WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4953, 9 February 1937, Page 6

WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT

“What is it that the people want.” asks Mr Harold Macmillan, Conservative M.P., in the “New Outlook.” “When one cuts through all the theoretical argument of political leaders, the pathetic truth of the moderation of the people’s demands is revealed. “They want work and wages. Is that unreasonable? “And they want their work to be directed in such a way that we shall begin to tap the abundance which science has brought within our reach. “They want adequate diet for the twenty million people who, Sir John Boyd Orr tells us, cannot buy enough of the health-giving foodstuffs which British farmers could grow. “They want an adequate diet for the grace of the depressed areas, and, out of the greater productivity of a fullyemployed population, they want a comfortable retirement for the aged. “But the question to-day is not whether we have the wits to know what to do, but whether we have the courage, the patriotism, and the generosity of spirit to combine the strength of the progressive forces to obtain the power to do it. Each one of us must accept our share of responsibility. A progressive alliance would give life and vigour to a forward policy.”