The Early Progress of Intervention, 1973–6

Abstract

Government intervention in industry rarely proceeds according to any specific master plan. Rather, once circumstances have produced a commitment to intervene, the character and progress of intervention are dictated by developments in the economy at large as they impinge upon the specific political and bureaucratic structures of British government. This implies that as economic conditions change and novel situations requiring a government response proliferate, intervention ‘strategies’ frequently become more and more meaningless. It also implies that economic circumstances beyond government control are dominant in the determination of the character and progress of intervention as of other developments in the state sector. Thus, while, for example, different approaches to intervention arising from different types of political commitments can be distinguished, these differences may be overwhelmed depending upon the pace and gravity of economic events in the larger arena. This, of course, is not to argue that there is no pattern to government intervention in industry, only that in recent years this pattern has been more clearly a product of the manner in which national and international economic developments affect the state as a whole rather than of divisions within the state or changes in its complexion over time.¹