---
election_year: 1964
party_id: liberal
party_name: Liberal Party
party_leader: Jo Grimond
political_spectrum: centre
victory: false
government_outcome: opposition
sections:
  - economy
  - taxation
  - health
  - education
  - housing
  - immigration
  - defence
  - foreign-policy
  - transport
  - law-and-order
  - welfare
  - democracy-and-constitution
  - agriculture
  - science-and-technology
  - local-government
---

# Liberal Democrats Manifesto 1964

**Liberal / SDP / Libdem Manifestos**

---

## Think for Yourself - Vote Liberal

The Liberal Party offers the electorate a radical, non-Socialist alternative. In the long run,
our objective is to form a government. In the short run, we seek sufficient support to send
back a force of Liberal M.P.s which will hold a decisive position in the next Parliament.

Many thinking people in Britain dissociate themselves from politics today. A strong Liberal
Party is essential to bring them into public life.

In the past five years we have brought new blood into local government by increasing the number
of Liberal councillors from 500 to over 1,800. We have pioneered great issues of policy like
the Common Market, regionalism and the need for national policies on redundancy and monopolies.

Liberal by-election successes forced the Prime Minister to sack seven Ministers and make the
first hesitant Tory gestures towards modernization. We ask for your vote at this general
election to bring about a more substantial and dramatic change in British politics.

A decisive Liberal influence is needed, in particular, to carry out three major aims. Modern
technology provides the means of achieving a new age of abundance which could provide everyone
with a richer life and great new opportunities. Since the war this country has lagged behind
and failed to seize these opportunities. The vested interests in the Conservative and Labour
parties have blocked the way. The Liberal Party seeks a decisive position in the next
Parliament to make sure that change and growth are stimulated.

Our second aim is to ensure that individual people benefit from the new industrial revolution.
The age of automation could be an age when the individual is trampled on and power is
dangerously concentrated in the hands of big business and the state. Change must be humanised
so that the new wealth within our reach is used to give the individual a richer life and
protect the weak. Class consciousness in the factory, on the housing estate, or in politics,
must give way to a new spirit of partnership.

The third Liberal objective is to apply the idea of partnership in international affairs. In
the nuclear age mankind cannot afford narrow nationalism. The economic benefits of modern
science can only be achieved if there is a lavish flow of ideas, people and goods, amongst the
nations. The giant risks of the nuclear age and the explosive problem of world poverty cannot
be mastered until the nations act together. A strong force of Liberal M.P.s will ensure that
Britain plays a new and greater part as a pioneer of the new international order that mankind
so badly needs.

## Creating the Wealth

Britain has lagged behind since the war because the "Establishment" in politics, in
Whitehall, in industry, and the trade unions, has too often been unresponsive to the
possibilities of the new age. To put this right, the way Britain is run must be drastically
reformed; the new men and women who understand modern technology must be given wider
opportunities to use their talents; economic growth must become a major aim through more
skillful management of the nation.

### A Plan for Expansion

To give economic expansion top priority, central government must be reorganised, and a
Ministry of Expansion set up as the hub of economic government.

Parliament, the Ministry of Expansion and industry, would then draw up and implement a
national plan for economic growth. It would be drafted by the Minister of Expansion in
consultation with industry and the unions and then submitted to Parliament for debate and
approval. Parliament would weigh up the implications and decide on a 4, 5 or 6 per cent.
rate of growth.

Expansion at home depends on selling more abroad. Britain should constantly take the
initiative in the drive to bring down world tariffs. Cuts in our own high, outdated tariffs,
ill help to expand world trade. They will also bring down our costs at home and thus make our
exports more competitive abroad.

The Government must play a far more positive role in the export drive. Commercial staff in
British embassies abroad, for instance, must help individual firms and work with them to get
orders and expand their markets.

The sterling problem once more threatens our economic growth. Liberals will take the initiative
to solve this deep-seated problem by the radical step of pooling international exchange
reserves.

The international reserve pool could then develop a world strategy for expansion and
prosperity, and seek in particular to build up the wealth and buying power of the impoverished
southern continents where we must sell our goods.

