The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1945. Manpower For British Reconstruction

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24633, 1 August 1945, Page 6

The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1945. Manpower For British Reconstruction

According to the political correspondent of the “ Daily Express the new British Government is to speed up demobilisation to make manpower available for reconstruction, and the new Service Ministers will be told that every man who is not fully employed in the forces is to be released. The process has, of course, once already been hastened, for in mid-May the National Government announced that it would noi enforce the originally planned standstill of three months from the end of the European war. Instead, it had decided to advance the date of demobilisation by six weeks, with the first releases from the forces to start on June 18. However, the Labour Government’s decision to apply yet another stimulus is not unexpected, as the general council of the Trades Union Congress early last month had expressed the fear that the change-over to normal production was not being planned rapidly enough. Even before the end of the year, then, something like 825,000 men and women may have returned from the Services to civilian life. But the manpower problem will not tnereby have been solved The Labour Government will apply the fullest possible strength of the nation against Japan. Accordingly, it may be expected that, side by side with demobilisation, the call-up of the 18-to-30 class will continue. There will, besides, be the usual industrial wastage; and the transfer of manpower to industry through demobilisation is likely to be largely offset by these losses. Indeed, the London correspondent of the “ Syd- “ ney Morning Herald ” has reported that unless most of the 1,000,000 old people and the 2,000,000 normally unocc pied women now in industry remain at work, the already serious manpower shortage may become critical. At any rate, the Ministry of Labour in May appealed to employers not to get rid of their older workers, and to workers not to rush from the factories, even if they qualify for release, until the defeat of Japan allows a general demobilisation. The problem is, however, more than that of maintaining manpower, it is also one of distributing it to those sections of industry which are being turned over to urgently needed civilian production. 1 Here again Labour has inherited a formidable task. From 1939 to 1944, the consumer- goods industries lost one-third of their labour force. In the textile industries, manpower declined from 1,002,000 to 626,000; in the distributive trades, from 2.887.000 to 1,928,000; in the footwear industry, from 165,000 to 107,000; in the clothing trades, from 587.000 to 349,000. Industries which turn out goods for the homes of Britain are short of 530,000 workers. Many of the men and women went from these industries to munitions making and to higher wages and more attractive working conditions. Many of them are so reluctant to return that it was recently reported that the Ministry of Labour might have to resort to compulsory direction. Such a step, the National Government promised, would be taken only “ in extreme necessity The Labour Government may be even less anxious to move in that direction, for the Trades Union Congress has all along declared itself opposed to compulsory direction after the end of the war in Europe. Mobilising the nation’s manpower had been difficult enough, Sir George Ince, former Director of Manpower at the Ministry of Labour, recently remarked; but demobilisation itself would be “ infi- “ nitely ” more difficult. Demobilisation in this wider sense will be an early test Labour’s capacity, and perhaps a critical one.