Mr. WILLIAMS: I readily agree that in the middle of the period of which I speak the threatened Crisis of July would not have arisen if we had not reverted to the Gold Standard.

That was at the greatest Crisis in July, 1948.

There is one thing that one can say about the July Crisis which is in its favour.

Even before we had the July Crisis, even before the Budget and even before we knew what the Chancellor was going to do, I said in a newspaper article, "Of course sterling will recover, for a time".

That was two months before the Crisis of July, 1955, and four months before the autumn Budget.

Its purpose is to consolidate the gains we have made since the financial Crisis of July - and the very substantial gains made in raising the standard of life ever since the Conservatives formed the Government in 1951.

Our charge is that the Government began to negotiate at a time of economic Crisis in July, 1961, in such a way that the impression was given that we had no alternative way out of economic crisis except entry into Europe.

The Government have dropped the pretence that the Bill was to deal with the July Crisis which they had created, and we are now told that the purpose of the Bill is to deal with future crises which the Government expect to create.

The figures in the National Plan, which was approved by everybody in this House - it was not simply the present Government's plan - have had to be looked at again in view of the measures taken following the Crisis in July.

This was again the answer to the Crisis of July, this year, and the answer is basically supported by the Tories.

Did the hon. Gentleman read the announcement which followed the meeting of the Council of Ten at The Hague, soon after the July Crisis broke?

This is true, but it is easy enough to see the symptoms of our disease which manifested themselves in the 12 months before the July Crisis.

In it, there is an interesting article dealing with a very important point I have raised the matter before, but I raise it again, because it fits in with certain comments which were made in the British Press at the time of the July Crisis.

It was a great disappointment of my political life, certainly the greatest disappointment I had when I was in Government, to see the income guarantee and all which could have come from it go on to the rocks in the economic Crisis of July, 1965.

Having got themselves into the Crisis of July, 1966, the proper course for the Government would have been to have used the breathing space provided by the complete freeze to get basic new policies into operation, and even today I believe that the trade unions and the people as a whole might prefer to suffer a limited period of freeze, rather than the extended, unknown period of dreary misery which is being meted out to them, if only they could feel certain - and this is the key - that that limited period would be used to introduce new policies and a new structure of industrial relations which would allow a return to responsible freedom and provide the hope of new economic progress.

The possible outflow of funds, a fall in the sale of gilts, rises in DCE and money supply, a sharp rise in interest rates and a sharp fall in sterling, are all too familiar as elements in a July Crisis.

In the economic Crisis of July 1966, Mr. Speaker King took certain key decisions off his own bat about requiring the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, our former right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, to come to the Dispatch Box against his will.

The unpredictability of events was part of the July Crisis that led to the outbreak of the first world war; what is almost more horrifying about Srebrenica is its very predictability.

The misunderstanding and underestimation of people's willingness to react was a major contributor to the July Crisis that led to the first world war.