14. A Critical Eye on British Economic Policy

This chapter looks at two pamphlets written by Colin Clark in the 1960s which outlined his criticisms of British economic policy. In Growthmanship (1961), Clark assailed the popular convention that Britain simply needed to invest more to achieve higher growth rates. Capital, he argued, was created by growth rather than growth being a function of investment. Moreover, productivity growth came more from ‘human factors’ such as knowledge, organisation, education and enterprise. All this this meant a revival of the competitive spirit, fewer restrictive practices and lower taxation. In Taxmanship (1964). Clark recycled his views that high taxation impaired productivity and aggregate supply, as well as his espousal of the 25% tax limit. Elsewhere he was aghast that the British Labour Party was embracing ‘ancient errors’ such as the idea that services ‘do not really count’ and that ‘only material goods constitute the national product’. Clark was unimpressed with the Wilson Government’s espousal of planning and growth targets, likening it to reducing economic policy to medieval alchemy or witchcraft. He was also sceptical about the efficacy of incomes or wages policy.