Liberalism and the Social Problem

by Winston Churchill

Side by side with this is the scheme of insurance against unemployment which I hope to have the honour of passing through Parliament next year. The details of that scheme are practically complete, and it will enable upwards of two and a quarter millions of workers in the most uncertain trades of this country—trades like ship-building, engineering, and building—to secure unemployment benefits, which in a great majority of cases will be sufficient to tide them over the season of unemployment. This scheme in its compulsory form is limited to certain great trades like those I have specified, but it will be open to other trades, to trade unions, to workers' associations of various kinds, or even to individuals to insure with the State Unemployment Insurance Office against unemployment on a voluntary basis, and to secure, through the State subvention, much better terms than it would be possible for them to obtain at the present time.

It would be impossible to work a scheme of unemployment insurance except in conjunction with some effective method of finding work and of testing willingness to work, and that can only be afforded by a national system of labour exchanges. That Bill has already passed through Parliament, and in the early months of next year we shall hope to bring it into operation by opening, all over the country, a network of labour exchanges connected with each other and with the centre by telephone. We believe this organisation may secure for labour—and, after all, labour is the only thing the great majority of people have to sell—it will secure for labour, for the first time, that free and fair market which almost all other commodities of infinitely less consequence already enjoy, and will replace the present wasteful, heartbreaking wanderings aimlessly to and fro in search of work by a scientific system; and we believe that the influence of this system in the end must tend to standardising the conditions of wages and employment throughout the country.

Lastly, in connection with unemployment I must direct your attention to the Development Bill, which is now before Parliament, the object of which is to provide a fund for the economic development of our country, for the encouragement of agriculture, for afforestation, for the colonisation of England, and for the making of roads, harbours, and other public works. And I should like to draw your attention to a very important clause in that Bill, which says that the prosecution of these works shall be regulated, as far as possible, by the conditions of the labour market, so that in a very bad year of unemployment they can be expanded, so as to increase the demand for labour at times of exceptional slackness, and thus correct and counterbalance the cruel fluctuations of the labour market. The large sums of money which will be needed for these purposes are being provided by the Budget of Mr. Lloyd-George, and will be provided in an expanding volume in the years to come through the natural growth of the taxes we are imposing.

I have hitherto been speaking of the industrial organisation of insurance schemes, labour exchanges, and economic development. Now I come to that great group of questions which are concerned with the prevention and relief of distress. We have before us the reports of the majority and minority of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, and we see there a great and urgent body of reforms which require the attention of Parliament. The first and most costly step in the relief of distress has already been taken by the Old-Age Pensions Act, supplemented, as it will be if the Budget passes, by the removal of the pauper disqualification. By that Act we have rescued the aged from the Poor Law. We have yet to rescue the children; we have yet to distinguish effectively between the bonâ fide unemployed workman and the mere loafer and vagrant; we have yet to transfer the sick, the inebriate, the feeble-minded and the totally demoralised to authorities specially concerned in their management and care.

But what I want to show you, if I have made my argument clear, is that all these schemes—which I can do little more than mention this afternoon, each one of which is important—are connected one with the other, fit into one another at many points, that they are part of a concerted and interdependent system for giving a better, fairer social organisation to the masses of our fellow-countrymen. Unemployment insurance, which will help to tide a workman over a bad period, is intimately and necessarily associated with the labour exchanges which will help to find him work and which will test his willingness to work. This, again, will be affected by the workings of the Development Bill, which, as I told you, we trust may act as a counterpoise to the rocking of the industrial boat and give a greater measure of stability to the labour market.

The fact that everybody in the country, man and woman alike, will be entitled, with scarcely any exception, to an old-age pension from the State at the age of seventy—that fact makes it ever so much cheaper to insure against invalidity or infirmity up to the age of seventy. And, with the various insurance schemes which are in preparation, we ought to be able to set up a complete ladder, an unbroken bridge or causeway, as it were, along which the whole body of the people may move with a certain assured measure of security and safety against hazards and misfortunes. Then, if provision can be arranged for widows and orphans who are left behind, that will be a powerful remedy against the sweating evil; for, as you know, these helpless people, who in every country find employment in particular trades, are unable to make any fair bargain for themselves, and their labour, and this consequently leads to the great evils which have very often been brought to the notice of Parliament. That, again, will fit in with the Anti-Sweating Bill we are passing through Parliament this year.

Now, I want you to see what a large, coherent plan we are trying to work out, and I want you to believe that the object of the plan and the results of it will be to make us a stronger as well as a happier nation. I was reading the other day some of the speeches made by Bismarck—a man who, perhaps more than any other, built up in his own lifetime the strength of a great nation—speeches which he made during the time when he was introducing into Germany those vast insurance schemes, now deemed by all classes and parties in Germany to be of the utmost consequence and value. "I should like to see the State" (said Prince Bismarck in 1881), "which for the most part consists of Christians, penetrated to some extent by the principles of the religion which it professes, especially as concerns the help one gives to his neighbour, and sympathy with the lot of old and suffering people." Then, again, in the year 1884 he said: "The whole matter centres in the question, 'Is it the duty of the State or is it not to provide for its helpless citizens?' I maintain that it is its duty, that it is the duty, not only of the 'Christian' State, as I ventured once to call it when speaking of 'Practical Christianity,' but of every State."

There are a great many people who will tell you that such a policy, as I have been endeavouring to outline to you this afternoon, will not make our country stronger, because it will sap the self-reliance of the working classes. It is very easy for rich people to preach the virtues of self-reliance to the poor. It is also very foolish, because, as a matter of fact, the wealthy, so far from being self-reliant, are dependent on the constant attention of scores, and sometimes even hundreds, of persons who are employed in waiting upon them and ministering to their wants. I think you will agree with me, on the other hand—knowing what you do of the life of this city and of the working classes generally—that there are often trials and misfortunes which come upon working-class families quite beyond any provision which their utmost unaided industry and courage could secure for them. Left to themselves, left absolutely to themselves, they must be smashed to pieces, if any exceptional disaster or accident, like recurring sickness, like the death or incapacity of the breadwinner, or prolonged or protracted unemployment, fall upon them.

There is no chance of making people self-reliant by confronting them with problems and with trials beyond their capacity to surmount. You do not make a man self-reliant by crushing him under a steam roller. Nothing in our plans will relieve people from the need of making every exertion to help themselves, but, on the contrary, we consider that we shall greatly stimulate their efforts by giving them for the first time a practical assurance that those efforts will be crowned with success.

I have now tried to show you that the Budget, and the policy of the Budget, is the first conscious attempt on the part of the State to build up a better and a more scientific organisation of society for the workers of this country, and it will be for you to say—at no very distant date—whether all this effort for a coherent scheme of social reconstruction is to be swept away into the region of lost endeavour.