Business is the wealth generator of the UK, and small and family businesses are the often neglected heart of the UK economy, with family businesses alone employing nearly four in ten of the UK’s workforce. We propose ways to make the UK an economy all businesses can thrive in.
Bringing Accountability back to Local Government
Central government at present funds just under 49% of the costs of local government in England through block grants, specific and supplementary grants and domestic rate relief.
Which Direction? Board Appointments in Nationalised Industries
Inadequate salaries and continued governmental intervention in the running of nationalised industries have actively discouraged able men from accepting senior management responsibility in the nationalised industries. The temptation to blame defective management and disruptive workforces for all the ills of nationalisation frequently disguises the fact that governments are at least equally responsible for the plight of ailing state industries.
Wages Need No Councils
A government that has set its face against incomes policies in any form has left untouched in striking anomaly; the wages councils. These still regulate, though not with excessive zeal. The wages of nearly three million workers: about one worker in every eight.
The New Corruption
This report analyses some of the disturbing trends which have emerged recently in Local Government, which have serious implications for democracy in Britain. Indeed, the combination of these trends may be so sinister as to warrant the description, “The New Corruption”.
Property and Poverty: and agenda for the mid-80s
Let us start with a little vignette. The scene is the Cabinet Room. The date is 18 October 1945. The new Labour government is less than three months old. And the Cabinet is meeting to hear Mr Bevan;s proposals to take the hospitals into public ownership. Nothing so odd about that, you might say. We all knew that Labour nationalised health.
Making it Work: The future of the European Community
The purpose of this Paper is to try to establish what kind of European Community Britain should be working to bring about in the next 20 years or so. It seeks to provide an answer to two broad questions: what realistically can Britain and her Partners hope to achieve in the longer term though membership of the Community; and what changes or developments and needed in the Community for those hopes to be realised?
Essential Services – Whose Rights?
The right of employees to withdraw their labour in an organised fashion was achieved slowly and, it must be admitted, sometimes painfully during the nineteenth century and in the first years of this century. The background was one in which employees individually worked at a great economic disadvantage vis-à-vis the employer, and one in which some employers were willing to exploit their advantage.
Education Race and Revolution
The Commission for Racial Equality, as it likes to tell us in its advertisements, “was set up by the Race Relations Act 1776 whit he duties of working towards the elimination of discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity and good relations between different racial groups generally.” These are indeed admirable objectives, which no person of goodwill could fail to share. Certainly racism is an outrage; if but only if, that is, the word “racism” is, as it should be, constructed as meaning the advantaging or disadvantaging of individuals for no other or better reason than that they happen to be members of this racial group rather than that.
Criminal Waste
In this study we have tried to achieve a blending of research, represented in our group by John Croft CBE, formerly Head of Research at the Home Office; the political knowledge of John Wheeler JP, MP, who was formerly a member of the prisons service, and is mainly responsible for this paper; the practical experience of barristers who also sit in the criminal courts on occasion as recorders; as well as the experience of two magistrates.
British Shipping: The Right Course
This pamphlet takes a fresh look at the problems of the British shipping industry and suggests practical proposals to solve them.
Personal and Portable Pensions – For All
There should be a fundamental review of pension legislation to remove the penalty on changing jobs, to aid mobility and to link individuals more closely with the wealth represented by their pension fund.
BL: Changing Gear
Between 1975, when the Company became state-aided, and in January 1983, BL received £2,051m from the Government. Except for the loans from the NEB which were subsequently converted into equity and the stake in Wholesale Vehicle Finance Ltd. Neither interest nor dividend has been paid on this sum.
Airports UK: A Policy for the UK’s Civil Airports
This pamphlet offers a new analysis of the problems facing Britain’s airports system. It shows how state control has led to an inefficient use of resources with passenger capacity under pressure in the London area and in excess everywhere else. It explains how the British Airports Authority uses its monopoly position to raise charges to the airlines and their passengers to fund its development programme, including the costly proposals for expansion at Stanstead, and why no positive regional strategy has yet been produced.
Worried to Death
After one of the greatest election triumphs in history, the Conservatives return to Government to attend, we hope, with renewed vigour to some important unfinished business.
The “Right to Strike” in a Free Society
The right of employees to withdraw their labour in an organised fashion was achieved slowly and it must be admitted, sometimes painfully during the nineteenth century and in the first years of this century. The background was one in which employees individually worked at great economic disadvantages vis-à-vis the employer and one in which some employers were willing to exploit their advantage.
The Truth about Transport
For a clear understanding of the present situation as regards transport in this country it is necessary to have some knowledge of the historical background. Until the 18th century overland movement was by the common roads which had developed from medieval packhorse trails between villages. The alignments of these had been adjusted over the years to take advantage of dry ground and to avoid the worst sloughs.
