THE BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

Evening Star, Issue 21633, 31 January 1934, Page 12

THE BRITISH UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir.—l would he grateful if you will permit me to acquaint your readers with some interesting features included in the above Bill. Similar to the unemployed scheme functioning in this country, the new British Bill is direcetd against trade unionists and trade union agreements, as well as the unemployed. The Bill proposes : (1) To saddle 60 per cent, ot the cost ot maintaining unemployed who have exhausted statutory benefit upon comity councils and town councils. (2) To appoint highly-paid commissioners to administer the scheme and to give them and their local assistants full power to raise insurance contributions and benefits if they think fit. (3) To bring ‘boys of fourteen into the scheme on payment of 2d per week. (4) To immediately commence compulsory training centres for all young workers. (5) To start instructional centres, where all workers on transitional benefit will do task work for their dole. (6) Anyone directly, or indirectly, affected by industrial disputes will not receive benefit. <7) Anyone refusing to go to the camp can, if his dependents apply for relief, he arrested and gaoled. Point 1 will moan that where unemployment is acute the rates will bo exceptionally high, and voluntary social services will be discontinued. Point 2 will mean that autocratic officials will have power to reduce benefits and send anyone to camp at will. Points 3, 4. and 5 will result in young men being compelled to enter semi-military camps, where they will perform task work for their dole' They will be hired out for county councils and town councils in order to kill by their slave labour the trade union standards and conditions. 'Later on the Government will hire them out to private contractors, which means that conscripted slave labour will be established in Britain. Point 6 is an attempt to prevent strike action by wiving the insurance commissioners exceptional powers with a view of helping the lug industrialists in their wagecutting drive. Point 7 provides that,

ff parents refuse to force their sons under eighteen into the camp mentioned, they can he prosecuted and fined a sum not exceeding £l, and sons or fathers who similarly refuse can be arrested and sentenced to a term not exceeding twelve months’ imprisonment. After a short study of the above points it is possible to notice a similarity to the scheme operating in this country, and also other parts of the Empire, especially those points dealing with camps and wage-cutting, and I desire to submit that the schemes operating throughout the whole of the Empire are part of a general understanding that has taken place, possibly at the last Imperial Conference, with a view to reducing the workers’ standard of life and economic power, and thereby leaving him at the mercy of the employing class. The various working class organisations have often been accused of class warfare, but I submit that those Conservative Party unemployment schemes which, force working men and their sons from home, and not the sons of the rich, are only perpetuating class warfare. It has been sug nested tint wo are living in a -liberty-, loving Empire. T desire to empha-' ticallv declare that as far as the working class is concerned, particularly those who are unemployed, liberty is an unknown factor. We undoubtedly are shackled ns a result of economic circumstances; in a word we are economic slaves; and it is just possible that economic slavery is worse than that experienced by a *big number of American negroes. In conclusion, I hope those who are responsible for the existing unemployed schemes are acquainted with the words of the hymn—viz., “ Only remembered by what we have done,” ' because the present conditions are going to have a lasting effect upon the minds of the people.—l am, etc., W.m. Dickinsox. January 30.

[An old-fashioned comment seems pertinent • “ These are the gloomy companions of a dispirited.imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.”—Ed. E.S.I