BRITISH GOVERNMENT DIVIDED ON CONTROLS

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24150, 8 January 1944, Page 4

BRITISH GOVERNMENT DIVIDED ON CONTROLS

POST-WAR POLICY

MR MORRISON [From “The Times."] Public control had brought Great Britain through the gravest danger it had ever faced, and while there was a negative side to the policy to offset shortages of goods brought about by the war, there was a positive side through which full prosperity could be achieved. The experience of the last war was well worth recalling. At the end of the war the whole system of controls which experience had taught the Government to impose was thrown aside, and the country entered on a foolish period of boom and bust which paved the way for the depressions, the crises, and the follies of the late 1920’s and 1930’5. That was not done out of sheer light-hearted inexperience or because the Government of the day knew no better. On the contrary, in the latter part of the war and in the early months of the peace the Government made it clear that the controls ought to continue. Gone for Ever There were two reasons which led the Government to scrap the valuable machine it had built up. The first was that the business community was longing to get back to 1914—was obsessed by the fetish of a return to normal. It did not understand that the prewar normal had gone for ever. The second was the raging, tearing press campaign which echoed and amplified the utterances of the businessmen. Government departments which, whatever their faults, had succeeded in organising the complicated war-time processes of the national economic life, were pilloried as nests of bureaucracy staffed by civil servants whose incompetence was only equalled by their lust for power. We knew the result of all this combined wisdom. After this war we should face a situation in many ways resembling that of 1919. Controls and rationing would seem to be just a part of the grim and gloomy memory of war. The promise of peace would seem to beckon us away from such things towards a visionary prospect of relief and freedom. The control of the State will be pilloried under the name of bureaucracy. Every one of the problems and difficulties of the early post-war period—and there would be some terrible problems and some grievous difficulties—would be laid at the door of State control. But there would be certain things that these voices would not tell the country. They would not say that control was imposed because it was essential to meet the crisis of war and that a system of sensible and rational management, without which we could never have met the crisis of war, had just as much to be said for it when we faced the less bloody but no less difficult crisis of peace. They would not say that under a system of public control Great Britain had shown itself capable of producing the most tremendous effort in its history and of

Divergent views on post -war controls were recently expressed Mr W. S. Morrison, Home Sefcretary, and Captain H. H. Balfour Under-Secretary of State for Air. The "Observer.” in a leading article. atU'ibuted Mr Churchill’s attitude in the coal debate to the “disturbing dispute among his Ministers on the State control of sev eral industries, with hints of resignation.” Sir Herbert Williams’ M.P., addressing the Central Council of Conservative and Union!, ist Associations, asked whether it was to be assumed, when Mf ‘ Morrison spoke on the way controls were to be run after the warthat he represented “the policy of the Government—or only tha opinion of Mr Morrison? ”

surmounting the gravest danger it M ever faced. System of Fair Shares “We shall have won this war," in Morrison went on, “by a system ofS shares—which means control; by am tern of finding what we needed whM ever we could get it—which witfjj control; by a system of resources to the most urgent need'll a basis of first things first—whlcS means control. All these things will be needed after the war.” H

CAPTAIN BALFOUR -g [From the “Observer."] ‘Si Speakers, including “Ministers dangle endless control as the catrojuaj cure all evils at all times,” were cised by Captain H. H. Balfour, UrSj: - I Secretary of State for Air, in dress to the Isle of Thanet Chamb»?*| Commerce at Margate. Orders regulations from Government deffflftii ments would never, he declared. Saji the ordinary citizen’s order his life in the way he chose. Vjii “These super-controllers, with 'ffirafl extreme views, are doing a disservi® '3 the community because the lugubrwil picture they paint of a nation trusts up tight in stays of State causes national revulsion from acceptances® that degree of continued control whmll commonsense folk appreciate wiijaiw necessary for some indefinite time asS ■ the war. J|® Extinction of Little Man ||» “These people saw before thehmffi dawn of a glorious vision of g&S ownership of all and sundry, tation ol work and leisure by ment departments, and, as a ■'“fH j corollary, the extinction of theljjSH 3 man and the small business as belongs 1 efficient and unwanted in such i feet ordered society. 'iSlI * “Their ultimate ideal will be the|fflH|: ing of utility families in with State guidance; the childrens soon as possible, being enrolled intla ever-swelling ranks of a new rae|| little State stooges trained to servllß look only to the State for all nance, security, and benefit. ;||| “If this picture was said to be eal gerated it was no further fromlw truth than the portrait, sprei®| speeches and writing, of all empamf as a gang of frock-coated, tnp.KSflSI over-paunched, unscrupulous riiMpy “Our citizens,” declared r.aptaTpm four, “will not fall for this fully nrri3j and planned state to be achieve®! the indefinite continuance and, lnd» intensification of all our war-time tin trols. ..'3® “Acts, orders, regulations, and dinl tions from Government departhim would not crush down the deterriM tion of the ordinary man and worn® to order their lives in the ways wB choose, giving full play to man’sjSfil vidual determination to succeed aHS draw reasonable rewards for hunanl and for his family due to the suhi|l of his own efforts.”