The Labour Party wasn’t always entirely pro-business

Fifteen years earlier, having been invited to address the annual conference of Britain’s Advertising Association, the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan had told them that advertising was ‘one of the most evil consequences of a society which is itself evil’. They were, he said to a stunned silence, ‘harnessed to an evil machine which is doing great harm to society’, leaving the consumer ‘passive, besieged, assaulted, battered and robbed’.

Currently reading: The Great British Dream Factory by Dominic Sandbrook 📚