This book charts the dispute over defence spending between the left and business, government and the trade unions between 1970 and 1983. Whereas the left blamed Britain's postwar economic decline on its burdensome military commitments, successive governments used defence was a form of economic stimulus to promote jobs and sell weapons abroad.

Forty years before COVID-19, socialists in Britain campaigned for workers to have the right to make ‘socially useful’ products, from hospital equipment to sustain the NHS to affordable heating systems for the impoverished elderly. This movement held one thing responsible above all else for the nation’s problems: the burden of defence spending. In the middle of the Cold War, the left put a direct challenge to the defence industry, the Labour government and trade unions. The response it received revealed much about a military-industrial state that prioritised the making and exporting of arms for political favour and profit. Looking at peace activism from the early 1970s to Labour’s landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, this book examines the conflict over the cost of Britain’s commitment to the Cold War and asserts that the wider left presented a comprehensive and implementable alternative to the stark choice between making weapons and joining the dole queue.

This is a timely collection of essays utilizing the political economy approach to military spending, primarily by the United States. The articles deal specifically with the relationships between defense spending and: (a) political-business cycles, public opinion and the US-Soviet relationship; (b) military action - i.e. war; (c) economic performance - the trade deficit, guns versus butter issues and fiscal policy.

The debate about globalisation and its discontents

Part of The Labour Governments 1964-70 series, this text concentrates on Britain's international policy during Harold Wilson's Labour governments in the 1960s. The coverage ranges from defence policy and the government machine to European integration, NATO and the Vietnam War. Harold Wilson and his ministers have often been accused of betraying the sense of promise that greeted their victory in 1964. Using recently released archival evidence, Young argues that a more balanced view of the goverment should recognize the real difficulties that surrounded decision-making, not only on Vietnam, but also on Aden, the Nigerian Civil War and Rhodesia. tensions and the need to placate allies all placed limits on what a once-great but clearly declining power could achieve. Fruthermore, the government proved of pivotal importance in the history of Britain's international role, in that it presided over a major shift of focus from positions east of Suez to European concerns, a focus that has remained until the present day. international relations during this exciting period. Together with the other books in the series, on domestic and economic policy, it provides a complete picture of the development of Britain under the premiership of Harold Wilson.