Politics
The V.R.H.T. of U.
Some years ago, when the liberalisation of China after Mao was just beginning, a television team visited the offices of the People's Daily, and filmed its work. It turned out that some phrases were used so often that they were held in type in advance. Viewers were shown a shelf in which lay line after line of metal saying `after smash of Gang of Four', and 'thanks to progress of Four Modernisations'. Con- servative Central Office has a similar store. There is the phrase about providing goods and services which people want at prices they can afford; there is the one about peace, but peace with freedom and justice; but the one used so often that the metal needs constant replacement is 'the Very Real Human Tragedy of Unemployment'. This is an essential part of any electioneer- ing speech ('We don't need any lectures from socialists about the V.R.H.T. of U.'), party conference oration ('Of course we care about the V.R.H.T. of U.'), or statement on the subject in the House of Commons. Tories of all hues agree that such a phrase must be used — not even a Lawsonian has yet dared to speak about the Very Real Human Comedy of Unem- ployment — though some use it more often and with more feeling than others. But the constant repetition may not help to eluci- date the problem. What is it about unem- ployment that is Very Real, Human and Tragic?
No one suggests, presumably, that all unemployment is bad. In any healthy and active economy, people are always chang- ing jobs, and there are bound to be short periods of unemployment between those changes. If those changers have some money or a determination to get one particular thing, they will be prepared to put up with a longer wait. This sort of unemployment is a symptom of Very Real Human Triumph — people are moving round and finding things which they want. I think it was the Emperor Diocletian who decreed that each man should do the same job as his father — a cure for unemploy- ment in the sense in which swallowing liquid cement is a cure for diarrhoea.
It follows that the bit of unemployment which is bad is the bit which is long-term. This is because those who want to, but cannot, work lose dignity, hope and pur- pose. Even here, though, one begins to detect differences which are not very frankly expressed in political debate. There is a split between those who think that the dignity of work is so important that it overrides other considerations of social welfare, and those who think that poverty is a worse evil. For it is obvious that if the price of labour drops, employers can take on more workers. The Heaths and Walkers and all those who stoutly champion the un- employed in their speeches, are the same men who would not like anything which made the unemployed more employable by lowering their entitlements. They prefer men to be unemployed and semi- comfortable than working and straitened — a highly defensible view, but not one which they state in those terms. Mr Walker is inclined to think that he can cut the Gordian knot by slicing through the idea that jobs have prices. For the poor, espe- cially the potentially uppity poor, the Walker solution is that the state should a. pay out money and b. wherever possible, provide something which we will all pre- tend is a 'job'. The theory is that a + b = One Nation.
Until quite recently, the Wet jibe against the Thatcherites that they did not care about unemployment was true. This is not to say that Professor Alan Walters and Professor Patrick Minford and Lord Harris of High Cross and the rest are flint-faced Gradgrinds — indeed, they always seem to me far more genial, unworldly and benevo- lent than the men of Cbmpassion ranged against them. It is rather that Mrs Thatcher and her ideologues and allies were so determined to improve other aspects of economic policy that they were not pre- pared to take on the public argument and reform required to face unemployment. Instead, they relied on the rhetoric about 'necessary suffering' and found, to their surprise, that it worked. Unemployment came to be assumed in their policy.
Now the official period of suffering has been replaced by one of recovery. The Government therefore feels embarrassed when the suffering unofficially persists. When it has finished with the miners, it now believes, the unemployment question will be the first in everyone's mind; every- one will be wondering why, now that the famous 'shake-out' has occurred, so many of those shaken out remain in a heap at the bottom. The Government's answer, very broadly speaking, is that the labour market is too rigid to accommodate all those who would like to be in it, although it is no longer working too badly for the rest. It is too difficult and expensive to move house. Some wages are kept too high by law and the benefit structures, some by the power of trade unions. Planning rules, health, safety and fire regulations make the setting up of new business too expensive. Em- ployers, worried by 'employment protec- tion', and the painful memories of getting rid of people over the past four years, often prefer to run at a lower level rather than risk the horrors of having to sack new people. The result is a lump of people with nothing to do.
As it contemplates the lump, the Gov- ernment can do two things which may, but do not have to contradict each other. One is to take bits of the lump and put it into smaller piles, or to spread it thinly over a wide area. This is not a solution, but it may be a help. At present, about 500,000 are kept off the dole queue in this way. They are on the Youth Training Scheme or the Community Piogramme. They are Job Splitting or Job Releasing or Enterprise Allowancing. They are not necessarilY getting 'real jobs', but they are putting themselves in a better position to do so and, in the process, doing something of some value which it is possible for them to enjoy. They are also costing a tinY fraction of what would be needed if the Government were to invent manufacturing jobs for them. The entire collection of programmes costs about two billion pounds annually, actually less than will end up going to the Coal Board. There is much that the Government could add to the collection. At present, for instance, someone on the dole who does part-time work is taxed at 100 per cent if he earns more than four pounds a week. The existing Enterprise Allowance Scheme pays unemployment benefit for a year to people on the dole who become self- employed. There would be nothing milk" soppy about extending that principle to the part-timers — the long-term unemployed could be allowed to continue to draw the dole and work part-time losing only, say, half of their entitlement.
The other slower, more general, in the end more important side of the question relates to the whole organisation of British society. We have got into the way of seeing something which is attractive and entrench- , ing it, without thinking that the effects of that entrenchment may not be so pretty- Mortgage interest tax relief, for instance, encourages people to buy their own home, (good thing): it also puts up the price 01 houses (bad thing). The Green Belt gives the stockbroker a handsome prospect froth his house in Hertfordshire, the poorer Man seeking work and house in the area a poorer chance of affording it. Rent acts work like a good security system, keepin,g those inside safe and making those outside very frustrated. In his last budget, Mr Lawson set out to try to reduce these entrenchments, and was praised for it. But wherever his reforms pinch, the complaints are loud, and Mr Lawson's response Is unsoothing. The Government ought by i now to be able to argue for a more liberal not in terms of dire necessity, but I words pleasant and reasonable to hear. Instead of which, people still find the Fa', of Stockton, and even Mr Walker, inelte romantic, as they resolutely recommend the doctrines which have brought us to our present pass.
Charles Moore
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