Word: labor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cheaper Exports. When Clement Attlee's Labor government last devalued the pound in 1949 (from $4.03 to $2.80), 23 nations followed by devaluing their own currencies. This time, several countries-Ireland, Denmark, and Israel-almost immediately followed Britain's move by devaluing, and others are sure to follow this week, particularly within the British Commonwealth. The Common Market countries immediately decided not to follow Britain's lead, and the U.S. lost no time in announcing that it has no intention of devaluing the dollar. In a White House statement, President Johnson said that he could "reaffirm unequivocally...
...Wilson, he had concluded that Britain would have to devalue, that "there's a point at which determination becomes obstinacy"-and that he had now passed that point. Exports were hardly rising, he told his boss, and yet enough wage increases had crept past the barrier of the Labor Party's price and income squeeze so that rising demand kept imports growing at an alarming rate...
Needing Every Penny. Labor, too, with its fierce class antagonisms still smoldering and its "I'm all right Jack" attitudes, has stoutly resisted any modernization of British industry that infringed on shop-hardened rituals. The unions' push for wages, backed by a proclivity for wildcat strikes unmatched in any country, sent hourly earnings soaring some 40% from 1960 to 1966. While Britain's productivity grew by only 18%, West Germany's was rising 29% and Italy's 40%. The result was that British goods were priced out of the market, while Britons used their money...
...Panacea. Only twice before in the 20th century have Britain's economic troubles required a devaluation of the pound, and both times the step was taken by Labor governments. Britain's first devaluation was in 1931, when it went off the gold standard in the midst of the Great Depression; that move forever tarnished Labor Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald's image in his party. The second was Attlee's in 1949, when none other than Harold Wilson, then head of the Board of Trade, took a major part in planning the devaluation. Properly done, a devaluation...
...Tory Leader Ted Heath greeted the news by saying, "I utterly condemn the government for devaluing the pound," but Quintin Hogg, the Tories' shadow Home Secretary, made a more telling thrust: "People are angry and humiliated by this decision," he said. "At last they will realize that the Labor government cannot govern with its financial policies...