### Mobilising our Skills

Britain's most valuable asset is skill. But restrictive practices, poor management, and lack
of enterprise at the top mean that this is too often wasted. Three men are used on average in
our industry to produce the output of one American worker. This need not be so.

The Liberal plan will set a target for the growth of national output so that every working man
and woman can make full and satisfying use of his or her time at work. Unions and management
will be encouraged to bargain For higher basic rates, a shorter working week and longer
holidays with pay, in return for the abandonment of out-of-date restrictive practices.

An incomes policy which penalises teachers and nurses, whilst speculators and company
directors escape the net, is wrong. The Liberal incomes policy will aim at relating all
incomes, including profits, to productivity. make allowances for groups that have been left
behind, and see that social benefits like pensions, take their proper share of growing wealth.

Trade unions must be encouraged to adopt industrial unions and plant bargaining. Plant
bargaining brings the shop stewards into the negotiations and cuts out the need to manipulate
overtime, bonuses, and piece work rating, in order to get round the shortcomings of national
rates. National agreements should fix adequate minimum rates and consolidate the position of
groups who are getting left behind.

### Partners in Industry

Go-ahead companies have already realised that the alternative to negative control by the
unofficial strike is real participation by the employee in the running of his firm.

The Companies Act must be amended to give all established employees in public limited
companies a status comparable to shareholders. Employees must be given a share in the
decisions and profits of the companies in which they work. Employees should be represented
on the board of directors, or on a joint supervisory council. This is one way to ensure that
ability gets to the top.

Public companies must be required to publish more information about their accounts. they
should be published every six months; firms should be compelled to publish full accounts
of subsidiary and associate companies, including contributions to political parties.

All pension rights must be made transferable. At present too many employers try to prevent key
men changing their jobs. Experienced employees must have a right to periods of long leave which
they can use to widen their background or train for an alternative job.

In an age of automation everyone must have the opportunity to learn fresh skills throughout
his or her working life. There must be a massive expansion of education for management and
government training centres, shorter and more flexible apprenticeships, and freedom of entry
into skilled trades for qualified workers of any age.

To provide security against redundancy a national redundancy fund must be set up, financed by
contributions from employers and the state. This would supplement unemployment benefit up to
at least two-thirds of a worker's average earnings. Individual firms would be encouraged by
tax rebates to provide even better benefits.

### Reduce Income Tax

We will also simplify the tax system. The present complications foster tax avoidance and
unfairly favour those who can afford a tax accountant or lawyer. The ownership of personal
wealth must be spread more widely, estate duty will be replaced by a graded legacy duty and a
tax on gifts paid by the recipients. The burden of tax on those who earn must be reduced by
spreading the indirect tax net, taxing capital gains over a longer period and stopping tax
dodges.

We will introduce equal pay for women for equal work and give women greater legal rights in
marriage particularly in regard to property, the guardianship of children and the enforcement
of maintenance orders.

We shall make it easier for married women to return to work without disrupting the home, by
encouraging part-time work, improving training and retraining, removing tax disabilities and
introducing an allowance for child minders.

### Cost of Living

A pound in 1951 is worth only 13s. 0d. today. The rising cost of living penalises people on
fixed incomes, pensioners and many people in every walk of life.

Liberals will check the rise in prices by action against monopolies and price rings; tariff
cuts and tax policy. These measures to spread the fruits of higher productivity to the
consumer are the key to a just incomes policy. In particular we will outlaw certain
restrictive practices and make take-over bids and mergers, subject to public scrutiny.

Fair trade legislation will protect the consumer against shoddy goods, misleading labels and
markings up. It will also protect the shopkeeper against discrimination by suppliers who
squeeze our retailers by withholding discounts which they give to their competitors.

The wrangle about nationalisation and denationalisation is irrelevant to most of the problems
of modern industry.

Liberals want a truce in the dispute over steel which will take the industry out of politics
and enable it to get on with the job. We press instead for modernisation of the industry,
government help for redundancy, competitive marketing, and a world steel conference to cut
tariffs and agree on world rules of competition.

