Compare And Contrast Wilson And Not Heath

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Wilson and not heath was responsible for a decade of decline and economic failure. (45 marks) Wilson and Heath’s time in office was to begin with optimism both hoping for promising change and attempting to modernise Britain and try and catch up with industrial rivals. Whether it was through a ‘white heat’ or ‘quiet’ revolution, both PM’s promises however never lived up to their expectation, the previous governments had badly hindered the economy for both Wilson and Heath and as a result during their 10 collective years in power resulted in economic decline, instead of promised transformation and advancement of Britain. It is arguable that much of the responsibility of the economic decline in this period could be seen to be Wilson. During…show more content…
DEA overlapped with the Treasury and the role of Chancellor, Callaghan and Wilson didn’t know who to listen to, this resulted in Brown/DEA in competition with Chancellor Callaghan and the treasury. This problem worsened as Brown was impulsive and lacked consistency (drink problem). Brown came up with National Plan, this created in unison with trade unions and industry but did not have support of united government. Potential third problem was that Wilson was trying to keep everyone happy rather than pick best team for the job and this resulted in the DEA being ineffective and not helping the economy at…show more content…
There were fixed levels of oil production October and the 1973 Yom Kippur War prompted OPEC to declare an oil embargo, and exports suddenly stopped , as well as prices rocketed to 4 times usual price, as a result in Britain there long queues outside petrol stations. This was worsened with NUM then demanded a huge pay rise in November 1973, causing 3 day weeks in Britain. Something that the administrations of both men suffered from were tensions with the trade unions, with both Wilson and Heath had similar polices which was consequently a disaster for both PM’s. Trade Unions had come to wield such influence due to post war consensus politics and were important in maintaining full employment, as well as being very favourable with the some of the public with opinion polls in the 1960’s showed 60% people had favourable view of them. The trade unions became a problem when real wages for workers was decreasing and the price of goods was increasing and as a result Wild cat strikes broke out and this presented issues for both governments and trade unions. Wilson’s response to this was his policy ‘In Place Of Strife’ in 1969 and Wilson thought it was necessary to curb unions who were getting out of control and for good of British economy. However this was not quite the case as it upset trade unions as well as some of the labour party itself, and a storm of protests took place, including the National Union of Mineworkers, and Callaghan
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