A study of how World War II British politicians planned a postwar settlement to remedy inadequacies from the interwar years; how that settlement was implemented in conditions different from what they had imagined; and why it became so criticized that the Macmillan government tried to recreate it.

In this book, Adrian Williamson investigates the processes by which Thatcherism became established in Tory thinking, and questions to what extent the politician herself is responsible for Thatcherism within the Conservative Party.

Public policy interventions aimed at encouraging, supporting and developing small businesses are important for understanding entrepreneurship and small business management. This textbook is the first to provide teachers and students with a resource that gives an overview of how institutional and policy structures interact with small firm start-ups, continuation and succession/failures. Beginning with a brief introduction to policy processes, the text covers the main policy instruments for entrepreneurial market entry and start-up support, for on-going small business advice and financial support, and succession planning. It particularly focuses on policies that improve the Business Enabling Environment through macroeconomic policy, institutional reform, and deregulation of bureaucratic burdens. Theoretical rigour is complemented by detailed assessments of current policies around the world, including USA, advanced and emerging economies and Policy support from global institutions such as the World Bank and the ILO are included. Written by a pre-eminent scholar of public policy and entrepreneurship, this textbook provides a concise but thorough introduction to the subject for Master's students internationally. Policy recommendations in the author's conclusion also highlight the book's value to policy-makers as they adapt to the globalized, digital world.

The relationship between the Conservative Party and the organised working class is fundamental to the making of modern British politics. The organised working class, though always a minority, was perceived by Conservatives as a challenge and many union members dismissed the Conservatives as the bosses’ party. Why, throughout its history, was the Conservative Party seemingly accommodating towards the organised working class that it ideology would seem to permit? And why, in the space of a relatively few years in the 1970s and 1980s, did it abandon this heritage? For much of its history party leaders calculated they had more to gain from inclusion but during the 1980s Conservative governments marginalised the organised working class to a degree that not so very long ago would have been thought inconceivable.

The Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms (the Bolton Committee Report) was produced at a time of significant political change. The 1970s in the UK saw the beginning of the end for interventionism and ‘big government’ and the emergence of a new free market, economic liberalism. However, the same period also saw the creation of what became a substantial agenda to intervene in the economy through an extensive range of government initiatives aimed at encouraging and enabling small firms and entrepreneurship. Marking the 50th Anniversary of the publication of the Bolton Committee’s report this book provides researchers with new insights into the tensions between these potentially contradictory political agendas that would come to shape our modern economy. It provides the first in-depth analysis of the origins, operation and outcomes of the Bolton Committee, which is widely seen as responsible for the small firm agenda in the UK. In doing so, new insights are generated not only into the birth of enterprise policy in the UK but into the wider changes in political economy that saw powerful tensions between free market rhetoric and new forms of interventionism in practice. The book will be of interest to scholars and PhD students working in the fields of entrepreneurship, small business management and business history.