² Recovery Guides: A Record of Progress in the E.R.P. Countries (Washington, D.C.: Economic Cooperation Administration, Division of Statistics and Reports, 02, 1951)Google Scholar and Monthly Digest of Statistics (London: Central Statistical Office, 11, 1951), 18–22 Google Scholar; also “Unemployment in Europe,” Economist, 06 18, 1950.Google Scholar

³ As one Tory campaign manager in the 1951 election campaign complained: “… the millions of workers … don't realize that it was Hitler, who beggared the world of goods, and not the Socialists, who created the conditions for full employment.” Time, 10 22, 1951, 31.Google Scholar A 1945 estimate of manpower requirements for restoring exports, and for “some restoration of housing and capital equipment was 3.4 million extra workers. The total supply in sight was only 2.6 million. See Hancock, W. K. and Gowing, M. M., British War Economy, History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Civil Series, ed. Hancock, W. K. (London, 1949), 521.Google Scholar

⁴ “The Government accept as one of their primary aims and responsibilities the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the war…. This involves a new approach and a new responsibility for the State.” Cmd. 6527 (London, May, 1944), 3, 16.

⁵ Over 85 per cent of trade unionists are affiliated with the Trades Union Congress. In July, 1947, the Economic Planning Board was set up, “a radical departure because it associates management and labor continuously with the government in the consideration of planning problems as a whole.” See Brady, R. A., Crisis in Britain (Berkeley, 1950), 520.Google Scholar

⁶ Hancock, and Gowing, , British War Economy, 165.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., 43.

⁸ The subsidy programme, which in 1940–1 represented a cost of £63 million, had reached a peak of £485 million in 1948–9. In The Times, Oct. 18, 1951, Professor Jewkes pointed out that the annual per capita food subsidies were roughly equivalent to the amount workers paid in taxes on consumption (especially the taxes on beer and tobacco). “Why then” he asked, “do we not abolish the food subsidies and cut the taxes on consumption pro rata? The only answer must be that the Government thinks it knows better than any individual how best he can distribute his income to give him the greatest satisfaction.” Miss Ruth Cohen correctly pointed out (The Times, October 20, 1951) that subsidies did in effect help the poorer and the larger families since for these families, the rates of expenditure on food compared to expenditure on beer and tobacco were higher than for the “average” family. Secondly, the abolition of subsidies would in turn accelerate demands for higher wages and aggravate the problem of inflation.

⁹ Labor and Industry in Britain, 09, 1951, 115.Google Scholar

¹⁰ This writer does not attach as much importance as does E. Rolph to the money wage differentials in allocating labour in Britain. See “The Trade Unions, Freedom, and Economic Planning” in Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of Third Annual Meeting (Chicago, 1950, 338–51Google Scholar). Rolph admits, for example, that wages had risen spectacularly in the coal industry and yet coal-mining remained the most badly undermanned industry, but simply dismisses this with “the disutility of work in coal is so high that no generalized inferences about motivation may be safely made from coal” (p. 341).

¹¹ Flanders, Allan, “How Much is British Labour Controlled?” In Labor and Industry in Britain, 03, 1950, 21 Google Scholar; also Labor and Industry in Britain, 12, 1948, 147 Google Scholar; March, 1951, 9.

¹² Statement on Personal Incomes, Costs and Prices, Cmd. 7321 (London, 02, 1948).Google Scholar Cf. par. 7(c) and 6.

¹³ Economic Commission for Europe, “Reports on Inflation Everywhere,” Economic Digest, 07, 1951, 299 Google Scholar, and “Weekly Earnings, Wage Rates and Retail Prices,” London and Cambridge Economic Service, XXIX, no. 2, May, 1951, reproduced in Economic Digest, 07, 1951, 290.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Monthly Digest, of Statistics, no. 71 (London, 11, 1951), 121, 122.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Labor and Industry in Britain, 09, 1951, 104.Google Scholar

¹⁶ “Britain's Economy, 1951,” Labor and Industry in Britain, 06, 1951, 69.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Prime Minister Churchill was once prompted to remind his colleagues (contemplating further austerity) that Great Britain was “a modern community at war, and not Hottentots or Esquimaux.” We should remember that during the war the average Briton was exposed to blackouts, intermittent blitz attacks, drastic mobilization of labour and direction of work. Nearly every man worked an average of 53 hours a week, and in most cases had to put in 48 hours a month on Home Guard or Civil Defence. Supplies were limited; the queue was a part of everyday life. The real consumption level per capita in Britain declined by 16 per cent from 1938 to 1944. (It increased 16 per cent in both Canada and the United States.) Per capita food consumption dropped 11 per cent, clothing and footwear 34 per cent, household goods over 50 per cent, and motor vehicles and operation 95 per cent. See Hancock, and Gowing, , British War Economy, 519.Google Scholar