In the past ten years more has been wasted by the Conservative Government on abandoned defence
projects and other matters than the whole school building programme. Waste in government will
not be cut out unless the best brains of the country are brought into administration from
industry and the universities.

The House of Commons must also have better control over public spending and the formulation of
policy on economic affairs, foreign policy and defence. Specialised parliamentary committees
on these matters, empowered to call on experts, should be set up to allow more time for broad
debates in the House and permit M.P.s with specialised knowledge to share in framing policy.

Back bench M.P.s must be given more freedom to influence legislation. There must be more free
voting, except on matters of confidence. to enliven debate and give it meaning. The House of
Commons must be brought into closer contact with people, especially young people. A royal
commission should consider extending the franchise to those over 18.

### A Prosperous Countryside

Increased earnings for farmers and farm workers are necessary to create a prosperous
countryside.

Liberals will set up meat and grain commissions to manage the market for both home and
imported produce so that the farmer gets the bulk of his income from the market and the housewife
is assured regular supplies at reasonable prices.

We will allocate a larger share of Government money to stock improvement and projects for
technical advance, capital aid to small farmers and schemes for group farming and
co-operative marketing.

A Land Bank will be set up to make credit available to genuine farmers at low interest rates,
thus creating conditions in which agricultural productivity can expand.

We will bring down the cost of farm materials through improved distribution, grading and
marketing so that both the housewife and the farmer benefit.

## The Future Face of Britain

The skills and potential wealth of Britain will not be fully used if people continue to drift
to the south-east.

In order to establish a proper balance between the regions, there must be a broad national
plan on the movement of population, the location of industry, new towns and transport.

The key note of this national plan will be the decentralisation of power and wealth from
London. In Wales, Scotland and the north and west of England, there are plenty of able men
and women who could make a bigger contribution to the running of their own affairs. These
untapped resources will not be released unless political power to make decisions is brought
back to the people they concern.

A Scottish Parliament must be set up so that Scottish domestic affairs will receive the
informed attention which Westminster cannot provide.

A Council for Wales will be established and a Secretary of State for Wales appointed. A Welsh
development agency will be set up to plan, to lend money and to promote new industries. It
will give special attention to the problem of mid-Wales. In Scotland a Highland development
authority will be set up to arrest depopulation, and promote industrial and rural development.

Northern Ireland will also benefit from the policy of devolving power from London. The Liberal
plan will provide broader regional tax advantages for Northern Ireland.

Liberals seek also to help the different religions and groups of Northern Ireland to live
peaceably together without mutual discrimination or intolerance. A Bill of Rights should
guarantee the citizen against discrimination.

### Regional Government

Throughout Britain regional authorities must be set up responsible, ultimately through elected
regional councils, to the regions they represent. They must draw up regional plans and have
the power to build new towns to counter the attraction of the congested areas. Today Whitehall
ministries allocate school and hospital building funds or give permission for the siting of
new factories. Such powers must be decentralised to the regional authorities so that the people
who live in a region have responsibility for their homes, schools and jobs.

Regional planning also proves a key to transport policy. The Buchanan Report on "Traffic
in Towns" is at present no more than a scrap of paper. Regional authorities will have
the powers and resources to help local authorities reshape our cities so that they can be
pleasant places to live in. They must be empowered to provide specific subsidies to bus or
rail services in rural areas to keep remote communities alive.

Transport shapes the future of our country, yet investment in roads, docks and railways, for
decades, has lagged far behind the country's needs. A comprehensive national motorway network
must be built. East long distance rail transport must be developed further and antiquated
docks modernised within the framework of regional plans.

## Homes for All

The chronic housing shortage can and must be ended and slums cleared within 10 years. This
means progressively raising the building programme to at least 500,000 homes a year.

The regional authorities can once more provide the drive. Many of our 1,400 local housing
authorities are tied to old-fashioned building methods because they can only build on a minute
scale. Only regional authorities can help place orders on an industrial scale and make full
use of modern techniques.

