POST-WAR PROBLEMS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5595, 22 March 1943, Page 2

POST-WAR PROBLEMS

PRODUCTION CONTROL AND SOCIAL SECURITY

In a speech at Swindon (England) on 20th December, Mr Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security, discussing post-war problems, directed attention to the related questions of Social Security and Social Control of Production.

Security (said Mr Morrision) is like happiness, as many an individual has found; if you put it first and make it your aim, you lose it. I think it is this truth which it at the back of the minds of those who fear that schemes of social security may sap the people’s initiative and enterprise and rob them of their will to work. They see the need of a spirit of effort, initiative, and adventure and I agree with them, I agree that if people have security and no purpose, no sense of loyalty to something beyond themselves, they will relapse into inertia. But the conclusion I draw is different from that of the critics. I don’t believe in the moral value of imposing insecurity on people’ for its own sake. I don’t believe in trying to whip them into achievement with the lash of fear and of want. I believe in getting the best out of people; I believe the best in our people is magnificently good; I believe they can be led to rise to great occasions in peace as in war; I believe that education is a better taskmaster than unemployment, leadership than want, faith than fear. After the war, the fate of our people will depend upon their power to put first thing first. Our economic life must be organised directly to achieve its object, a right standard of public well-being. That means turning our backs for ever on schemes of restriction whether of goods or of labour. If tempted by any shortterm argument, we ever again dabble in such schemes, in that instant our national future is threatened and our scheme of social security becomes a burden instead of a benefit, a load on our shoulders instead of a weight off our minds. Never again dare we, on any grounds, whether economic or moral, be indifferent if our productive machine is standing idle or running down, or if the energies of the people are unused or under-used. Wise Control Must Continue

In my view, to ensure full national output and a proper welfare standard for all, much of the social control of production which we have learnt to accept and to value during the war will need to be continued during the peace.

Social control of production, however, may take many different forms; how much of it we want, and in what forms, cannot be settled in terms of any political dogma. The sole test must be whether the public interest is served by such measures in particular cases or not. Some forms of economic activity would, like our postal, and telegraphic communications, respond well to ownership and management by a department of State. But the public concern in this form is certainly not a universal panacea. Rather is it likely to be exceptional. What, for instance, should we do with out natural monopolies, industries which cannot be carried on properly at all except on a monopoly basis? It may be that instead of leaving them in private hands, tied down and hedged about by a tangle of statutory restrictions or bureaucratic checks, we should get better national service from them if we turned them into public corporations like the Central Electricity Board, the London Transport Board, or in another sphere the 8.8. C. Again, what should be done with industries which are not natural monopolies but have, by their growth and development in modern conditions, come nearer and nearer to being monopolies in faet, through the operation of mergings and trade agree-

ments or cartels, like the iron and steel or chemical industries? These are great basic industries on which national well-being in peace and safety in war directly depend. We can’t Ijtve them alone in their monopolptic glory—we don’t want to turn Britain into a corporative State and to adopt Fascism in its economic forms. The answer may be anything from a public corporation to some form of management under a board of directors with a nationally nominated chairman. The thing that matters is to secure in these large-scale basic industries a due measure of public guidance and public account-ability—-and these are not things which can be left to chance.

Then there are kinds of business where individual enterprise has a lot of value even in modern conditions—small businesses and some kinds of medium and small scale manufacture. Here the answer may be that the community will best serve itself by standing aside, apart from insisting upon proper business practice and standard minimum pay and conditions for employees of all grades. There will be a substantial place too, as there is now, for the cooperative movement in trade, and also I believe for co-operative enterprise in agricultural production and marketing. Farmers may find the answer to many of their problems and the means of preserving much of what is best in war-time arrangements by schemes of mutual aid on a systematic basis. Industrial Planning

After the war we shall have to approach all our economic problems on the basis that the interest of the community comes first. We should, I believe, have an annual economic and industrial budget as we now have an annual financial Budget. We shall need each year a statement of the cost not merely of government, the social services, and the armed forces, but also of our national needs for wages and salaries, new capital outlay, and capital repairs and renewals. We shall, in fact, have to estimate the size t not merely, as we do now, of the State Budget but of the national income as a whole, and relate it to the demands we want to make upon it. No longer must we be in any doubt about whether we can afford this form of social security or that enlargement of Government activity. Such questions must not be left to the conjectures of partisans with an axe to grind. They must be matters much more of ascertainable fact than they were before the war. Our public policy as a whole will not be sound unless it is founded firmly upon a clear appreciation of values other than material ones. Efficient organisation of industry is right, but it is not enough. Social security too can be abused—at both ends of the economic scale. Poor people may learn to depend upon public schemes of welfare without developing a corresponding sense of their duty to the community. Richer people may equally defraud the community’s productive labour force by enjoying their incomes without feeling or discharging a corresponding obligation. We want better standards than the old Victorian code of doing the best one can for oneself. While one cannot enforce the Golden Rule by a process of law, one can build an economic society in which it is easier to be unselfish and much less profitable to be selfish than the world in which you and I grew up.