THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRY
WITH its report on Work : the Future of British Industry, the Conservative Party has this week made its own specific contribution to the outstanding domestic problem of the near future. Full and remunerative employment can only be achieved by providing conditions in which industry can go full steam ahead in continuous high production, and that is the question to which this report, prepared by a Sub-Committee of the Conserva- tive Party's Central Committee on Post-War Problems, gives its attention. The first step towards finding a scientific solution is that all parties and all interests should put their cards frankly on the table and state their respective cases as cogently as possible. This new document may be read side by side with the Liberal Party's Relation of the State to Industry, and various state- ments issued by the Labour Party, which is understood to have a fuller report in course of preparation. Here, then, we have a well-considered and well-written statement of Conservative views. It is far from being an echo of old party slogans. It addresses itself with energy to the conditions which will confront the country after the war, and, while of course rejecting many of the hypotheses of thc. Labour Party, is not in the least afraid of new measures to meet new conditions.
It is well that we should not encourage the assumption that the three political parties have three divergent programmes for attain- ing three separate ends. The end in each case is the same, and between all there is a great deal of common ground in regard to measures which should be taken. All will accept the Conservative statement that the ultimate peace-time purpose of industry is to .supply people with what they need and want, and that on indus- trial progress the standard of living of the nation principally depends. None is thinking exclusively of a sectional interest or denies that a national policy for industry should. aim solely at providing the best and most efficient service for the whole com- munity. Many of the conditions which are required for such an efficient service in this country are matters of common know- ledge and fixed by economic laws. It is agreed that we can scarcely regain even our former prosperity without a vigorous export trade, which, while dependent in a great measure on our own exertions, cannot be secured unless foreign countries will co-operate in a policy to restore the flow of trade between nations. Therefore this, like any other British programme, must necessarily include a pious expression of hope that Britain will be backed by other nations in promoting a sound international currency, stable exchange rates, reasonable pricbs for primary producers, better machinery for distribution, and acceptance of the principle that exports must ultimately be paid for by imports. This world problem is pretty nearly half the whole problem of British indus- try, and on this side of it there is something like unanimity here.
But there is also a broad field of common ground between the parties in their attitude to the domestic side of the problem. All agree that we must aim at continuous and ascending production to satisfy the needs of a widely distributed consuming, power and full employment. The Conservative report pays much attention to what may be called the human factor in industry. It insists on the importance of better general education for those who are to be recruits for industry, better technical education, and provi- sion for continued education. It realises the value of the " right atmosphere" between workers and management in industry, and would give labour a greater part and a greater interest in the control of its industries by encouraging Joint Production Com- mittees. and giving every man and woman in industry every possible opportunity of understanding the whole scheme of pro- duction. It emphasises the need for greater efficiency at the top as well as in the ranks, and would make ampler provision for train- ing in management ; and yields to none in insisting on the neces- sity of welfare and good conditions of work. It favours shorter hours of work and holidays with pay, a guaranteed working week, and, for women, equal pay for equal work. It calls for more scientific research. All of these are matters on which there is little if any difference of opinion. Nor does the Sub-Committee disagree with the Labour Party in accepting the view that many war-time controls must be continued in the period of transition, though they—and the Liberals are with them—insist they should not be retained longer than is necessary.
In its proposals for dealing with the trade cycle and the tendency for recurrent alternations cf slumps and booms the Conservative Sub-Committee is not fundamentally at variance with Liberals or Labour men, though it approaches the problem in a somewhat different way, with emphasis on different points. Some scepticism is expressed on the wisdom of relying heavily on " public works " ; it is not quite fair to suggest, as the report does, that a " public works " policy must necessarily be carried out by the hand-to-mouth methods practised in 1929 and 193o. It admits, however, that there is value in having programmes of, public works thought out in advance, which the authorities can speed up or slow down according to the state of trade. But it attaches more importance--and in this it is doubtless right—to stabilising capital expenditure at a high level, and it puts the emphasis on " private " capital expenditure, for the obvious reason that it is no part of its policy to give a great place in the national economy to " public " capital expenditure. Its objective here is that of all economists today, but it may be doubted whether it has provided sufficiently powerful means for controlling the ebb and flow of capital. Its proposals fall short of those of the Liberal Party, which would not only, like them, take deliberate measures to stimulate private investment when trade is threatened with recession, but has confidence in schemes of national development on a scale large enough to make up for any remaining deficiency in capital expenditure. But much of this is a matter of emphasis. The interesting proposal is made that the Government should finance the bulk purchase of universally desirable household articles with a view to encouraging the manufacture of consumption goods On the general question of machinery, it is difficult to see how adequate provision can be made unless there is an Economic General Staff and a Minister with adequate powers.
It is when we come to the direct part that the State should or should not play in industry that we reach the main dividing line between the Conservative and Labour Parties. On this the report is uncompromising, and adopts a view which is by no means that expressed by the Prime Minister in his speech broadcast last March. In that speech Mr. Churchill, looking into the future, anticipated that there would be a wide field of industry in which public enterprise would appropriately play its part, just as there would be a wide sphere for private enterprise. Indeed he then expressed a view which is more and more coming to be adopted by people of all shades of opinion. Many persons who have ranked as Socialists have had their faith in State ownership of indus- try shaken by their war-time experience of bureaucracy, and have been no longer able to believe that the energy, initiative, drive and willingness to assume responsibility which are necessary to success in industry could .flourish in any concern run like a Government department. All the familiar arguments against nationalisation of industry are stated in the report, and stated well, and it cannot be denied that they carry great weight. It might be thought, however, that while condemning nationalism' on in the full sense the Conservative spokesmen would be gentler in discussing the modified form it assumes in public corporations. But here too they find many of the same defects, and complain that the characteristic of public corporations has been a. tendency to " sleepiness." The criticism is one that has to be met, and at the same time it must be remembered that the same defects tend to creep into very large businesses even under private enterprise. The Conservative report is quite unconvincing in its assumption that large monopolistic concerns or associations of concerns— however free the justifiable " profit-motive " may be from " profiteering "—are competent to guard the widest interests of the nation, or that their powers, even when limited by discreet State action, are compatible with planning on a national scale. In the sphere of greal monopolies we shall need the public corporations:- The question should be, not how to dispense with them, but how to free them from their defects, and find the means of injecting into them the life which is claimed. to be, but is not always, the characteristic of private enterprise'. In this vital matter there will certainly have to be a compromise, as the Prime Minister himself has clearly recognised, and if com- promise, the problem is how to make it a satisfactory one. A National Government cannot burke that and survive.
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