Furthermore, Thatcher’s monetarist policies to tackle inflation faced opposition due to their highly controversial nature. Although these policies were successful in reducing inflation from 19% in 1979 to 5% in 1983, they had detrimental effects on the social sector. Unemployment rose to almost three million, which in turn caused social upheaval and massive unpopularity for Thatcher; leading to riots in Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester. This therefore highlights the reason for opposition in this area of Thatcher’s economic policy, as the controversy of her monetarist policies ultimately lead to implications and increased resistance against her social policies, which is reflected when Thatcher abandoned her monetarist policies in 1985. However, although many aspects of Thatcher’s social and economic policies facing opposition were down to their controversial nature, her attack on the union powers was also an influence to opposition due to its
Bad working conditions in the country sparked numerous strikes and riots, and the sheer lack of exports meant there was an increase of imports, and therefore costs continued to rise. Mussolini saw that the economy was in dire need of vast improvement, and along with it the standard of living was nearly in a state of disrepair. Throughout the years 1922-1943 Mussolini formulated 4 key Battles to aid and expand his economy; Battle of the Grain (1925), Battle of the Lira (1926), Battle of the Births (1927), and the Battle of the Marshes (1928). From 1922 to 1925, Mussolini's regime pursued a laissez-faire economic policy under the liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani. De Stefani reduced taxes, regulations, and trade restrictions and allowed businesses to compete with one another.
Although finance played a significant role in the deterioration of the relationship between Crown and Parliament, it was not the lone reason, due to the fact that there were other more important factors including foreign policy and Buckingham which caused the collapse in the relationship between Crown and Parliament. Firstly, finance was a critical factor in the breakdown in the relationship. For example, the Forced Loan caused a great amount of tension between Crown and Parliament and therefore, worsened relations. It worsened relations because Charles enforced illegal taxations on his subjects without any form of consent from Parliament. He required that his subjects “loan him the equivalent of five subsidies” and although it was “opposed by significant numbers in the localities,” the taxation still occurred as the government had “employed all its powers to eliminate resistance”.
How far do these 3 sources suggest that it was the sudden deterioration in the trade figures during the election campaign that explains labours unexpected defeat in the general election? Source 1 provides no direct evidence to show how labour was defeated in the 1970 election however economically in the 1960's, Labour and Harold Wilson had struggled. They inherited a large trade deficit and this became most apparent in 1966 once Labour had increased their majority. The problem was that to help ease the issue, Wilson would have to devalue the pound so that the UK's exports would be cheaper and therefore more competitive in price. However this was something that Wilson vowed he would not do.
Due to this debt the government then resulted in printing money and this resulted in inflation. Inflation destroyed savings of the middle class and especially effected land owners as they relied on rent. State employees and factory workers purchasing power fell by 25% because of the value of the Iire. The state also spent 148 billion lire on the war effort and inflation increased with the price index quadrupling, and rising from 100 in 1914 to 413 in 1918. Conscription soaked up rural unemployment and some peasants grew prosperous.
The 1600’s was a period of great hardship for the whole of England. The countries general prices combined with a level degree of wage meant that people became much worse off. Moreover, the idea that in the period of between 1642-1649, Britain was undergoing massive change due to the Civil War. These both attributed to people becoming poorer….or was it just the simple idea that none of this would have affected them so harshly, if they hadn’t of been so lazy? In my opinion they were not affected mainly by laziness, but by the general economic slump at the time.
The Wall Street Crash in America in 1929 had a great impact on Europe in the subsequent years. It left countries with stockpiles of unsold goods along with the production of goods being greatly reduced resulting in unemployment soaring to extremely high levels and also leading to many national financial crises. Britain and Germany were two of the key European economies which both had extremely high levels of unemployment. In the British case the high levels of unemployment were mainly due to intensely severe deflation which was induced by the authorities. They wanted to depress prices and rise the value of the pound to what it was compared to the dollar before the war.
One of the possible factors was the genuine concern that they felt towards the poor. However, this argument cannot be ignored but it would prove too simplistic and explanation on why the Liberals introduced the social reforms. There are a number of other factors which led too the introduction of the Reforms one being the social reports of Booth and Rowntree that confirmed poverty was a big issue. Also the fact that Britain feared her place being a top industrial power was threatened by a lack of good workers, britains Empire was still extremely important to her and they had discovered when recruiting for the Boer war that many men were unable to fight due to poor health. Some even argue that the Reforms were introduced for politically selfish reasons as they believed that the Liberals felt threatened by the Labour party.
One of the other key long term causes was the industrial recession that was taking place after the “great spurt” within Russia. The determination of the government to industrialise Russia had come at a huge cost. The upper classes were furious about the fact that Russia was barely surviving on loans from
However after the petrol crises the world economic status has dramatically changed. Central Banks of the industrialized countries started to perform disinflationary policies and the interest rates that were even negative in real terms prior to the petrol shocks has increased considerably. In this regard global recession emerged which resulted immense decrease in export income of developing countries meaning that increasing balance of payments problems occurred. Thus developing countries has faced difficulties in new borrowing and even defaulted. In this context developing countries became dependent to the Bretton Woods Institutions like WB and IMF.