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" Diested by ALEXANDER HALL Prochical by
MAX GORDON
A COLUMNS PICIKIS
Eloanor POWELL
SHIP AHOY?
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1947.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF BRITAIN
Stop Interfering With Industry ·
BY
HALFORD W. L. REDDISH Chairman & Managing Director, Rugby Portland Cement Co., Ltd.
ET'S face the present, for The plitable, matourish, bungling the recent past is a Borry Improvisations are too recent to
The criels in Britain has launched a vast spate of comment, explanations (and condemnations, both in and out of direct politics, Horo are two views one by a business man and the other by a professional journalist, which are typical of the two main currents of opinion.
Give us ren) leadership and the nation will respond. We sliil await the call from an inspired and inspir- ing voice.
Create conditions in which men
Planning Is More
Than Necessary
BY
KINGSLEY MARTIN
Editor, The New Statesman and Nation
THE
backs are not yet to all, more coal,
story and the future in present need recounting. But was it plan of good wiil and ability, of any party the wall. This is merely the
circumstances unpredictable.
I write this puroly as a bus ness man-I don't blame the Government for the weather, nor do I seriously believe that millions of wicked Torics are plotting to Inflict misery on themselves and others in order to annoy Mr Shinwell,
But responsibility for our present and parious situation rests fairly aquarely on the shoulders of Government.
this
Government First, I charge the with lowering the standards of de-
and cency and honesty fair play which used to be characteristic of our national life.
Take Mr Dalton, for example. Re- cently he was telling an audience at Gateshead that the shortage of coal and the lack of adequate stocks dis.
were legacies from the lately possessed colliery owners.
VET he knows perfectly well that
the whole question of man-power in the mints and the production and distribution of coal have been under Government control for over Ave years, and under the control of his
jast 18 months,
Onc
of
•
ning?
.
The whole affair dissolved Into or of no party, can conscientiously administrative chaos, which could and cheerfully unite in the great and should have been avoided by tasks' to be accomplished. adequate and businesslike arrange- ments in good time.
In saying this I do not complain of any lack of co-operation from the senior civil servants in the de- partments.
leave
They are being forced to grapple with industrial problems for which they are the first to admit they have not been trained, while they have to be careful, in everything they do to a backdoor open through which their Minister can escape in the event
the of a question in House.
Bút Government interference with industry must be drastically reduced if we are ever to get on our feet again.
Let the Government govern. Let industry be run by the men who have made it their life work.
If Mr Attlee will not shed hile more outstanding administrative failures-Shinwell, Bevan, Strachey
then at least let himn severely restrict their activities. Otherwise complete paralysts will set in,
own Government of planners for the Isomething, apart. It is the first CANNOT regard the coal crisis us
Instalment we have to pay for governmental meddling in business, and is a foretaste of far worse muddles to come if transport and electricity are taken out of the hands of the men who really under- stand them,
Consider Mr Shinweli. his oft-repeated excuses is that, although production of cual is up, bo But he is industrial consumption. says nothing of quality, yet every one knows how that has fallen.
The industrial user is not really Interested in coal, as such, but in heat units, or, as we say, the calori fle value.
If a consignment of con! has twice the ash content it should have, then obviously more "cool" must be con- sumed to generate the same amount of heal.
THEN, again, the ordinary citizen.
He is so enmeshed in restrictions and rationing and controls to-day many of them unenforceable ex- cept through official snoopers, the spying neighbour and the anony- mous letter-that he Is steadily learning contempt for all law.
03
The decay of our moral standards must be arrested. We are entitled to expect Ministers to set example in dignity and decency.
Secondly, I charge the Govern ment with bringing this crisis upon us by political and bureaucratic in- terference with industry on the port of men who just don't understand what they are doing.
THE fact is, as most industrialists THE
who are in touch with the vaṛ- ious departments know only too well, that this Government of Planners normal _never baj a plan in the sense of the term, and have shown precious little understanding of how to go about making one.
Working from hand to mouth, (m- provising to meet difficulties as they arise, whether in coal, building, food or anything else, is not planning. Any business run on such ilnes would soon came to grief.
Only a few months ago, the plan- ners assembled the bricklayers but forgot the brickmakers. A crisis was narrowly averted.
To-day the Government is offer- ing to buy the stock of overslooked brickworks at n 10 per cent. dis count, while Belgian bricks are be- ing imported at something like £3 a thousand above the local price. Planning?
Take food. Does anyone but Mr Strachey believe that the people are property nourished or that distribut- ed stocks of food are adequate meet an emergency?
to
But let us get back to coal. In the House of Commons, Mr Dalton stated that during each of the win- ters of 1944-45 and 1945-40 coal alocks were reduced by 0,000,000 tons.
