BRITAIN'S DILEMMA

Evening Star, Issue 26029, 18 February 1947, Page 5

BRITAIN'S DILEMMA

A Triple Task Ahead

Produce More, Sell More, and Sell in Right Places

(Written by Geoffrey Cox, for the ‘Evening Star.')

LONDON, February 4

This is a time of considerable heart-searching and mindsearching in Britain. The White Paper about the serious economic state of the country, published in mid-January, has smashed at one blow the widely-held belief that provided the country kept steadily on along the path of hard work and reasonably austere, living, all would be well. Wide sections of opinion inside the Labour movement, as well as outside, believe that new measures are needed to meet the difficulties which are moving towards Britain like a major thunderstorm. , » . The main facts that have to be faced are twofold, and both stare out unmistakably from the White. Paper. Britain has to. transform herself from being a financial, trading, and creditor nation into a trade and manufacturing nation, living not on investments and trade and manufacture, but on trade and manufacture alone. To do this she must accomplish two things. She must manufacture a great deal more than in 1938, and she must sell a great deal more of these manufactures abroad to the so-called “ dollar countries —-Canada, the U.S.A., and Latin America. For it is from the “ dollar countries ” that she buys at present the bulk of her foodstuffs and raw materials.

Crisis When Loan Runs Out

■j/hat then, is the triple problem—produce more, sell more, and sell it in the right place. And no one of them is being met satisfactorily. .Production and'the export trade are both Up, but not up nearly high enough. Production is held down because the country needs at least another 500,000 Workers to fill the empty places at the work benches and the assembly lines.

And the exports, though mounting, are going in too great a volume to the countries inside the sterling area and in too small a volume to the dollar countries. Unless considerable improvements are made in b'oth fields this cbuntry will face a real crisis when the American loan, which alone at present enables Britain to pay her

way, runs out in the middle of 1948,

What are the cures? The Government has so Ifar given no clear idea of its plans. These will not be disclosed until the big parliamentary debate on the state of the nation Jate in February or early in March. Hut plenty of others are being advocated. The Conservatives call for a check to the nationalisation- programme and to a return to freer private enterprise. The Liberals call for a national price and wages policy. But these calls, though significant, are at present irrelevant to the argument. The Labour Party holds such overwhelming parliamentary power that it can disregard the Opposition on home matters. What is important is the trend of ideas inside the Labour Movement itself.

Cut Out Foreign Commitments

The first of these ideas is of an immediate and rapid demobilisation of more men from the armed forces. There are stiff 1,385,000 men under arms, nearly two years after the end of the European war. “ Cut our commitments and get the men back to the factories,” is a cry which is now spreading further amongv a section of the Labour Movement, It is a cry which has long been made by the Communists and those Labour back-benchers who march in step with the Communists on foreign had'little response. Too many people thought that the motive for this policy was a Communist de-

■ sire to see Britain quit of Greece and the Middle East and leave these areas to the Soviet sphere of influence. But now the point has been reached at which many Labour supporters are saying, “ Whether it means that the Middle East falls under Russian sway or not, we have little choice. Unless we get the men home we’ll go bankrupt and we’ll have to bring them home anyway.” Others urge immediate withdrawal from India and the Ear East, whilst yet another school, which would still keep a foothold in the Middle.;, East, would like to see an immediate partition of Palestine in the hope that that would settle that problem and let the troops come home.

Foreign Labour

Demobilisation', even at the cost of scrapping British power over wide sections of the globe, is therefore one policy being urged on the Government. , A second, which finds support even among leading trade unionists, is the importation of foreign labour. There are some 250,000 Poles from General Anders and other forces available and waiting for work here. After months of delays they are being slott/ly and . timorously introduced into the mines and industry—months during which they have just idled their time away at the British public’s expense in camps here and in Italy. Another 300,000 potential workers ttaud idle in displaced persons’ camps on the'Continent, the people who don’t want to go back to the Baltic States ©r the Balkans, Poland, Hungary, or

elsewhere. The ‘ Daily Worker ’ calls them the “scum of Europe,’’ but the Labour Government sees them as one further wave of political exiles entitled to some sanctuary. Some of them—chiefly girls from the Baltic States—are entering British cotton mills, and others are to be allowed to come to Britain in time.

Foreign labour, therefore, stands with demobilisation as the second proposed cure for the man-power shortage which lies at the root of the present problem. A third solution being energetically canvassed is the reduction of less useful work at home. Too many workers, it is argued, are employed in work of very secondary importance. This work should be stopped and the workers diverted to other jobs. And other people who are idle should be forced, as during the war, to take on jobs'.

Betting Trade a Target

The most obvious target for. attack here is the betting trade. This .is immense. Workers in bookmakers’ firms, in totalisators, and in the offices of the football “ pools,” the betting organised on football results, total some 300,000400,000. This work can only by the greatest stretch of the imagination be called necessary.

And the idle are numerous enough. Over one million people of working age in Britain are not classified as holding any job. t Many of these could contribute wort in the present crisis, even if they were employed only on a ipart-time basis. Many others are no doubt people with family responsibilities (though •housewives are not in the total) or

have other private tasks which hamper them doing more. But there is a slack here which ought to be taken up. To demobilisation and the importing of foreign workers is therefore added this third policy of making more economical use of the workers at present available. But so far the Government has ' shown no urgent intention of adopting any but the second of these policies—that of bringing in workers from abroad. Yet even tins goes slowly enough. Mr Isaacs, Minister of Labour, has told the House of Commons that he can’t deal with the entry of Italian ex-prisoners of war, who want to come back to British farms, until he has finished talks about the Poles. He is apparently negotiating unioD by union on each issue.

Lack of Speed

This lack of speed may prove in the end the Government’s greatest drawback. Mr Attlee and his Cabinet still hold the support of the bulk of the people, if by-elections and Gallup polls are any test. There is no mass feeling in favour of a change over to a free-for-all under Conservative leadership, and the Liberals are still far too weak.

Pressure in this country is not

for a change of Government so much as a speed-up, or, in some cases, a change in the present Government’s policy.

There are times when I believe that it would have been better in the long

run for Britain not to have got the American loan last year. She would have had a time of immediate hardship, but she would have been brought face to face with problems which are not vet solved, but only postponed. There has to be a further period of austerity - and reorganisation before Britain can get firmly on her feet again, and the sooner it comes the better. This calls for firm and rapid decisions. But with such decisions, with resolute leadership, there is no reason why this country should not be prosperous and assured once again and rapidly enough.