The Storm-Clouds Gather

Abstract

All things considered, the government had emerged from its first year in office with a remarkably docile party behind it at Westminster and in the country. Inflation had more than doubled; unemployment was heading for two million and above for the first time since the Great Slump of the 1930s; interest rates remained apparently stuck fast at unprecedented levels, yet monetary growth was far outside the Chancellor’s chosen target range; the exchange rate was described by the Bank of England as ‘excessively high’, and the leaders of private industry were showing signs of despair. There were rebellious voices on the backbenches — former Cabinet Minister Geoffrey Rippon was calling almost every weekend for lower interest rates, and other dissenters such as Julian Critchley and Peter Tapsell did not disguise their dismay at Treasury strategy — while from the front bench Sir Ian Gilmour continued to utter veiled doubts in public, and his superior Lord Carrington unveiled doubts in private. But these seemed isolated opinions.