The Labour Economic Policy Group has one overriding objective. It is to persuade Labour’s leadership to adopt economic policies which will avoid the new Labour government foundering on the same economic rocks as those which caused so much damage in 1964-70 and in 1974-79. We are not campaigning for anything new - only the implementation of the economic policies set out clearly in "Meet the Challenge, Make the Change", the statement passed by an overwhelming majority at the 1989 Labour Party Conference after two years of consultation at every level.

If no changes are made, we fear that the Labour government will run into a familiar economic maelstrom. This will entail the same faltering economic performance, cuts in public expenditure, rising unemployment, and disillusionment among the electorate and in the Labour Party, which was prevalent during the last two Labour administrations.

Labour is losing the intellectual battle on economic policy. Instead of finding solutions to our current problems, we have allowed the new right’s monetarist agenda to dominate the economic debate. Their success in persuading economic commentators, academics and politicians in all political parties of the unwarranted merits of hard line monetarist policies has been extremely damaging to Britain generally, and to Labour supporters in particularly.

Monetarist doctrines reinforce all the tendencies which have done so much to weaken the British economy for decades - monetary policies which are too tight, interest rates which are too high, and an exchange rate which beckons in imports and which destroys our domestic industry.

Monetarism has no answers to Britain’s economic problems. Its flawed intellectual analysis does little more than to provide a respectable gloss for the deep rooted prejudices in Britain in favour of the haves against the have-nots, old money against new, the rich against the poor, finance and the professions against industry and commerce, and those in work vis à vis the unemployed. Labour should be campaigning against all of this.

We fear that the European Union will reinforce deflationary policies. We believe in strong partnerships with other countries in Europe and elsewhere, but not in monetary arrangements on a European scale, particularly EMU, which are all too likely to lock us into permanent deflation and relative economic decline.

There are solutions to Britain’s economic problems. They are far more congenial to Labour’s fundamental objectives than those currently on offer. The future ought to lie in import saving and export led growth, priority for manufacturing industry, full employment, and the use of public expenditure to underpin success rather than paying for unnecessary failure.

We call on Labour Party members, and anyone else who shares out views, to support our campaign for the policy changes which we believe must be made if the Labour government is to fulfil the aspirations which both the electorate at large and Labour supporters have for it.