It is particularly difficult to classify the relationship between business and politics in Great Britain. A whole series of fundamental questions about the relationship between business and politics has no easy answers. These questions include how hostile or supportive is the political culture of capitalism, the degree to which the relationship between business and government is institutionalized, and the character of the 'industrial culture' prescribing what should be the purposes of the government- business relationship. Britain was often said by industrialists and commentators before the advent of the Thatcher Government to have an anti- business culture. Yet the political party closely associated with business, the Conservative Party, has ruled Britain for over half the period since the Second World War. Early comparative studies of interest group politics pointed to the close consultation and partnership which characterized relations between government and economic interests in Britain. Political scientists influenced by neocorporatist theory have often placed Britain extremely low on their scales of how closely government and economic interests are integrated. Other political scientists have argued that the British 'industrial culture' is biased against government becoming involved in detail in making decisions about investment or industrial development. Yet British governments in the last thirty years have spent billions of pounds on assistance to industries, and at times have taken a very detailed interest in industrial restructuring.

In the USA, the public was much attracted to capitalism in the abstract and favored stronger government action in practice. In Britain, a substantial proportion of the public (though still a minority) favored socialism in the abstract, but in more practical terms socialist measures were overwhelmingly rejected.

It is not surprising, therefore, that only intermittently has the Labor Party seemed to promise a break with capitalism. It is true that the Party's Constitution declares in the famous Clause IV that the party is dedicated to taking into public control the means of production, distribution and exchange. Yet in practice Labor governments have nationalized few industries which were not in major financial difficulty; other industries which are, or have been, in public ownership such as electricity generating, broadcasting, or Rolls Royce have been nationalized by Conservative governments for similarly pragmatic reasons. Indeed, in spite of the fact that between 1945 and 1979 the Labor Party held power for as long as the Conservatives, Mrs. Thatcher inherited a situation in which the proportion of industry owned by the government, or the proportion of gross national product spent by the government, was lower than in other European countries such as France and Italy in which socialist parties had not enjoyed similar electoral success.

For much of its history, the Labor Party has been a coalition of socialists, reformers and union leaders in which pure socialists have been a minority. In the early 1980s, the left wing of the Party seemed to break through to dominance with the help of some of the most important union leaders. The Labor Party changed its constitution and rules in ways which advantaged the left in the selection of the Party leader and Parliamentary candidates. Simultaneously, the Party adopted much more left-wing policies for its 1983 Election Manifesto. The results for the Party were catastrophic. Several well known politicians on the right wing of the party broke away to form a new political party which, though short-lived, helped lose Labor the 1983 and 1987 elections.

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