The Brandt Report North-South: A programme for survival was published in Britain just over a year ago. Within two weeks of publication the Report had sold out and was being reprinted. (World-wide sales have now exceeded 120,000 an exceptionally high figure.) Editorials, articles and reviews appeared in all the major newspapers.

Non-governmental organisations and development groups reported unprecedented interest in the Report and numerous public meetings have been held in all parts of the country. Some 30,000 copies of a summary sheet on the Report have been distributed by the Centre of World Development Education.

The initial British Government reaction to the Brandt Report was cool, if not frigid. In part in response to the unexpected upsurge in public opinion, the tone of recent official pronouncements has softened.

The change is evident in the extracts from various official statements presented in this Bulletin. But in substance, present British policy remains largely unconvinced by the central ideas and proposals of the Report, even if in some degree it is professedly sympathetic to its objectives.

Part of our intention in compiling this Bulletin is to focus attention on some of the critical issues, especially uncertainty and imbalance in the areas of finance, energy and food security, in order to show the need for international action and to urge a more positive British response.

The world economy is deep in recession, with declining GNP being recorded in most major industrial countries, For developing countries the picture is also bleak, more so than in the mid-1970s when initial recycling, high commodity prices and often rising exports sustained a certain dynamism in a number of countries.

The prospects for the 1980s in most of the poorer developing countries, but especially in Africa, are extremely dismal. In all these respects the position today, and the prognosis, look even more serious than when the Brandt Report was published a year ago.