PUBLIC CONTROLS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 13 January 1944, Page 6

PUBLIC CONTROLS

PROS AND CONS DISCUSSED IS BUREAUCRACY HERE TO STAY? NOT WANTED FOR ITS OWN SAKE We shull be invited to contemplate the hordes of Civil servants, enmeshing themselves ever more hopelessly in the strands of endless red tape, an obstacle to that freedom and prosperity which are waiting round the corner if only the sinister ambitions of misguided bureaucrat, can be checked. But there will be certain things that these voices, when they begin to be heard at their full strength, will not tell the country. They will not say that control was imposed because it was essential to meet the crisis of war, and that a system of sensible and rational management, without which we could never have met the crisis of war, has just as much to be said for it when we face “the less bloody but no less difficult crisis of peace. They will not say that under a system of public control Great Britain has shown itself capable of producing the most tremendous effort in its history and of surmounting the gravest danger it has ever faced. Mr Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary. Everyone is agreed, says the “Daily Telegraph,” that transition from a war to a peace economy will present gigantic problems, and that guidance by the State will be indispensable during its continuance. Obviously some far-reaching controls which have been imposed during the war for war purposes cannot be abruptly withdrawn without the risk of chaos and of serious delay in reconstruction. The question is not whether there shall be controls during the transition period, but what form they should take, and how long they should last. To come to specific questions, it is pertinent to ask what controls Mr Morrison desires to see retained. Does he, for example, advocate the continued ‘direction 4 of labour into particular industries or a prolonged delay in restoring the trade union “customs” waived during the war? It is possible that he does. On the other hand, there is prima facie ground for the suspicion that h e would like to pick and choose, and to retain only those controls likely to assist in the process of socialisation. If what he really desires is a backdoor approach to Socialism, then he i-s thinking in terms of party politics and not merely of the errors made last time. Those are points which need further elucidation. It is a commonplace with informed opinion, urges the “Manchester Guardian,” that we shall not now get a smooth transition if we suddenly throw off all the machinery of control and regulation, and that we cannot hope to carry out a policy of full employment unless we are prepared to accept self-discip-line and 1o give the State wider powers cf interference with economic life than were commonly acceptable before 1939. A HEALTHY REACTION Mr Morrison is on strong ground in insisting on these truisms. But he must be careful, and not try to prove too much. There will be an instinctive reaction against controls, and it is well to recognise that it will be in large measure a healthy reaction. To idealise and claim overmuch for the war system may have the most undesirable effect of stiffening the revolt against all national measures of economic control. It is commonly said, states “The Times,” that controls arc in a greater or less degree restrictions on personal liberty, that they are evils, though sometimes no doubt necessary evils, whose social necessity must be justified in each particular case. All this is in a sense true. But it is true only in the sense in which all government is a restriction of liberty and all government a necessary evil. Government restricts the liberty of some in order to assure the greater liberty of all that can only be enjoyed within the bounds of order. It tempers the unrestricted competition of individual wills because, as all experience shows, the inevitable end of unrestricted competition is not more liberty but less. Controls are justified in so far as they make possible a more equitable, as well as more efficient, utilisation of resources, and through it create wider opportunities of a more real freedom for all. It was on these known and accepted principles that Mr Morrison based his argument on Sunday. To abrogate immediately at the end of hostilities that orderly management of the production and flow of essential supplies which has served the nation so well in war would not be a restoration of liberty under the conditions that will then obtain. INFORM PUBLIC IN GOOD TIME It would mean only that the demand for luxury goods would compete intolerably with the supply of necessaries; that prices would rise; that the less essential industries would get more than their share; that scarce shipping space and scarce currencies would be devoted to the less essential imports; that the export trades would suffer; and that the world would soon be back on the old chaos of unemployment and want out of which Fascism and Hitlerism were born. All this is incontrovertible. It is the obvious and inescapable lesson from the mistakes of 1913. Controls that are recognised as necessary instruments of national policy or necessary means to national well-being in the time of transition will be accepted and welcomed by the public; and, where they are necessary for these purposes it will be for the Government to inform the nublic accordingly and to inform it in good time. This is an issue, stresses the “News Chronicle,” which cannot be presented too plainly or too soon. It lends itself readily to misrepresentation. For (1) it is quite true that economic control is impossible without some measure of “bureaucracy”; (2) it is quite true that there are serious dangers in bureaucratic administration against which w e must always be on our guard. And (3) it is obvious that no one wants bureaucracy for its own sake. The war and the peace are indivisible. The building of a new Britain is the completion of the task which begins with the overthrow of Axis tyranny. This cannot be done without planning, which, in its turn, involves a certain degree of control. But we cannot help reminding Mr Morrison that, while he continues to

press in his speeches for a comprehensive plan of post-war social reform, next to nothing seems to be happen- * In short, we have had once again from Mr Morrison a speech full of sound sense and informed by constructive statesmanship. But speeches will not build the new Britain; and Mr Morrison’s party, which has three representatives in the War Cabinet, cannot escape a substantial share of responsibility for the Government’s continued failure to make planning a reality. In acquiescing in this policy of inertia the party is jeopardising its own political future.’ NOT HEROES IN WHITEHALL The Judiciary, says the “Evening Standard,” has lost much of its capacity to review legislation since the Government departments have more and more assumed the privilege of legislating by regulation and Order-in-Council. The Press has suffered its province to be partly overrun by the Ministry of Information and'the publicity departments of other various Ministries. Parliament has allowed its own privileges to be curtailed. Habeas Corpus is a shadow of its former self. Some persons have sometimes professed not to be interested in these issues. Hampden and Wilkes have never been the heroes of Whitehall. Yet it has been the body of law apd custom for which such men as these fought, and which is comprised in what we call our civil liberties that has chiefly distinguished this land from continental countries, where dictatorship took easy root. Whatever other kind of world we choose to make for ourselves after the war, there should be no doubts now about the machinery with which we desire to achieve it. We want a live, vigorous, argumentative democracy, buttressed by civil liberties which protect the weak and unpopular no less than the strong. All restraints on those liberties should be taken away as soon as possible.” The State control of the economic system, points out the “Yorkshire Post,” which Mr Morrison seems to advocate must work blindly unless it is informed by knowledge, and unfairly unless it stimulates as well as directs. We have urged before that the postwar lay-out of the country’s economy will have to be subject to control. But control is not necessarily identical with public ownership. A fairly simple system of priorities, imposed not for its own sake but to insure that scarce commodities go first where they are wanted most, should suffice. The task of working out the necessary machinery will afford an opportunity for wise and businesslike co-operation between the authorities and private enterprise. Control is not an end in itself, says the “Economist,” its sole justification is the achievement of purposes, efficiency, equity, service, that could not be achieved in any other way. There is room for a vast area of individual enterprise without any direct Government interference, except by the imposition of a communal code of conduct. The real point is, first, that the community’s resources cannot be employed in such a way as to give a guarantee of full employment and a national minimum of consumption without official direction; and, secondly, that the kind of enterprise for which so active a campaign of publicity is going on just now is often the very reverse of the kind of enterprise that the community requires. Mr Morrison forgets that private enterprise is just as worthy and necessary as public enterprise—and that public unenterprise may be even worse for the community than private enterprise.