Abstract
Although it was not until 11 February 1975 that Margaret Thatcher succeeded Edward Heath as Leader of the Conservative Party, 1974 was in some ways the turning point in post-war Conservative politics. Against the background of the February and October election defeats, it was the year in which the consensus really began to crack. Over the last period of the Heath government there had been rumblings, not just about the way in which Heath was handling things — for instance, his isolation from the parliamentary rank-and-file — but over the whole notion of prices and incomes policy in particular. This was seen as excessively interventionist, anti-enterprise, corporatist (with its emphasis on thrashing things out with the TUC and the CBI) and unlikely to work. Now, as they surveyed the wreck of the policy in the 1974 election, the number of dissident voices increased.
Keywords
Public Expenditure Policy Group Housing Finance Conservative Party Domestic RatePreview
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