T.U.C. DEMANDS IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28080, 22 September 1956, Page 11

T.U.C. DEMANDS IN BRITAIN

Macmillan Differs On Methods, Not Aims

LONDON, September 20. “You cannot get more than a pint out of a pint pot. If you want to get more than a pint out of your pot you must get a larger pot and brew more beer.” said Mr Harold Macmillan, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech replying to criticisms of the Government’s economic policy voiced at the recent annual conference of the Trades Union Congress. The T.U.C. rejected wage restraint and asserted the rights of Labour to use its bargaining strength to protect the worker from “dislocations of an unplanned economy.” Mr Macmillan said: “I do not find serious disagreement between us, although I find a good deal of misunderstanding. “I think that what I want is what they want —the expansion of our production and the concentration of our production upon the right things so as to maintain and increase exports and ensure a continually rising standard of living. “Furthermore, everyone wants to put an end to a constant increase in prices which is a grave threat to what the nation has achieved and what it hopes to do. The division of opinion came on how the nation should go about achieving these ends. “There is not a single trades union leader, except the Communists, who will put his hand on his heart and say that he would accept a fully planned economy, including the control and direction of labour. “This means the substitution for the system of free negotiation between trades unions and employers’ associations of an imposed settlement of wages and conditions from a centralised Government authority. “Nor do I believe that they would seriously ask our people to be subjected again except in war to the detailed control and rationing of almost every activity of life and almost every commodity of service which they may wish to have.”