This is Volume II in a series of eighteen on Public Policy, Welfare and Social Work. Originally published in 1998, part one of creative demobilisation looks at the principles of national planning. The book attempts to lay down principles of planning on a national scale. It is not concerned with the working out of details which belong rather to the sphere of regional and local planning. Planning has become the catchword of our age: not merely, one suspects, because it is a necessity inherent in our historical situation, but also because it offers for many people a welcome escape from the ambiguities of political action.