Ballyhoo But so far from having been called in then,
he has not been called in now—and the Government has even gone so far as to give an assurance that he will never be called in. The Prices and In- comes Board, for all Mr Brown's ballyhoo, is, it seems, all right for minor disputes; but when something really serious turns up then it's back to the old routine. Nor does the appointment of one of Mr Jones's henchmen to the court of in- quiry—not as chairman—alter the situation; which is that courts of inquiry headed by lawyers (in this case Lord Pearson) invariably produce judicial settlements rather than industrial sense.
This week's report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, in spite of a not- ably unconvincing attempt to inject a note of relative optimism into its balance of payments forecasting, comments that the Government's present economic policies 'represent a counsel of despair about achieving any acceleration in the British growth-rate' and that `some new action on the incomes policy front, to be effective in 1966, is needed.' So far from the Institute's cry being answered, the only new initiative that's even been mentioned—the so-called Early Warning Bill which the Government had to promise the Americans in exchange for dollar support during last summer's sterling crisis—has still to see the light of day. In short, it looks as if the incomes policy, along with every other aspect of the Government's economic policy with the excep- tion of old-fashioned stop-go, has quietly been jettisoned. After the latest rebuff over the sea- men's affair poor Mr Aubrey Jones must be wondering whether it is worth his while going on at all.
Previous page
