The case against import controls
Sir: I remain unmoved by Mr Robert Skidel- sky's and Mr Vernon Bogdanor's attempts (Letters, 18 and 25 October) to get the argument about import controls back on to the ideological plane from the more technical level to which I had consigned it in my article on 11 October.
I agree entirely with Mr Skidelsky's first point that economic decisions tend to be taken for non-technical reasons; but like David Hume I draw a distinction between what is and what ought to be. I hold to the view argued in my article that the issues which are properly involved in deciding for or against import con- trols now are 'technical' rather than philosophi- cal. With the actual motivation of Messrs Wilson, Jenkins and Crosland I am not con- cerned.
I deny, although in the nature of it I cannot thereby refute, Mr Skidelsky's insinuation that
I am influenced in my view by a 'sub-conscious addiction to Gladstonian thinking' about free trade. Anyway, my psychological disorders (as with all arguments ad honzinenz) are irrelevant to the question at issue.
Finally, Mr Skidelsky begs the question by merely reasserting without argument the propo- sition—disputed by me—that 'the real issue is . . . whether this country is prepared to take responsibility for its own economic destiny... If that were the real issue, every living British soul would want import controls, maybe all the time. But they do not because some think that the country's economic destiny is best served without import controls. That belief is the issue, not whether or not one is 'content to remain forever a prisoner of circumstances beyond the country's control.' Who, after all, would be knowingly content so to remain?
I take Mr Bogdanor more seriously. Like him I regard it 'as inefficient and immoral to increase unemployment to solve our difficulties,' if by that he means that it is wrong deliberately to create unemployment for balance of payments reasons in excess of the statistical level of 'unemployment' indicated by internal objectives like growth and stability. Indeed, the falsity of the whole Bogdanor-Skidelsky thesis is illustrated at least by the fact that I differ from them on the question of import controls, although I start from virtually identical moral and political premises (as I read their other writings).
In reply to Mr Bogdanor's more 'technical' points, I would only say two things: (a) Had devaluation not been balanced by countervailing measures (the budget, etc) it would have been massively reflationary (to the extent of perhaps £8110 million). Thus Mr Bog- danor really should distinguish the two senses of 'reflation'—or 'deflation'—namely, moving demand from its present level and moving it from the level which it would have reached in the absence of the policy action in question. The budget, etc, were planned to be deflation- ary only in the second sense.
(b) If Mr Bogdanor believes that import con- trols would permit the Government to plan for 1 per cent rather than 2 per cent, or indeed any substantially lower level of unemployment (with impunity in terms of domestic price levels and the competitiveness of exports, to say nothing of foreign exchange markets), he is 'drifting on into the dark,' as he calls it.
Peter Jay
The Times, Printing House Square, London EC4
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