Conceived as a challenge to the Margaret Thatcher Government's introduction of a strongly market-led economic ideology, CLES is now about to celebrate its 40th birthday.
Fresh from a rebrand – the organisation's name has now been tweaked to become the Centre for Local Economies – chief executive Sarah Longlands says the arrival of Thatcher as Prime Minister in the 80s ‘sent shock waves through some of the assumptions that had just become part of how UK society worked'.
