On May 10th 1968 at Chippenham, Enoch Powell tried to disabuse the labor union movement of the notion – which it appeared to have accepted uncritically – that it was responsible for rising prices and the falling value of money. He said labor unionists had been brainwashed rather in the style of victims of the Soviet Union police, and had had to endure their leaders talking of the need for their members to be ''restrained'', the sort of language normally applied to a dangerous madman. ''Who shall complain, then'', he asked, ''if even the sturdy common sense of the United Kingdom working man gives way at last under the onslaught?'' He told them categorically that, ''inflation, with all its' attendant consequences, comes about for one reason only: the Government causes it.'' Looking forward to the 1968 Prices & Incomes Bill, which would be published the following week, he said it should be called:
''An Act for blaming the United Kingdom people and interfering in all their affairs in order to distract attention from the real causes and the true remedy of this nation's financial predicament.''
He added that the way the Socialist & Co-operative Her Majesty's Government was blaming the people was akin ''to stealing a man's wallet and then locking him up for theft.''
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