Even to-day, the politicians thinking more of restricting consumption of coal in the
are the future
than of increasing the supply. A
end to this defcatism and continual failure!
What, then, is our most urgent need in this winter of our discon- tent? In one word, statesmanship.
Let the Government have the courage to withdraw their nationall- sation schemes and other controver stal matters (the British public in generously warm-hearted towards a man with the pluck to admit he was reduce wrong) and
their Inter- ference with Industry to mini- mum.
end of the phoney war.
to-day
1
THIS is not Dunkirk; our need more production and... above
which worth more than gold.
This means, putting it bluntly. that coal miners are now the most important people in the country and therefore, like other workers for whost talents there is a special de- favoured position in the community. mand, able to claim a specially
We need not grudge it.
a
"grave
We have been jorked into realising that the second Battle of Britain is not far ahead.
Somewhere in the back of our minds, while polltlclans made un- Inspiring speeches about and difficult situation," we have all, including the politicians, relied on a Maginot Line somewhere, an illu- BE
RECAUSE England is an island sion that this island could not really Let them sweep away every petly suffer the catastrophes of the Con-
built on coal there has,
untit control and restriction that can ren- tinent. Perhaps a
now, always been plenty of it and
miner. has sonably be removed and so free an the
hangover from the
been underpaid army of officials for more produc-
Britain's world and Ill-treated, After tong Certainly n tive labour, at the same time make- from the war, when any urgent need between
of hangover years
Idleness rotting in the lug life a little
two wars, minera casier for the was always mel by lend-lease. The are naturally a
little slow to un- ordinary ellizen, especially housewife.
the American loan perpetuated this flu derstand that they need not agmin
fear unemployment.
ET Ministers resolve
supremacy. days
sion.
to speak
of
with one vole, uniting the people THIS phoney period is over, and it
in a great national effort. A to their week-end gibes ut one section or another, and spreading of class hatreds.
must not return
their continual weather breaks.
who labour with brain or
when
the
At the moment this is a transport Let them send out business men crisis because frost and snow and into the world to buy food that our ice and fog and gates have stopped people may be adequately ted for the coal at the pithead from being the hard work that Hes ahead of moved by rail and sea. But the them.
erisia is, 03 we all know, a coal crisis.
If there is not more coal we shall have less for the factories and less exports to buy the raw materials and food we need. Unless we have made provision, unless we are ready when the lonn comes to an end- many experts think in less than two years--we shall learn not merely what it is to be cold but be hungry.
Let them restore incentives to all brawn and at all levels, so that men may orice more find dignity in their own worth.
confidence, at home and abroad, in Let them, in short, re-establish
the future of Britain.
There never was, and there never will be, any substitute for hard work in the production of human well- being. Let all the people have songs In their hearts as the winter snows give way to the promise of spring,
GILES FINDS A BRIGHT SPOT
If we have no dollars to buy raw materials and food, there will no remedy, only hunger and unem
be
ployment. We had not planned to be alone. But that is what we once again have to face.
In 1940 we needed aircraft meet the danger. This time
"Oh everything's all right now nothing to eat, no fire, no light-but
the frost didn't get father's crocuses."
BY THE WAY by Beachcomber
SAY, Professor, why do all the Still carping
cultured people avoid that dark
to
At last their demand for nations- lisation huy been granted, at last we have a Government which pays attention to them. They have responded by a substantial increase of producilon.
But they are u dwindling and ageing population. In return
for better conditions and better pay. - and miners will now have to paid more than engineers, however much the rest of the industrial hierarchy dislikes upsetting its wage precedents-the miners may fairly be asked to agree to a substantial indux of foreign workers.
be
POAL comes first, but it is not the
whole story. Economie "planning" means, Arst and foremost, the choice of priorities. Here the Government are open to criticism because they have not clearly explained the fortable choices has to be made: public that a series of most uncom-
It sults politicians of all partica to talk as if the alternatives were Utopia and bankruptcy. The truth Is that if we are not to staryc We we have to do a lot of things that are
very disagreeable.
We have been given on export target, and we have been humour- ed by having more goods In the shops. There were even, if I recall rightly, somne people in. quite responsible positions who complain- ed of bread rationing. These very people now abuse Mr Shinwell for not rationing fuel.
some
Fuel cuts would have meant short ilmé in industry and either less consumers' goods or less experts.
