The twilight world of British business politics: The Spring Sunningdale conferences since the 1960s

This article explores a previously unknown form of interaction, known as Spring Sunningdale, between the British business elite and its civil servant equivalent in Whitehall. These began in 1963 and were still continuing only a few years ago. The continuity and stability of these meetings stands in contrast to wider changes in the nature of business–government relations in Britain during this period, particularly since the election of the Thatcher government in 1979. The article analyses why there was such continuity and what the senior civil servants and the captains of industry who attended these annual meetings gained from them.