Forty Years On: New Perspectives on the 1981 Budget

When: Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Where: Online

In this special History and Policy seminar, the panel of experts compared the polarised 1981 Budget debate with the current Conservative government's policies and draw lessons for today.

This year is the fortieth anniversary of the 1981 UK Budget Statement, one of the most controversial in British history.

Geoffrey Howe, the Conservative Chancellor in Margaret Thatcher's first government, deliberately increased taxes during a vicious world recession after two years of tight monetary policy and punishingly high-interest rates, to tame high inflation.

Inflation dropped, but the Budget also accelerated deindustrialization and spiralling unemployment, and turbocharged inequality. It has since indelibly shaped memories of ‘Thatcherism’.

Forty years on, the current Conservative government is at a new fork in the road in its economic policy, grappling with pandemic spending legacies, the fallout from Brexit, and post-2008 economics, and with electoral pledges both to fiscal probity and to 'level up' the UK.

Speakers:
Tim Congdon - Founder and Chair, International Institute of Monetary Research and former advisor to the UK's 1979 - 97 Conservative government on economic policy.

Amy Edwards - Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on cultures of capitalism, investment, and enterprise; their interactions with civil society and the political economy; and their impact on everyday life.

Lukasz Krebel - Economic researcher at the New Economic Foundation focussing on monetary and fiscal policy.

Jim Tomlinson - Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He is currently researching deindustrialisation and the global history of Juteopolis.

Chair:
Emma Barrett - Visiting Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute & Honorary Research Fellow in History at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on Thatcherism; the 1980s financial revolution; elites and networks of power.

A recording of the webinar can be found on our YouTube Channel.