5 - Economic Developments

Question 1

What policy was followed by Conservative chancellors? What was it?

Answer 1

Stop-go

Interest rates used to control economic growth

Question 2

What would be raised if the economy was growing too quickly? What would become more expensive?

Answer 2

Interest rates

Borrowing money

Question 3

What would happen if the economy slowed? What facility would be easier to access?

Answer 3

Interest rates would be cut

Credit

Question 4

What would happen to demand following stop-go?

Answer 4

Increase and decrease

Question 5

What was manipulated to win more support in elections?

Answer 5

Budget

Question 6

What did the Chancellor introduce in the 1959 budget? Why?

Answer 6

Tax cuts

So people could spend more

Question 7

What should the Chancellor have done in the 1959 budget? Why?

Answer 7

Raised interest rates

To reduce spending during inflation

Question 8

Who could see an increasing number of problems in the economy? What team resigned in 1957 over stop-go?

Answer 8

Experts

Macmillan’s Treasury Ministers

Question 9

What did the Treasury Ministers want?

Answer 9

Reduced government spending

Question 10

What did the government prefer to promote economically? What two organisations were set up in 1961?

Answer 10

Growth

NEDDY and NICKY

Question 11

What does NEDDY stand for? What was planned?

Answer 11

National Economic Development Council

Growth

Question 12

What does NICKY stand for? What did they want?

Answer 12

National Incomes Commission

Regulation of wage demands

Question 13

What did the government announce in July 1961? What were they trying to curb?

Answer 13

Pay pause

Excessive pay demands

Question 14

What did the period of 1951-64 see a period of? What else was there during this period that would later resurface?

Answer 14

Economic growth

Underlying problems

Question 15

What was there a small difference on between Labour and Conservatives? What were policies known as?

Answer 15

The economy

Butskellism

Question 16

What is Butskellism an amalgam of?

Answer 16

Butler and Gaitskell

Question 17

What 2 things did Butskell want to maintain?

Answer 17

Full employment and economic growth

Question 18

What did Butskell want to continue the development of?

Answer 18

Welfare state

Question 19

Where else did economies grow in the 1950s? Why was this?

Answer 19

Western Europe

Marshall Aid

Question 20

What issues were there with the balance of payments? What was Britain’s deficit value in 1961?

Answer 20

Britain imported more than exported

£95 million

Question 21

What couldn’t Britain afford to build economically? What 2 things couldn’t be maintained?

Answer 21

A competitive, modern economy

Welfare state and defence commitments

Question 22

What were people speaking of in terms of inflation? What demand happened as inflation grew?

Answer 22

“Stagflation”

Workers demanded pay rises

Question 23

What was Britain’s debt by 1957? What was it in 1964?

Answer 23

£540 million

£800 million

Question 24

What famous speech did Macmillan make by 1957?

Answer 24

British people “never had it so good”

Question 25

What was growing in Britain despite high employment?

Answer 25

Unemployment

Question 26

How many Britons were unemployed by 1951? How many by 1958?

Answer 26

367,000

563,000

Question 27

What did Macmillan say in his “never had it so good speech”?

Answer 27

“Go around the country… and you will see prosperity”

Question 28

What memoir did Jennifer Worth write? What does it state about 1950s Britain in the memoir?

Answer 28

Call The Midwife

“By the 1950s most houses had cold water and toilets in the yard outside”