In 1976 I attended my first Labour Party conference as a raw, young delegate from the Hayes Constituency Labour Party. It was the notorious Blackpool conference at which the chancellor, Denis Healey, stormed into the conference hall to a reception of cheers and boos to announce that the economy was in such a deep crisis that he was off to the International Monetary Fund to plead for a loan to prevent a collapse in the value of the pound.
Confidence in the Callaghan government had evaporated in the global financial markets creating a nightmare sterling crisis. Although Tony Benn mobilised the left around his “Alternative Economic Strategy”, Healey accepted a $3.9bn loan from the IMF but the accompanying conditions included cuts in government spending, tax increases and interest rate rises.
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