"LACKING COURAGE"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 71, 25 March 1939, Page 8

"LACKING COURAGE"

BRITISH POLITICS

The Minister of Labour did not shine in the Commons debate on unemployment, states a leading article in the "Manchester Guardian" of February 17. The official brief he used has become dog-eared. It was the stock speech of every Minister of Labour in a National Government. It began with the truism about there being no "standing army" of unemployed (what inteligent person has ever talked of a standing army of two millions?); it went on to describe how, since the worst point of the depression, there has been a reduction in the number of long-standing unemployed (not unnatural in a boom), although the number has lately risen; it expatiated at length on the various forms of training and instructional centres, which had had "a vast effect on the core of unemployment" (an absurd exaggeration); it dwelt a litlte on junior instruction centres (also hardly a conspicuous success); and it ended with some vague promise of an increased demand for men on A.R.P. constructional work.

Apart from the last, it is a' threadbare tale, and it left most of the real criticisms untouched. It exhibited the entire lack of imagination which the Government shows about the problem. It was assailed by Labour and Liberal and also by Conservatives of independent mind like Mr. Eden and Mr. Brooke.

Mr. Brown in a purple passage compared his dealing with unemployment by a piecemeal and inadequate system of training with the Prime Minister's policy of "appeasement." The comparison was not unapt. Both, have the same lack of courage, the same fondness for drift. Both exhibit painfully the complacency which, as Mr. Eden said, is the most insidious and fatal