ANOTHER VOICE
Strathclyde's brave attempt to solve the problem of unemployment
AUBERON WAUGH
Christmas is coming and it is time to think of the unemployed, as well as those who will die of hypothermia throughout the festive season and those who will die or be atrociously injured on the roads. Before reaching for my notes on the annual sermon which points out how we are all (are we not?) in a very real sense unem- ployed, suffering from spiritual hypother- mia and drunk, I observe some resolute activity on the part of the Strathclyde Regional Council which is clearly intended to alleviate at any rate the first two seasonal anxieties.
A correspondent in those chilly regions has sent me a document announcing the Strathclyde Regional Council's Hypother- mia Campaign, which also advertises for the post of Regional Project Manager:
Strathclyde Regional Council . . . are spon- soring a project which aims to make contact with every household in Strathclyde in an attempt to locate pensioners and families who would like information and advice about `How to keep warm safely during winter'.
With funding from the Manpower Services Commission, they are creating 1159 tempor- ary jobs for staff whose main role is to advise people about available Welfare Rights, Safe- ty in the Home, Diet and Dress, etc, during winter.
There follows a job description for the post of Regional Project Manager. He will be responsible for:
1. 1158 staff located throughout Strathclyde Region. 2. Liaison with Jobcentres. 3. Liaison with DHSS, Gas Board, Electricity Board, Scottish Health Education Group. 4. Liaison with Social Work Department. 5. Development of pro-forma in consultation with Social Work Department e.g. for re- cording visits, absences and holidays of staff etc. 6. Statistical returns. 7. Monitoring of individual projects. 8. Reports for Com- mittee.
It is a fascinating document. My corres- pondent points out that for the £1.5 million or so the Campaign will cost, they could have provided free thermal underwear to every old age pensioner in the region, or insulated their lofts and draught-proofed their windows. But the purpose of the operation does not seem to be to make these people any warmer. It is to give those of them who would like it information and advice about 'How to keep warm safely during winter'. A cheaper way of doing this might have been to print a pamphlet with the essential information and advice on it, but that would have been less useful from the point of view of employment. So 1,159 people will receive temporary employment in a useless and unnecessary occupation which will equip them to do nothing else and leave them, at the end, as unemployed and unemployable as before — unless, I suppose, the Strathclyde Re- gional Campaign decides upon a Hay Fever Campaign for spring and early sum- mer. In addition to making a nuisance of themselves by 'making contact' with every household in Strathclyde they will have learned only how to liaise with other time-wasting public employees, how to record their visits, absences and holidays, how to be monitored and reported upon.
It might almost seem that by funding such desperate schemes as these the Man- power Services Commission is determined to preserve unemployment and thus extend its own life, liaising with everyone in sight and providing funds for further liaisons. But this analysis ignores the important second consequence of all this liaising that nothing whatever is done tO help the hypothermic old. One could argue that some deaths from hypothermia are neces- sary to provide public employment for all the hundreds of thousands of people in the caring professions whose occupation it is to liaise about them, make contact, suck their teeth and provide information or advice about dress and diet in winter. Deaths from actual hypothermia are statistically almost non-existent, although it has always been true, and always will be true, that old people tend to die in greater numbers during a cold snap, whether from pneumo- nia or an aggravation of existing respira- tory or circulatory troubles. More people in Britain die from choking on beef than die from hypothermia. One does not like to mention this, however, for fear that a new quango will be set up to liaise about it.
But I feel that something more sinister than job creation is involved in the deliber- ate perpetuation of hypothermia, bad housing and similar miseries. My pen- friend George Stern (whose fierce and protracted opposition to the Archway Road Improvement scheme must surely win him a chapter in any history of democratic resistance groups) shares my `I've got my 50 per cent.' theory that the Conservatives' only hope of re-election is to preserve unemployment (hence the Manpower Services Commis- sion) and comparative poverty.
He believes that the success of Keynes- ian policies in Austria, Sweden, Japan and indeed Britain in 1940-75 in keeping unem- ployment at bay proves that it is unemploy- ment which is unnatural and created by government, not full employment. He cites the arch-Keynesian Hitler's success in re- ducing unemployment from six million to one million in four years as proof. Ergo, unemployment is government-created, through deliberate inactivity. Perhaps this argument applies to the circumstances which followed Wall Street's crash in 1929, but I would argue that in present circumstances unemployment is created by government activity rather than inactivity. The real villain of the piece, as I see it, is not Mrs Thatcher so much as Lord Beveridge.
There may be two influences favouring a Strength-through-Misery programme: the far Left, which sees hypothermia, bad housing, unemployment etc (most unintel- ligently, as I would argue) as favouring the cause of revolution; and the unspoken intuition of the Right, which sees the existence of an angry and menacing poor as necessary for bringing home the Conserva- tive vote. But what has really created unemployment in Britain, making so many of our fellow-citizens psychologically un- employable and such large parts of our country unsuitable for investment in any form, is the Welfare State.
In any natural condition, a pair of idle hands — even incapable of steering a bicycle or unattached to a particularly adventurous brain — offers an opportunity for someone else to exploit them. If the Government interferes in this normal state of affairs to make it unprofitable for the exploiter to exploit, or for the owner of the hands to let them be exploited, then they will remain idle. In Britain, widely accepted government policies on personal taxation and on conditions of employment make it extremely difficult for one citizen to employ another. So we are left with the public sector, which will employ unem- ployables to question us about our winter underwear. Whether this is the result of wicked calculation or ordinary stupidity, it has the same effect. We are left with only the last question, of whether we are not all of us, in our heart of hearts, and in a very real sense, drunk.
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