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The TUC has today (Wednesday) set out how the UK can recover from the coronavirus economic crisis, stop the despair of mass unemployment and set working families on a path to prosperity.   

Alongside the report, the TUC publishes analysis showing that the fastest recoveries from economic crises in UK history were based on investment for growth, not cuts to services, deregulation and tax breaks for millionaires and bosses.  

75 years on from VE Day, the UK should emulate the post-war recovery  

TUC analysis shows that the decade of investment for growth (1947-57) that followed World WarTwo achieved an average growth rate of 3.3% But the decade of cuts (2009-19) that followed the bankers’ crisis achieved average growth of just 1.9%. 

These examples are part of a wider pattern for the UK’s responses to economic crises over the last century. The UK recovers better and faster when the approach is investment for growth, prioritising workers’ wages, strong public services, a decent safety net and building the capacity of both private and public sectors. 

Approaches based on cuts to spending only serve to hold back the whole economy. This can be seen not only during 2009-2019, but also during 1921-31, when severe cuts meant growth averaged just1.9%. 

In both 1921-1931 and 2009-2019, slow growth led to higher national debt. By contrast, periods of recovery based on investment for growth have reduced national debt, because they are successful at generating broad growth and making the country wealthier. 

A plan to get Britain growing out of the crisis – and stop mass unemployment  

The pandemic alone did not cause this economic crisis. It was made worse by a decade of austerity and failure to strengthen the UK’s economy. Choosing the wrong approach to recovery now risks embedding low growth, long-term unemployment and all the social ills that go alongside.     

An investment for growth approach means taking action on six key areas:  

  1. Decent work and a new way of doing business: New business models based on fairer employment relationships. A fairer share for workers of the wealth they create, with a higher minimum wage and new collective bargaining rights. 

  1. Sustainable industry: Economic stimulus for a just transition to net zero carbon. Rebuilding the UK’s industrial capacity with modern tech and training in new skills.  

  1. A real safety net: Reforms to social security to provide help faster and prevent poverty. A job guarantee scheme so everyone can work and long-term unemployment does not take hold.  

  1. Rebuilding public services: Bringing our public services back to full strength, with decent pay for those who looked after us in the crisis, and a new focus on good jobs and direct employment in social care.  

  1. Equality at work: Specific actions to make sure women, disabled people and BME groups do not suffer disproportionately from the impact of the coronavirus recession.  

  1. International solidarity: New international rules must prioritise decent jobs and public services for all. 

The evidence from the post-war recovery is that this investment for growth recovery plan can pay for itself. Millions of working families with higher disposable income create the economic demand needed for strong growth and healthy public finances. Stronger public services and an effective safety net will support people to start and grow businesses, and will better protect against a future pandemic. 

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:  

“The UK’s weak economy and ten years of cuts left our country unprepared for coronavirus. Only the dedication of millions of individual workers kept our country going.  

“Let’s learn the lesson. Together, we can work our way safely out of this recession. Let’s make sure everyone has a decent job, with fair pay and security for their family. Let’s thank our key workers with the pay rise they have earned. And let’s not consign millions of our fellow citizens to the despair of unemployment.  

“Today the TUC publishes our plan for recovery. At its heart is good jobs. Jobs in a reborn UK manufacturing sector. Jobs in a social care sector finally getting some respect. Jobs in the green tech of the future. Let’s rebuild our country through hard work, determination and investment in all our futures – not cuts to spending, deregulation and tax breaks for millionaires and bosses.”  

She added:  

“Seventy-five years ago, Britain was bloodied, battered – and broke. Yet after the war Britain’s economy grew faster than ever before. We did it not by pay freezes and cuts, but making the priority decent jobs for everyone, new homes, infrastructure and a new national health service.   

“So let’s channel the spirit of 1945. Coronavirus doesn’t have to equal mass unemployment and a poorer, meaner country. We can do what the post-war generation did: grow our way out of this crisis and build a better life for everyone.”  

Editors note

Full report: The report – A Better Recovery: learning the lessons of the coronavirus crisis to create a stronger, fairer economy – is here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-05/TUC%20Report%20%27A%20Better%20Recovery%27.pdf  

Mass unemployment: Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that the unemployment count could reach 3m people as a consequence of the coronavirus crisishttps://obr.uk/coronavirus-analysis/ 

TUC analysis: UK economic recoveries over the last century, ranked from strongest to weakest 

Annual average 

Percentage points of GDP 

Rank 

Decade 

GDP growth, % 

Of which governmentexpenditure, ppts 

Public debt at start of decade 

Change in public debt 

1931-41 

4.5  

9.9 

181 

-21 

1947-57 

3.3  

0.5 

244 

-123 

1991-2001 

2.9  

0.3 

23 

+6 

1981-91 

2.9  

0.2 

43 

-19 

1975-85 

2.3  

0.2 

54 

-15 

1921-31 

1.9  

0.0 

160 

+20 

2009-19 

1.9  

0.2 

59 

+22 

Notes and commentary: 

  1. The table compares economic recoveries over the past century, with outcomes measured over decades beginning at the trough of each recession. 1981-91 and 1975-85 are overlapping episodes, each marked by a separate period of recession at the outset. 

  1. The analysis is based on the Bank of England historic data resource and latest ONS National Accounts and Public Sector Finance datasets; public sector debt figures exclude public sector banks. 

  1. Figures show average annual growth for GDP and government consumption expenditure in real terms; the level of public debt as a share of GDP at the start of each recovery, and the change over the decade. 

  1. The results show the best public sector finance outcomes coinciding with episodes when priority was given to strengthening social infrastructure and the economy, above all under the Attlee government after the Second World War. These outcomes (and those of the 1930s) reflected the hard-fought lessons of the 1920s and the great depression, Keynes’s work, the influence on the UK of Roosevelt’s New Deal and wider thinking in the UK to which trade unions made a major contribution.  

  1. Over the 1947-57 recovery the 0.5 ppts per year contribution of government consumption to GDP growth was more than double the average across all other recoveries (excepting 1931-41, when the figures are distorted by spending ahead of the Second World War).  And GDP growth over the 1947-57 recovery was broad based, with strong (public and private) investment and exports significantly outstripping imports (the only recovery when this happened). 

  1. In stark contrast are the outcomes of the 1920s and the last decade. In the 1920s, the ‘Geddes Axe’ cuts of the Conservative-Liberal coalition government implemented austerity.And in the last decade is was Osborne who wielded the axe as the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government implemented an austerity programme. It has been a hard way of rediscovering the lessons once learned after the 1920s. 

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