In particular. 且 stickler for prioritics would have refused to give us an almost peace-time call- way service again; and, we pre- sume, those who complained of bread rationing, and, now revile the Government for not rationing fuel. would have made no complaints. when the slow war-time train took half an hour longer to bring them to the office.
Again, It was bad planning on the Government's part to allow the shop-windows to be full of attrac tive electric stoves; bad planning to allow us to be warm in our bed- rooms at night. It Mr Shinwell now apulogises for his error in per- mitting us to USE more electricity than we could afford ut had facilities to make, his critics. we hope, will not
complain If the Government Is more austere in future,
In a word, the criticism of the Government now is not that it has been too austere, but that it has been too kindly, too generous a spendthrift, If you will. The Battle of Britain demands that the public. tell Sir Stafford Cripps bluntly that we can no longer afford extrava- gances. A little more austerity, please, Sir Stafford,
PERHAPS it is now clear why those who most revile the Government are not, when it comes to the test, startled me, Why do you speak like
at all likely to want to overthrow it that?" "Glamur," said the Captain Britain, Socialist, Conservative or Any Government in post-war man in the corner? Who is DEAR SIR,
"My father was an Arab sea-captain Communist, would be forced to con- he?"
What on earth has happened to trading in the China Sea. Bur, let us trol, plan and direct, "Haven't you heard? That's the the recently cleaned Rubens? Did
The one im- of love. Will you have great art collector, Brushforth, and that fat woman always have three ch he's Bot a dirty Van Dyck. It hasn't arms, or has someone painted one
NO,
Banks," said possibility is to put into practice the coldly. "Waiter." called the controls." That would leave us ut- Conservative election cry of "no been washed for years,"
in? And surely it was not the in. Captain, "bring a pall of ice, without terly helpless. in stock-insufficient to "Why doesn't he try Snibbo?"
Jove! That's at idea. I'll tell tention of Rubens to give her that I suppose," said Vita with a uneer. tives do not in their hearts want to
champagne. My head aches." "Love, allow for the seasonal drop of
A second reason why Conserva- 8,000,000 tous and provide
a week later.)
shining nose with only one nostril. "No, drink," adequate working stock.
Cleaners alwuld really be more care-
replin the. Captain, get rid of this Government, how- ful. To scrape at an old master with flipping her nether ear.
ever much they rovite it, is that un- a chisel may do more harm than Britain captures ferret
der
any other than a working-class good. There is a definite hole in one
administration we should have had of the Turners, which was not there
prolonged and fatal industrial dis- last year.
"ART-LOVER."
putes. The response among the workers to the Government's appeals was really remarkable.
At the beginning of this winter there were between 10 and 11 mil lion tons
"I say, they What steps did the planners take? do crowd round old Brushforth, don't It is known that from the beginning they?"
of October onwards there werd "No wonder! He's tried Saibbo on plans and counter-plans, orders and his Van Dyck, and it's as good as counter-orders and in the end the new." inevitable disorder, for nothing effective was done until too late.
And so a spell of severe weather catches the power stallions and In- dustrial consumers without adequate stocks and we are brought to the brink of complete disaster through
responsibility.
Zubzub el Marshrat
market DENYING that he had Alled a carpet-bealer's hat with glue, Hear what Professor Crowell maye:
Monty Nixon (40), an egg-grader, For three ucars I was a martyr to
told the magistrale that he had in- dirty pictures. Then one day a friend VITA BREVIS was lunching alone tended to import cels from Holland. told" me about Snibbo. I applied K in the West End when a voleo but:was refused a permit. Mr. Tup- to my pictures, with the most 'amaz. behind her chair sald: "You no likçe peny, employed by a different arm, ing results. Now I tell-all my artis-Alab chieftain make hcopum big said that she had no idea what any fie friends about it.
white palaver?" "Why, Captain of this referred to, and was cautioned Foulenough!" she exclaimed.. You twice....
a combination of ineptitude and (Signed) ARTHUR CROWELL-
NANCY He Doesn't Tick Correctly
WONDER WHAT TIME IT
| 15~~~ID SAY TWELVE-THIRTY,
ACCORDING TO \ TH"
WAY MY STOMACH
FEELS
OH, MISTER
WHAT
IT'S ONE: THIRTY
DAT'S FUNNY-- MY STOMACH
By Erule Bushmiller
I'M ABOUT AN HOUR SLOW ---WILL YOU GIVE ME A CHECK-UP ?..
?
TIME
IS IT?
IS USUALLY.
RIGHT
WATCH REPAIRS
660
066
HOPE the Government will draw the moral. It must never again foll into the trick of, warning us that things are bad and then explaining away its owh warning" with Boft
assuranceN,
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take"
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