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Clarion Texts
MY PLAN FOR 2,000,000 WORKLESS
by ERNEST BEVIN
(General Secretary, Transport and General Workers' Union)
Articles first published in The New Clarion, 1931-2
FOREWORD
IN submitting this pamphlet for your consideration, you will note that the proposals contained herein outline a plan for dealing immediately with the problem of unemployment.
I have had the opportunity of discussing the proposals with Employers, Trade Union Colleagues, Politicians, Members of Parliament, and others. All agree that even if the World Economic Conference achieves the highest hopes and trade returns to normality, the growth of technology, concentration and rationalisation is so great that it will be absolutely impossible materially to reduce the present figure of nearly 3,000,000 unemployed.
What, then, is to be done about the people who are the victims? The State cannot escape its responsibilities, and it is criminal to leave the position as it is. Therefore, in putting this pamphlet before all classes of the community, I plead for united action with a view to arousing public opinion and so ensure that Parliament will grapple with the problem in a thorough way and thus remove very grave injustices and suffering.
Everyone recognises that the problem of unemployment cannot be met by charity ; private enterprise cannot deal with it ; the attempt now being made to reconstruct the Unemployment Insurance Acts cannot alone meet the situation. I therefore ask that you will discuss the proposals in your Trade Unions, on Joint Industrial Councils, and all other bodies representative of employers and workpeople, and in your social, political and religious organisations, and forward your considered opinions, at the same time urging the Government to take immediate action.
The State have accepted the principle of pensions as well as the principle of Unemployment and Health Insurance, but the difficulty is that these measures have not been carried to the point of helping those of us who have the task of adjusting industrial relations ; therefore, we are now entitled to ask the State to take some such steps as those expressed in these proposals. Industry will then know what it has to carry, and the tortures suffered by thousands of the victims of the present industrial system—who may never again secure employment—will be removed for ever.
On the other hand, I plead for the young people and ask that a resolute national effort be made in order that they may be given the chance to which they are entitled.
The proposal in regard to hours of labour is a practical one. Having regard, however, to rationalisation, and all the other factors, the National Survey Board should have such powers as would enable it to compel industry to face up to its responsibilities to the workpeople who are disturbed or displaced by the measures taken in the reorganisation and development of industry. No longer should it be left to haphazard chance. The adjustment of hours and the acceptance of obligations to meet the revolutionary upset in the lives of the workpeople which these changes involve should be placed on an organised basis. This is the objective which these proposals seek to achieve.
Unemployment, with all its consequent demoralisation, ought to be tackled with the same determination with which slavery, child labour and other evils were fought. Unemployment is just as much an evil now as those evils were in previous centuries. A good deal of it is due to lack of will on the part of those in power, but a very much larger proportion is due to the out-of-date conception of the place the worker ought to occupy. From a trade point of view, for it to go out to the world that in these critical times Britain has given such a splendid lead for social advancement as these proposals involve, rather would it enhance our credit all over the world. The proposals would also make ultimately for efficiency in industry, for, after all, the queues outside those Labour Exchanges are a great monument to our incompetence and incapacity as a nation.
Civil servants, public employees, policemen, teachers, in some cases the better-placed industries, have had provision made for them. I plead for the miners, engineers, textile workers, dockers, and the great hosts who bear the brunt of unemployment.
I urge all people of good will to give these proposals their wholehearted support.
E. B.