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.
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.
Value for Money Audits
In March 1978 the government White Paper on the nationalised industries outlined their significance to the economy in the following terms.
The Giant with Feet of Clay: The British Steel Industry 1945-1981
The history of the British steel industry over the last 35 years is a chronicle of industrial activity being hindered by government interference. The industry has been subject to two nationalisations with all their consequent upheaval.
The Economic Adviser’s Role: Scope and Limitations
There is not much mystery to the job description for an economic adviser. He is expected to give advice on economic matters. But most job descriptions it conceals more than it reveals. Unlike the Emperor, the economist does have clothes of sorts – although views differ as to whether the garb is that of a dunce, a fool or an undertaker.
Second thoughts on regional Policy
To read a book which begins ‘The first sound in the morning was the clumping of the mill-girls’ clogs down the cobbled street’ and then goes on to complain about unemptied chamber pots, is to evoke a vanished world.
British Leyland: A Viable Future?
An all-out strike and consequent break-up of BL have just been averted. But this closely argued and thoroughly documented study suggests that so long as BL exists as a single state-owned entity, subject to cross subsidisation, the weaknesses which have made it a burden for the economy and a focus of political contention will remain irremediable.
Against Import Controls
The Prolonged world-wide depression in which we are living is a symptom of profound economic, social nd political change, presenting a challenge of survival and growth to us all.
A Bibliography of Freedom
In his major work of scientific historiography, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S Kuhn argues that scientific progress is not a linear, ever-upwards process in which the more valid theories replaced the less so in an objective, open-minded fashion.
The New Conservatism
It is now a little more than a year since the first woman ever to lead a British political party led the Conservatives to a remarkable election victory, becoming in the process the first woman Prime Minister of any western democracy.
Land in a Free Society
Land is one of the prime factors in economic production and a basic resource on which all economic activity depends. Policies primarily concerned with economic and social matters can, and invariably do, ultimately affect the ownership and use of land; conversely state policies to control the use and ownership of land cannot but affect the economy and the social ordering of society.
Measuring Money: The Inadequacy of the Present Tools
The belief that the control of the money supply is a necessary if not sufficient condition for the control of inflation has become same thing of an orthodoxy. But a doctrine by itself is unsatisfactory if there is a lack of tools to apply it.
The Challenge of a Radical Reactionary
Although I sit on the cross-benches in the Lords, I am delighted to appear on a platform sponsored by the Centre for Policy studies. As I understand it, the Centre’s purpose is to enliven the pragmatic Conservative tradition by exposing it to intellectual fermentation. If you think some of my strictures rather pointed, don’t take them too personally. Imagine I am addressing some high Tory paladin to whom I might refer from time to time symbolically as, say, Perry.
The Conservative Tradition and the 1980s: three Gifts of Insight Restored
If as we enter the 1980s, Conservatives are everywhere questioning, with increasing insistence, ideas that post-war conservatism took for granted, it is not because we have read a few books – Adam Smith, Hayek, Friedman – and have been converted. It is because the certainties of the past thirty years can no longer be taken for granted. It is because things have not worked out as we were promised they would.
National Enteprise Board: A Case for Euthanasia
To the socialist mind a State holding company is both natural and a necessary concept. Since individual acts of nationalisation need both a Parliamentary majority and parliamentary time, it is the simpler route to control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy. Better still, once there is a State company it gathers its own momentum and supporters whichever party rules at Westminster.
Give the Picketing code the sanction of Law
The following proposals are extracted from a Report on Trade Union Reform which is to be issued in October. They are published as a contribution to a debate of considerable public interest and are being submitted to Mr. James Prior, Secretary of State for Employment, in response to his request for views on the contents of his draft code of Practice for Picketing.
Class on the Brain – Cost of a British Obsession
It has become part of contemporary political folklore that a restrictive and divisive class system, almost a caste system, is the bane of this country. The system is supposed to be a major barrier to economic progress in Britain and also a significant source of justified social discontent.
