Promise of the eighties

Abstract

At this time the economic news, not only of this country but of the whole world, is uniformly bad; and you might well think that anyone who talks of the promise of the eighties is naive, ill‐informed, or needs his head examined. But I do believe that there are strong reasons for hope for the future; and what we now have to do is to translate such hopes into confidence, decision and action. Of course we must admit that the seventies have been disastrous for the Western world and the United Kingdom, and we must show quickly that we have learned the lessons of these disasters if we are to grasp the opportunities presented by this new decade. The major disaster of the seventies and before has been the rapid decline of our manufacturing industries; and if our hopes for the future are to be realised then the priority requirement is to reverse this decline, and restore manufacturing industry in this country to its previous success. For only in achieving this shall we again start the process of creating wealth, and only in this way can we ever expect to provide this densely‐populated country with the employment its people must have.

Citation

Tolley, L. (1980), "Promise of the eighties", Education + Training, Vol. 22 No. 7, pp. 198-199. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb016747