Work for the Workers
The essential passage in Mr. Bevin's speech on the Government's employment policy in the House of Commons on Wednesday was the declaration that that policy "is directed to a deliberatt ironing- out of the slump and the booth." The basic condition of that, the exercise of more extensive economic control by the State than has hitherto been exercised in peace-time, will not be seriously con- tested provided the object is achieved. But actually the object must be something higher than the Minister of Labour indicated.
Merely to iron out booms and slumps might involve the main- tenance of steady employment at a level much lower than that of full employment. The question is whether employment for all workers except the inevitable small floating percentage can be first achieved and then maintained. That must depend in part, as the authors of the recent White Paper fully recognised, on the export trade,—and the purchasing-power of consumers in other countries is not within our control. But at least something can be done positively to facilitate international trade, as by the Monetary Scheme which a British delegation under Lord Keynes is about to discuss at Washington, and something negatively by negotiating agreements for the reduction of tariff barriers and other impediments. All the Government's plans in this field interlock closely—the Employment Scheme with the Monetary Scheme for the reason mentioned ; and the Employment Scheme with the Social Service Scheme because unless unemployment is kept within reasonable limits social service finance will present insurmountable difficulty. Mr. Bevin was fully justified in quoting the soldiers who asked whether they were to come home to go on the dole once more, and the Government's pledge that that should not happen. Memories attaching to an earlier pledge about homes fit for heroes are a little ill-flavoured. In this as so much else We must do better after this war than after the last.
Previous page
