Knights’ Moves 
Peter Clarke
- Keynes and His Critics: Treasury Responses to the Keynesian Revolution 1925-46 edited by G.C. Peden Buy this book
The Institute of Economic Affairs is approaching its 50th birthday, and has much to celebrate. It was founded in the heyday of the so-called Keynesian consensus that dominated British political economy for about thirty years after World War Two. The mission of the IEA was to challenge that consensus through an intellectual assault on its foundations and to proselytise instead for free-market remedies. This looked like an uphill struggle at the time. Keynesian economics seemed to have carried the day not only in the universities but in Whitehall, whichever party was in power. Harold Macmillan was on the verge of a long premiership, during which he often reaffirmed his fealty not only as Keynes’s publisher but as his disciple.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article is available for purchase online. Buy this article.
Peter Clarke’s book The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire will be published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Indian independence in August.
Other articles by this contributor:
The Rise and Fall of Thatcherism · eight years after
Blair Must Go · Peter Clarke explains why he once supported Tony Blair and now believes he should go
The Antagoniser’s Agoniser · Keith Joseph
On the Blower · the Journals of Woodrow Wyatt
print layout
tell a friend