UNEMPLOYED IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29994, 1 December 1962, Page 11

UNEMPLOYED IN BRITAIN

Rising Figures Alarm T.U.C.

(N.Z.P A.-Reuttr—Copyright)

LONDON, November 30.

The spectre of unemployment has returned to threaten the livelihood of many British people. The latest official tally of the jobless —544,451, or 2.4 per cent, of the insured population—still falls short of a seasonal peak of 620,000 in January, 1959, which was the post-war unemployment record.

But the figures are still rising—to the alarm of Britain’s 8,000,000 - member Trades Union Congress, which has decided to seek early talks with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Reginald Maudling) to press for remedies.

While the picture is still broadly that of continued prosperity over the nation as a whole, specified areas of the country are suffering serious depression. For example, seven out of every 100 male workers are reported unemployed in the port of Liverpool. The depression is largely in the North of England. Scotland, and northern Ireland, where a vast part of

the country’s basic heavy industry is located. The unemployment situation is widely accepted as one of the main reasons for the current slump in the Conservative Government's popularity with voters. It has an emotional and psychological impact on the country, related not only to the present limited depression but also to memories of Britain's plight between the two world wars. Many of the older generation of workers are still haunted by the grim days of the 1920 s and 1930‘5, when unemployment reached a record peak of 2,947.000 —22 per cent, of the insured working population—in 1932. In that great slump, the coal, cotton and shiip-build-

ing industries were devastatingly hit. In some British communities 70 per cent, of the working population was "on the dole.” Familiar spectacles of the period were bands of unemployed Welsh miners singing in London's streets for money to send home to their families.

The unemployed made marches of hundreds of miles from the north to London—the most famous of these, from Jarrow, on the Tyneside, in protest againsst the shut-down of the town’s shipbuilding industry. The current sectional return of unemployment to Britain, like its pre-war predecessors, has resulted in a serious drift away from the north and other affected areas to the prosperous south. This is presenting a very real problem in England's northern region, where unemployment in the last three months has grown at three times the seasonal rate, with 61,739 out of work. Even so, the highest percentage of unemployment in the United Kingdom is in Northern Ireland, which has 7.1 per cent. By comparison, the London and north Midland regional figures are only 1.8 per cent., the nation’s lowest average. The T.U.C. intends to ask Mr Maudling to give the industrial situation a boost by a variety of measures. It will propose: Selective purchase tax reductions (which would increase domestic demand for various products).

A lowering of the bank rate (which governs the amount of interest that firms or individuals must pay for money borrowed and which now stands at 41 per cent.) Reduced national insurance (unemployment and health) contributions. The T.U.C. leadens have decided that the general unemptoymemt situation is now so bad as to need their undivided attention.