IN a recent edition of "Leviathan" on BBC TV, there was a newsreel clip with Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald introducing members of his government after Labour's election victory in June 1929.
There were high hopes among Labour supporters for the new government.
Indeed, there was great optimism in Britain with unemployment falling and industrial production and spending on consumer goods increasing.
On the international scene, following the signing of the Locarno treaty in 1928 which renounced war, Britain was on candid terms with all the world's leading powers - the United States, Soviet Russia, France, Italy, Germany and Japan.
The future looked prosperous and peaceful. Alas, in October the Wall Street stock market crash, which triggered a world economic and industrial slump and resulted in mass unemployment, brought down the Labour government in August, 1931.
It must be the Labour supporters' worst nightmare - that, one day, history could repeat itself.
JOHN PORTER, Thwaites Road, Oswaldtwistle.
Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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