The Roots of Tripartism

NEDC was born on 7 March 1962 of curious parentage, as the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan brought to bear on the problem of Britain’s relative economic decline the long and essentially British tradition of tripartite collaboration between government, unions and industry which had reached its apogee during the Second World War. But, paradoxically, they did not go back to the wartime experience so much as study contemporary European experience, in particular that of the French Commissariat du Plan, a fact which no discussion of NEDC’s origins can ignore.