AFTER-WAR POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1942, Page 3

AFTER-WAR POLICY

♦ PROBLEMS TO BE FACED IN BRITAIN SECURITY OF EMPLOYMENT. AND DECENT STANDARDS OF LIFE. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, July 30. Immediate and far-reach-ing plans for post-war reconstruction, giving security of employment and decent standard of life as the prime factor of our war effort, were urged by Sir William Beveridge in London today. The Government, he said, should use whatever powers were necessary to maintain employment after the war and should set up an economic general staff to prepare plans. Unemployment had -already been abolished twice in the lives of most of us—in the last war and in this. Consideration of how this had been done suggested that the maintenance of national planning and the control of labour and resources were essential after the war. This did not necessarily mean that the plan, when made, should be carried out directly by the State. It might, probably did, mean the replacement of competitive private enterprise for profit by public monopoly enterprise, not for profit, in certain fields, but private and public enterprise alike should work within the limits set by the general design. National _ planning did not mean administration of everything from Whitehall or the surrender of any essential citizen liberties. But private control of the means of production with the right to employ others at a wage in using those means —whatever might be said for or against it on other grounds —could not be described as an essential liberty of British people. Not more than a tiny fraction of the British people ever enjoyed that right. That control of food must be kept out of the hands of vested interests after the war for the sake of the people’s health was stressed today by Sir John Orr, the noted nutrition expert. He urged the setting-up of a commission charged with the responsibility of obtaining sufficient food of the right kind for the people of Britain. This would mean, an enormous increase in the production of fruit, vegetables, milk and eggs. The commission should have the further responsibility of seeing that food was produced at such prices that the lowestpaid worker could buy sufficient of the right kind of food to keep himself and his family in good health. There must be no question of some people having to fill in forms to get what they needed. Science had developed today to such an extent that there was no reason why milk and fruit should not be as plentiful in winter as in summer throughout the country.