decision was in reality a political one: to maintain the highest arms expenditure relative to national income in the world, as part of a bargain in which military support for the United States is exchanged for American support for the pound; to buy the cooperation of the City; and to search for an ‘economic solution! in the greatest assault on the trade union movement in this century by any government.