THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1930. LABOUR AND THE WORKLESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20481, 5 February 1930, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1930. LABOUR AND THE WORKLESS.

The Labour Government in Britain is being compelled by facts to acknowledge the hollowness of its promises to find a sure and speedy cure for unemployment. Those promises were glibly made in the course of the election campaign last May. They played a large part in returning Labour to office. Now they provide a seemingly ceaseless supply of political ammunition both for other parties in Parliament and for mutinous critics within tho Labour ranks. Instead of the promised reduction in the number of the workless there is a considerable increase. The number is now higher than it has been at any time during the last seven years and is nearly fifty thousand more than it was last year, while Mr. Thomas, who is specially charged with the duty of handling the situation, says that at least another hundred thousand must be added, by the end of this month, by reason of the operation of the new legislation now before Parliament. So frank an admission that the promises have not been kept is particularly impressive as coming from the one member of the Cabinet who is in a position to speak with authority. But Mr. Thomas has gone further. He has practically admitted that the promises ought not to have been made, that the framers of the party's election policy ought to have known better than to make them, and that whatever influence these promises had on the result of the election was got by means that should not have been used. Addressing a public meeting just before Christmas, he said ho had not solved the unemployment problem and that there was no short cut to the solution. If the problem was simply one of finding work of any kind for the people now unemployed, he added, that would not be a difficult task, but in the end the country would be worse off than before. He saw no other way than to make the nation more efficient to compete in the world's markets. This hard gospel has been anathema to the extremely Socialist section of the Government party. Two nights after Mr. Thomas had made this frank statement, the chairman of the Independent Labour Party (Mr. Maxton, M.P.) denounced the Government's policy as a surrender to capitalism and as opposed to the constitution of the whole Labour organisation. For this reason, he said, he and other Labour members had voted against the Government on the Unemployment Bill. The solution offered by Mr. Thomas is anything but a short cut. It amounts to the production of more goods to sell abroad. Every year, as he puts the position, Britain is compelled by inexorable circumstances to import £800,000,000 worth of food and raw material; this can only be paid for in two ways—in gold or in kind; Britain cannot pay in gold; consequently, she must develop her export trade, and this means raising the level of national efficiency—getting transport, or power, or general service into a better position to compete in the world's markets. To do this entails overcoming a hundred and one difficulties and will take time as well as energy. Naturally, so full an admission of the fallacy of the election propaganda of the party is unwelcome to those who look only to snatch methods of coping with unemployment, and deceive themselves and others with idle words about increasing the purchasing power of the workers and introducing social ownership. Mr. Thomas, while bent on the revival of trade, especially of export trade, as the only real solution, has been a party to certain immediate expedients, but he is evidently becoming more and more convinced that they can have only a temporary utility and will moreover bring a baneful reaction. Their capacity to relieve unemployment is limited severely in range and time. Mr. Baldwin has made what is described as a generous estimate of their worth : all the schemes taken together will not give, he says, five years' work for more than 70,000 or 75,000 men — and Britain's total of unemployed at the end of December was 1,510.000. "Every scheme a makeshift" was the description given by Mr. Wheatley, a Labour extremist like Mr. Maxton. Mr. Thomas is apparently of the same opinion, but as a Cabinet Minister, and in this connection the most responsible Minister, he can hardly use words so downright, and must content himself with argument to show that there is "no short cut."

To do Mr. Thomas justice, it must be acknowledged that he has gone about his impossible task with tremendous energy and a good deal of common sense, and he has had to bear the brunt of criticism that rightly belongs to everyone concerned in framing the election promises. "The whipping boy'' is the Times' apt title for him; "he has to suffer the chastisement that is due collectively to those who appealed to the country for political power with the claim that in them alone reposed the means and the will to cure unemployment." But sympathy with him, even when added to appreciation of the saner viewpoint to which he has come, cannot temper the just condemnation of the palliatives as specious and ultimately harmful. He SRys that, unlike his predecessors, he has used the accelerator in the matter of providing schemes of work; they put on ( the brake. Quite so; but , his opportunity to do this was made by their refraining from using the accelerator. What has happened is that he has brought forward by it year or two the constructive schemes ° '" ca -l bodies and rond authorities, with the inevitable result, to be ace by hirn should he remain long enouK i in office, that such resources be u * cd «P in advance of normal need and deceleration will naturally follow ere long There is no real cure in this-only a postponement of the ill—and meanwhile the Government is setting afoot influences calculated to aggravate rather than reduce the trouble.