The politics of strife and dole

got even Lord Butler could have im- proved on Mr Victor Feather's comment that the Prime Minister's speech to the tuc conference was 'none the worse for not having any new thinking in it' Indeed, in style as well as in content it was the mixture as before: the routine 'tough talk' as a substitute for action. Thus the void created by the abandon- ment (in the face of union and back- bench pressure) of Mrs Castle's great industrial Relations Bill is filled by tough' Wilsonian phrases about `dis- Liplining' irresponsible strikers and the trade unions' duty 'to take action against recalcitrant members'.

It is difficult to see who (except per- haps Mr Wilson himself) is any longer taken in by this sort of performance. Certainly not the thousand assembled trade unionists, who were far too cynical to express any of the anger they would certainly have shown had they believed for a moment that any of this was likely to come to pass. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister took care to include his standard passage designed to stay any anger that might threaten to rise in the breasts of the faithful: 'In this current financial year total provision for the social services amounts to £8,800 million, compared with £5,200 million in the financial year ending March 1964, the last full year before we took office, an increase of 70 per cent . . . When this Government's record comes to be assessed, let there be those who recognise that against the background of a grim economic crisis, of grave international economic difficulties, we have had the compassion and the courage to make provision on an un- precedented scale for those amongst us who were in the greatest need of help.'

It is, however, here, more than any- where else on the political scene, that the new thinking whose absence Mr Feather so percipiently noted is most needed. And this applies to both political parties. For

Labour, of course, the more public spend- ing (provided it is not on defence) the better: the sky's the limit. The Conserva- tives, for their part, have indeed noted With some alarm that public spending

has been rising considerably faster than the economy as a whole (a shade over 43 Per cent of gross national product in 1964, it is now getting on for 53 per cent) and that this implies steadily rising

taxation, an evil whose effect on incen- tives they dismayingly seem to condemn far more readily than they do its erosion of the individual's freedom to choose how he is to spend the money he earns.

But when it comes to the point of what is actually going to be done about public spending, the Tories can manage little more than a general muttering about the

abolition of the DEA and the Land Com- mission, some pruning of the nationalised

industries and a phasing out of farm sub- sidies—and barely a squeak about the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on indiscriminate hand-outs to private industry.

This is chicken feed. As Mr Wilson's own figures imply, far and away the biggest chunk of public spending is accounted for by the social services (notably social security benefits and education), and it is this sector that has been showing the fastest growth. If the Conservatives mean business about public spending and taxation, then they have got to have the courage (to use Mr Wilson's term in a more appropriate context) to tackle the social services; and they will not carry conviction until they make it clear that they are prepared to do so.

But how? In education, the fact that we (that is, the generality of taxpayers) are currently spending almost £1,000 year on each and every one of a privileged minority of 400,000 students, so that we may equip them to earn substantially more than the ordinary taxpayer does, is an obvious lunacy; and a gradual switch from the present system of student grants to one of student loans is long overdue. Yet what of social security proper— apart, that is, from the obvious need to kill Mr Crossman's grandiose scheme to provide everyone compulsorily with a bigger pension than they want?

We publish on pages 300-303 of this issue of the SPECTATOR an exceptionally long special report on the supplementary benefits system—the former national assistance. It is, to be sure, only one man's experience; but that one man is an official of the Supplementary Benefits Commission of many years standing, who would lose his job instantly if his true identity were known. For his report reveals the extent of the widespread absurdities and fiddles, the waste and misuse of taxpayers' money, that no one who has had any personal dealings with

the supplementary benefits system can have failed to encounter. Not least, the article underlines the degree to which Britain. alone among industrial nations. actually subsidises the very kind of indus- trial strife Mr Wilson so 'toughly' con- demned.

The total cost of supplementary bene- fits is now running at an annual rate of sonic £500 million, having doubled over the past five years. Even so, this is less than a quarter of the spending on National Insurance benefits; but politic- ally its importance is crucial. For one thing, supplementary benefits theoretic- ally go to those who, in Mr Wilson's words, are 'in the greatest need of help'. If even this system proves suspect, then there is all the more reason to subject to critical scrutiny every other aspect of the welfare state.

For the Tories, in particular. it poses a challenge. In the first place, can their theoretical preference for benefits in cash rather than in kind sur- vive the diversion of money, intended for children's needs, to parental luxuries? More important still, how can their emphasis on selective welfare, the con- centration of benefit where need is greatest, be sustained when the supple- mentary benefit system. which in principle does just this, is so inefficient and (to the dismay of those who have to administer it) corrupt? Might it not be desirable to try and redefine need, so that it is no longer simply a financial matter (the `negative income tax' notion), but so that a distinction is drawn between genuine and unavoidable hardship, such as that suffered by the mentally and physically disabled, and the self-imposed hardship of the striker or the hippie?

And this in turn leads to a still more fundamental reappraisal of the welfare state. The man in the street is all in favour of a redistribution of income from the rich to the poor, although it probably matters less to him than most politicians imagine. But the concept of a redistri- bution from the hardworking to the idle.

which is what he daily sees around him.

is a prime cause of the cynicism and erosion of moral values that has become so widespread. The Labour party is now trying to portray itself as the party of life and soul. To most people it appears rather as the party of strife and dole. But the alternative has yet to be propounded.