Vigorous action is needed to train more skilled men and eliminate restrictive practices and
price rings in the building industry. Standards must be raised and jerry-building eliminated
by the adoption of a national building code. The rate of slum clearance must be trebled to
180,000 dwellings a year, based on a national building survey. A land development corporation
will provide capital funds and teams of experts to rebuild city centres.

### More Home Ownership

House ownership must be brought within the reach of all. To bring down the cost of mortgages,
profits and income tax on the surpluses of building societies must be abolished. Government
guarantees for mortgages for periods of up to 30 or 35 years will help young married couples
by spreading the period of repayment. Fuller use should be made by local authorities of their
powers to grant 100 per cent. home loans.

Rented homes in Britain tend either to be hopelessly expensive, derelict, or severely limited
by a lengthy housing list. Here the only real answer is to build more houses and end the
housing shortage. Non-profit-making housing associations could expand further if they are given
more help by teams of architects and other experts which the regional authorities can afford to
employ. The Rent Act must be modified to allow longer periods of notice and the reimposition
of controls on landlords who demand extortionate rents.

### Land Prices

Liberals will check the rise in land prices by stimulating development away from the south-east;
they will abolish the present unfair system of rating and replace it with a scheme based on
site value rating. This would encourage development and better use of land, lower the burden of
rates on the householder and ensure that the community shares in any rise in land values.

## A Social Charter

Britain's social security system, pioneered by two great Liberals - Lloyd George and Beveridge
- now needs bringing up to date. The old age pension must be high enough for people to live on
without national assistance and linked to the national income so that pensioners share in the
growing national wealth. The minimum state pension must be fixed at half the average national
earnings - £8 l0s. and £5 5s. respectively for the married and single pensioner
today.

The National Assistance Board should ultimately be abolished when the need for it has
disappeared, once the basic pension is raised. The earnings rule, which stops elderly people
who draw a pension from earning a bit more, must also go. Widows pensions must be brought into
line with the nation's growing wealth.

Insurance stamps will be abolished. Social security should be financed by a social security
tax levied in proportion to their pay roll, on employers two-thirds and employees one-third.
Revenue for social security benefits would thus automatically rise with earnings.

Everyone must have the chance to supplement the basic state pension through an occupational
scheme, paying a benefit of up to at least two-thirds of their own previous earnings, subject
to a maximum and a minimum. Employers without a private scheme would contribute to a central
fund to finance individual savings schemes.

The Liberal aim is to enable everyone in need or in old age to receive two-thirds of their
previous pay through a combination of the basic benefit and an occupational scheme.

### Better Health Services

The health services are crippled by **a **shortage of doctors, dentists and nurses. Hospital
beds are empty for lack of staff. Liberals will encourage qualified doctors to practise by
reforming methods of payment and introducing refresher courses; we will review the wage and
career set-up of nursing and make it easier for married women to nurse part-time.

Prescription charges must be abolished. They create hardship for those least able to bear it
the old, the ill, the unemployed. Savings can be made in administration and through the bulk
buying of drugs on a regional scale.

An expectant mother, or an elderly person, is often treated by several separate branches of the
health and welfare services. We will end this wasteful duplication by setting up area health
boards, which bring together the whole range of health and welfare services. The G.P. would
have a leading position in this team, and thus recover the scope and opportunity he often
lacks today.

### Reform the Law

Liberals will switch the emphasis in combating crime to prevention and rehabilitation. We will
expand the police force and the probation service, improve pay and conditions to attract high
quality recruits. To reduce the prison population, we will make greater use of alternatives
to imprisonment; extend experiments in prison reform and remand procedure; improve after-care
service, and appoint independent inspectors to visit prisons and investigate complaints.

### Invest in People

Education decides the country's economic future and shapes our children's lives.

Here priorities are all important. The crux of our educational problem is the teacher shortage,
and the first priority is to bring about a massive expansion of teacher training.

Liberals propose to double full time places in higher education in the next 10 years. Then the
men and women will be available to reduce the size of classes and eliminate the slum schools.
Special attention will be given to the primary and infant schools, where neglect has been worst.

