I'm Backing Britain

I'm Backing Britain was a brief patriotic campaign, which flourished in early 1968 and was aimed at boosting the British economy. The campaign started spontaneously when five Surbiton secretaries volunteered to work an extra half-hour each day without pay to boost productivity and urged others to do the same. The invitation received an enormous response and a campaign took off spectacularly; it became a nationwide movement within a week. Trade unions were suspicious of or even opposed to the campaign, as an attempt to extend working hours surreptitiously and to hide inefficiency by management.

The campaign received official endorsement by the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, but it found that being perceived as government-endorsed was double-edged. The Union Flag logo encouraged by the campaign became highly visible on the high streets, and attempts were made to take over the campaign by Robert Maxwell, who wanted to change its focus into an appeal to 'Buy British', but the campaign's own T-shirts were made in Portugal. After a few months without any noticeable effect on individual companies or the economy generally, interest flagged amid much embarrassment about some of the ways in which the campaign had been pursued and supported.

It has come to be regarded as an iconic example of a failed attempt to transform British economic prospects.

In 1967, the British economy suffered from several difficulties. Despite tax increases announced in July 1966, the 1967 budget had set the greatest deficit in post-war history of £1,000,000,000. Each month, the Board of Trade published figures of the 'balance of trade' between exports and imports which seemed to show an ever-increasing deficit. The closure of the Suez Canal after the Six-Day War hit exporters, as did an unofficial dock strike, which broke out at the end of September. Having put up the bank rate to 6 percent on 19 October, on 18 November, the government abandoned three years of attempting to maintain the exchange rate and devalued the pound sterling from $2.80 to $2.40. Although it was an economic defeat, devaluation was perceived as an export opportunity that British industry needed to seize.

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