PROBLEM IN BRITAIN
PERMANENCE EMPHASISED
GOYEBNMEXT'S PLANS
United Press Association—By Electric' Tele-
graph—Copyright.
LONDON, 23rd November.
It is understood from the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament, and the Prime Minister's.statement in the House of Commons yesterday, that the Government is tackling unemployment from a new angle.
Hitherto the question has been associated with falling world trade, the socalled economic blizzard, and the temporary collapse o£ basic industries, and it has been assumed that the unemployed would lie-absorbed when better times came. The Government appears to have realised that a large amount of unemployment is destined to be permanent owing to the vast daily displacements due to unceasing extensions of machinery, the cessation of migration, and overmanning in many industries. For example, coal displacements are due to reductions in armaments and warship construction, and not. least to the postwar invasion by women in the labour market, practically doubling the total supply of labour.
Mr. Eamsay MaeDonald stated that even when trade was as busy as anyone could expect it to become there would be a residuum of population which, if not human beings, might be described as scrap.
The Government is determined not to allow this residuum, which Mr. MacDonald says will perhaps amount to 2,000,000 men and women, to become "superfluous scrap." It therefore regards the problem of unemployment as not a matter of temporary relief. Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, previously mentioned the figure of 1,000,000 as possibly permanently unemployed.
. The Archbishop of Canterbury said it was a shock to him to learn this from the Chancellor. "It is surely impossible that we will acquiesce In such a permanent burden on the social life of the nation," he said.
The newspapers foreshadow , vast Government plans to help the unemployed. ■ -■
It has been decided to divide the country into areas, each with an organiser, to provide,work in centres, allotments, physical training, and educational facilities, and to settle youth on the land. •
Permanent link to this item
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 126, 24 November 1932, Page 13
Word Count
325PROBLEM IN BRITAIN Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 126, 24 November 1932, Page 13
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