Teaching as a career must be made more attractive by an improved salary structure, service
conditions and pensions. New methods of teaching must be developed and financial rewards given
to teachers who improve their skills. The setting up of new machinery for negotiating teachers'
pay to replace the broken Burnham system is overdue.

The 11-plus exam must go. It is socially divisive and unfair in its results. We will encourage
forms of non-selective secondary education, ranging from the campus system to the
Leicestershire type schemes and the comprehensive school. This cannot be left to local
authorities alone. The Government must help, especially with cash for buildings.

## Partnership in The World

The Liberal aim is a true world order, based on controlled disarmament and a world-wide rule
of law. This cannot come overnight. In the meantime Britain must work to build up a
partnership between regional groups of nations consistent with the U.N. Charter.

Although the U.N. is not fully effective there is no alternative to accept a wider loyalty and
this world institution gradually assumes new tasks and takes on real power. In particular we
shall press for the establishment of a permanent U.N. force to maintain peace in areas of
tension.

Britain is part of Europe and could have played a prominent part in the United Europe movement.
Instead the Labour and Conservative parties dragged their feet. Today Britain is paying the
price for these hesitations. Exports to the Common Market are faltering; the West as a whole
suffers from growing political division.

In the course of the next Parliament, the chance to join a European Political and Economic
Community may come again. This opportunity must not be thrown away. A strong force of Liberal
M.P.s could decide this historic question.

### Towards a Welfare World

A joint Western programme of aid and trade is essential to defeat world poverty. The Freedom
from Hunger campaign has shown the way. A world food plan must play a systematic part in
development programmes. World commodity stabilisation schemes can steady prices of raw
materials exported by developing countries and, incidentally, help to bring Britain into
closer partnership with Europe. Britain must press for joint Western policies to lower trade
barriers to manufacturers from the new nations.

In the second half of this century racial bitterness may be the gravest danger for mankind.
Liberals reject racial discrimination for they believe fundamentally in the brotherhood of
man. In Africa there can be no compromise with apartheid. Shipments of arms to South Africa
should be stopped.

### Commonwealth Development

Britain has a special role to play in Commonwealth development. A Commonwealth Service must be
set up, recruited from all the member countries, to cover the whole range of technical help
needed by developing countries. An imaginative effort must be made to extend Voluntary Service
Overseas. On immigration and race problems Liberals will take the initiative in setting up a
system of Commonwealth consultation towards an agreed policy for immigration, exclusion and
expulsion and the rights of political asylum.

### World Peace and Security

No real progress will be made towards world peace and security until Governments accept that
complete national independence is impossible in a world threatened by nuclear warfare. The
attempt to maintain an independent British range of nuclear weapons has encouraged the
proliferation of nuclear weapons, weakened our economy, and deprived our conventional forces
of resources they desperately need.

Liberals will shift the emphasis to building up our conventional forces, so that Britain can
fulfill its world-wide obligations until an effective U.N. force takes over. We will seek
influence, not by buying American Polaris missiles at an eventual cost of some £600 m.,
but by pressing for new and effective NATO political institutions such as a powerful
political-military secretariat to plan strategy based on a European Political Community within
a true Atlantic partnership.

Collective control of nuclear weapons within NATO could be an important step towards
disarmament.

Britain can best contribute by integrating TSR2 and our V bombers into the NATO structure.

We must also take the initiative in the disarmament discussions by pressing for a freeze on
the development of nuclear strategic weapons; working to establish nuclear free zones;
considering proposals for inspection against surprise attack; pressing for the admission of
China to the disarmament discussions.

### The Liberal Challenge

This Liberal programme is designed to benefit the country as a whole.

At home Liberals have bold policies to reconstruct Britain and create a new spirit of
partnership. Abroad they seek to apply the same spirit of partnership to world affairs.

A positive Liberal purpose in Westminster is required to ensure that the will of the people is
done.

If all the people who vote negatively to keep the other side out, lend their support to this
programme, a decisive Liberal influence will be certain in the next Parliament.

Think for yourself - Vote Liberal.

**Liberal / SDP / Libdem Manifestos**