¹⁸ E.C.A. Report, I, 11, Table 60; vol. II, 57 also offers statistics on capital depletion. For discussion, see Brady, R. A., Crisis in Britain, 6.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Hancock, and Gowing, , British War Economy, 522.Google Scholar

²⁰ One is reminded of the cryptic analysis of the General Theory made by J. A. Schumpeter: “Here at last was a theoretical doctrine that … smashed the pillar into dust: a doctrine that may not actually say, but can easily be made to say that he who tries to save destroys real capital and that the unequal distribution of income is the ultimate cause of unemployment. This is what the Keynesian revolution amounts to.” The New Economics (New York, 1947), 99.Google Scholar As one writer in the Economist lamented, “We are witnessing a redistribution of wealth … not a rebirth … or flowering renaissance.” “Economic Patriotism” (01 1, 1949), 2.Google Scholar

²¹ National Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom, 42, 43, and the Economic Survey for 1950, Cmd. 8195. This figure reflects, of course, a strong inflationary bias. But students of British reconstruction generally agree that, by any standard, investments were sustained at a very high level. See Ellis, H. (ed.), Economics of Freedom (New York, 1950)Google Scholar, chap, V, “The United Kingdom—Economic Progress under the Marshall Plan.”

²² National Income and Expenditure of the United Kingdom, Cmd. 8203 (London, 04, 1951), 42.Google Scholar

²³ Cf. Williams, John H., “The Task of Economic Recovery,” Foreign Affairs, 07, 1948, 625.Google Scholar

²⁴ U.K. House of Commons Parliamentary Debates, Weekly Hansard (London, 04 6, 1948), cols. 45–6.Google Scholar

²⁵ “Bad housing was left as one of the worst of the social and economic legacies of the war.” For Statistics, See Hancock, and Gowing, , British War Economy, 496–7.Google Scholar

²⁶ “Capital Versus Consumption,” Economist, 11 8, 1947.Google Scholar

²⁷ Cole, G. D. H., Facts for Socialists, Including Some Unwelcome Home Truths Which Call for Attention (London, 1949), 9 Google Scholar; 10.

²⁸ British Trade Unionism, Political and Economic Planning (London, 1948).Google Scholar

²⁹ Seventy Years of Trade Unionism, quoted in ibid., 99.

³⁰ “Overhauling the T.U.C.” Economist, 09 13, 1947, 453.Google Scholar

³¹ “Labour's Choice,” Economist, 05 22, 1948.Google Scholar

³² Labour representation on national boards was not, in fact, large. Differences in opinion existed within the labour movement itself. A Communist minority demanded the extension of representation, denying the need to appoint “non-political” experts: “No one suggests that the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be a stock broker or the Minister of Defence a general, irrespective of their political opinions.” They reasoned that the Board, politically chosen, should use the experts as a Minister uses civil servants. See White, Eirene, Workers' Control? (London: The Fabian Society, 1949), 7.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., 10.

³⁴ Ibid., 11.

³⁵ Clegg, Hugh, Labour in Nationalised Industry, Fabian Research Pamphlet (London, 07, 1950), 10.Google Scholar

³⁵ White, , Workers' Control?, 2A.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., 13, 14.

³⁸ Undoubtedly rearmament costs, more than any other single factor, tore apart the fabric of restraint from which the government wage policy was woven. As the “Bevan” pamphlet, One Way Only pointed out, it was estimated that the 1951 increase in British output would be 7½ per cent (in the absence of the dislocations of a sudden rearmament drive). “This would have given us £600 million more to spend…. it could have given us, for example, an extra 50,000 houses a year and an increase of 10 per cent in the rate of capital investment in industry and another £ 100 million worth of goods to help the economically backward countries and a 3 per cent rise in living standards for all the people of Britain and all this whilst still spending 7 per cent of our national income on defense.” One Way Only: A Socialist Analysis of the Present World Crisis, foreword by Aneurin Bevan, Harold Wilson, and John Freeman (A Tribune Pamphlet), 13.