REASON OR HUNGER ?
By LORD BEVERIDGE THE House of Commons debates on the economic crisis will have left most people with a sense of frustration and bewilder- ment. This is particularly unfortunate, for escape from our troubles depends on their nature being understood by as many people as possible. The first step to understanding is to realise that the trouble is not to any important extent the creation of the Labour Government. The next step is to realise that escape from the trouble does not depend simply or mainly upon the Government. The times make a call for action by the whole people. The imme- diate crisis relates to the balance of payments. It is a crisis like that of August, 1931 ; as then we were forced 'off the gold standard, so now we have been forced to abandon the convertibility of sterling. This abandonment of the policies implied in the American loan should be taken as a sign that the destruction wrought by war and its aftermath, both to us specially and to the material economic structure of Europe, has been far greater than anyone realised. But underlying the war change is a shift in the economic structure in the world, making life for Britain harder than it was in the nineteenth century. Our prosperity in that century was based on luck as much as on enterprise and efficiency. It was based on the luck of our being first in the process of industrialisation, so that for a long time our industrial products were in urgent demand throughout the world. We could exchange them on unduly favourable terms for raw materials and for food. Now all the other nations, so far as possible, are following in our track. The terms of exchange between raw materials and food on the one hand and industrial products on the other hand have changed to our disadvantage, and are not likely ever to go back again.
This does not mean that we cannot have a high standard of life in this country. Technical advance will continue, and we can hope to reap its advantages, along with other nations. But we cannot both take things more easily than most other peoples and live better. We can no longer hope for a higher standard of life than other nations without working for it. We can no longer afford the slacknesses or the deliberate restrictions of the past. That is the lesson which all of us in this country will learn by hunger if we do not learn it by reason. This is our only choice of schooling. And on it there is a real difference of approach by different parties in the State. There are some who believe that any attempt to abolish want and unem- ployment is wrong, because only by these whips can the mass of our people, or any people, be driven to their duty. There are others who reject this doctrine of despair ; this rejection underlay the report known by my name on Social Insurance and Allied Services, a report setting as a practical aim freedom from want for all the people of Britain. The report did not imply freedom from work and individual responsibility. It did imply the view that the British people can be led by reason and inspired by hope in place of being driven by hunger.
There is no ground for abandoning that view today. The British people can learn by reason—given time. The trouble, as Mr. Herbert Morrison pointed out in his broadcast, is that we have so little time left for learning by reason before we get the hunger. Mr. Morrison did not point out how much the Government have con- tributed to our loss of time, and one could hardly expect him to do so. Nor is this really important. As is argued below, we cannot well make a change of Government. Responsible criticism should be directed to helping Ministers to get the support they will need. In a free country the actions of the people are not guided solely by the Government. They depend upon all kinds of voluntary associa- tions, notably in the present case upon the trade unions. .These organisations, indispensable organs of British liberty in the past, display also to a high degree the British quality of inertia in its most dangerous form, in the form of not sitting still but of keeping on the same line of motion, however the conditions change. So, since fighting ended, the trade union leaders have pursued, through deepening economic shadows, their old campaign of doing less work for higher money wages, producing the twin evils of leisure with no means of rational enjoyment, and of inflation. In face of this campaign the Labour Government have been pitiably weak, but would any other Government have done better? The trade unions cannot be coerced by law, but they have to learn like the rest of us that the world round .them has changed, that they must now do something more imaginative than raking off for their constituents as much as they can of an automatically rising prosperity. Their choice of schools is between learning by reason and learning by un- employment. Which will they choose?
There is another reason for the -widespread sense of frustration. The Labour Government, though they did not make the crisis, were inexcusably slow in foreseeing it, and up to the present have been lamentably weak in their remedies. It is not easy for them any longer to command the confidence which the Government should command when the country is in peril. Yet there is no alternative Govern- ment. The attempts made by leaders of the Conservative Opposi- tion to make party capital out of the crisis and to win support by attacking indispensable controls rule them out as a good alternative, . even if there was any chance of their getting power. Nor is any- thing to be said for formal coalition. The Labour Government must go on, and that means that the present Prime Minister goes on.
There is no good alternative to him. Mr. Bevin accepted in the war the gospel of money-incentives for doing one's indispensable duty, the gospel that has contributed so much to our present troubles. Mr. Dalton made a good broadcast last week about the balance of payments, but as Chancellor of the Exchequer he, above all Ministers, must take the blame of slowness in seeing what was coming. Mr. Herbert Morrison also made an admirable broadcast and in some ways is the Labour Minister who could most easily get support from men of other parties, but that very fact might weaken him in his own party. Mr. Attlee has conspicuously one positive quality which fits him for our need ; he is a man who puts duty before personal ambition. He is so indispensable today that if he threatened to resign he could get his own way, if only he would take it, if only he would give a lead to the country in changing its line.
To argue that the Labour Government must go on is not to say that they should go on just as before, in persons or in policies. Mr. Shinwell has twice run his ship upon the rocks, in the fuel crisis of the winter and in the gamble of the five-day week ; since this par- ticular ship carries all our fortunes its unlucky captain might honour- ably be relieved of his charge. There are other Ministers who have failed or are likely to fail as badly. But more beneficial than any change of persons would be change, or rather postponement, of measures. I do not suggest that the Government should surrender their Socialist principles. But they might re-consider the timing of measures to apply these principles, and they might be more open to friendly criticism and suggestion from outside their own ranks. Two illustrations will suffice out of many that could be suggested—relating to transport and the administration of National Insurance.
No one in his senses, not even Mr. Barnes, can suppose that, in the desperate twelve months ahead of us, the road hauliers will be able to work with maximum efficiency if they are spending their time filling in forms to decide whether they shall be taken over and in looking for alternative occupations. The Transport Act is law ; let the Government go ahead in restoring the railways ; let them go slow on the restrictive side of their plan—the hamstringing of road haulage. As to National Insurance, there is no need to postpone the coming into force of the higher rates of benefit ; they represent a redistribution of money incomes that is all the more needed the poorer we are. But the great administrative change—also due for next year—of abolishing the Approved Societies in favour of a centralised State machine will beyond question cause confusion and waste of manpower during the period of transition. The possi- bility of postponing the change till a quieter season should be most seriously considered. Finally, of course, the Government should reprieve the steel industry from the upset of nationalisation for next year at least.
The people of Britain are in process of learning that they cannot go on just as they had hoped to do without plunging into disaster. They are quite capable of learning this before disaster overtakes them. But they need help from their leaders. The best help that the Government can give is to set the example of learning to change one's line before one is on the rocks completely, of doing for a time without something on which one had set one's heart. All of us will have to sacrifice something. Let the Socialist Government set the example. Que messieurs les assassins commencent.
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