Although the death of the business cycle has been frequently proclaimed in the post-Keynesian era there are grounds for thinking that, like Mark Twain's obituary notice, such claims are a little premature. For although the post World War II years have seen no economic or financial crashes on the scale of 1929, a large number of statistical indicators continue to show wave-like patterns of between two and twelve years' duration – the conventional range of business cycles – superimposed on longer-term aggregate growth (Bronfenbrenner, 1969). For the United Kingdom economy as a whole, four major cycles in industrial production have been recognised by the Central Statistical Office in the last two decades. The longest extended over a seventy-three month period from 1952–VII to 1958–VIII with a minor recession in the summer of 1956. This was succeeded by two fifty-three month cycles (1958–VIII to 1963–I and 1963–I to 1967–VI). The latest period falls within the fourth cycle which to January 1970 had lasted for thirty months. As Figure 3.1 shows, the cycles of industrial production are matched by cycles of unemployment although here the cycle lags some months behind the production cycle. This lag has varied from four months at the start of the first cycle to three months for the start of the second cycle and two months for the third cycle. The last cycle showed a curious double peak in the summers of 1967 and 1968.