The Pillars of Security (Works of William H. Beveridge)

William H. Beveridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781138828230
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317573043
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This volume is made up of articles and broadcasts and deals with the conditions and methods of making the British war effort more effective. It then goes on to deal with post war problems and discusses the Beveridge Report in its perspective of social policy designed to make "New Britain" after the war.

1

GOVERNMENT FOR WAR: A COMPARISON WITH 1916–18*

THE immediate outcome of the recent Parliamentary debate on the conduct of the war has been the appointment of Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of War Production, with a reshuffle of subordinate posts,† Such an appointment is not in form a step nearer to the kind of war Government established in December, 1916. Whether it can be made so in substance and can help to bring such a Government into being rapidly is perhaps the most vital issue before the nation and its leaders today.

The requisites for success in war government are threefold: speed of executive action, correctness and speed of decision on policy, and that the nation should understand and support the actions of the Government. The first requirement is satisfied in proportion as responsibilities for executive action are clearly defined and all those responsibilities which hang closely together by nature are closely associated in the departmental structure. The second requirement involves the taking of decisions neither by one man nor by a committee of hurried executives, but by a group of men pooling their minds in constant session—men freed from daily executive tasks so that they have time to think before they decide, men with unquestioned authority over all departmental Ministers, so that what they decide is a decision, not a time-wasting compromise. The third requirement involves putting in charge of each Department a named Minister directly responsible to Parliament which represents the nation.

Some may question whether the third requirement is essential for success in war or is essential only for success by a democracy. My answer is that the one solid hope for the success of Britain in this war is the fact that Britain is a democracy allied to democracies: that the conflict is between the British people and their enemies, not between individual leaders; that by consequence the British people cannot be beaten by any psychological weakness or till they are physically helpless.

The form of Government established at the end of 1916 was consciously designed to satisfy the three requirements of success in war as set out above. Executive action was entrusted to departmental Ministers directly responsible to Parliament; they could proceed and were encouraged to proceed with full speed in their own spheres. They had above them a War Cabinet of Ministers without Portfolio, in nearly constant session, able at once to give a decision on any issue of major policy or any point of clash between Departments. It was possible and natural for one member of the War Cabinet to pay special attention to a particular group of topics, such as defence or munitions production or imperial relations. When any such problem came before them, his colleagues would expect him to have mastered all the relevant documents, even if they had not done so themselves; he might be asked by the Cabinet personally to settle, after inquiry, some special issue. Lord Milner, for example, became to a large extent the specialist of the 1917 Cabinet on many home front issues. But because he was Minister without Portfolio he neither interfered with the direct responsibility of each departmental Minister nor was he expected by Parliament to answer questions. That was the duty of the departmental Minister.

It is said sometimes that Ministers without Portfolio, lacking intimate contact with administration, will be too remote and too ignorant to be able to give sound judgments or to impose their will upon powerful executive Departments. The main answer to this objection depends upon choosing the right men for the War Cabinet. The subsidiary answer is that these men need not lack knowledge or expert assistance. The War Cabinet should not duplicate the work of the Departments, but it can have its own secretariat for economics, defence, and other groups of problems, to ensure that the wider implications of every proposal coming before the War Cabinet have been studied.

It is said also by some that the War Cabinet of 1916–18 was small in appearance only, since its actual meetings were attended by numerous other Ministers and their officials. This is true of some meetings though not of all; when a question affecting any Department (practically every question was bound to affect some Department) was before the War Cabinet, the Ministers concerned were summoned and they sometimes brought their principal officials. But this no more made the War Cabinet itself into a large body than the presence of counsel, solicitors, and others in the Court of Appeal makes the Court itself anything but a small body. The War Cabinet of 1916–18 had the unquestioned authority of judges and the same detachment from detail. The departmental Ministers were there only to put their particular case and answer questions. The decision was that of the War Cabinet given then or later, not by compromise but by judgment.

The Governments which have conducted this war for Britain hitherto have borne no likeness to the Government which conducted us to victory in 1918. In the present Government all the dominant personalities, from the Prime Minister downwards, have been eagerly absorbed in executive tasks; there are some Ministers without Portfolio but they have been made recessive. What difference to the contrast between the last war and this war is made by the new appointment of a Minister of Production? The answer depends to some extent upon the functions and way of work of the new Minister.

On the face of it appointment of a Minister of Production is neither a step towards the War Cabinet model of 1916–18 nor a step away from it. It is a move on a different plane, in the direction of grouping Departments and setting up a super-Minister for that group. The demand for a Minister of Production has sprung from a desire to secure greater co-ordination between the different branches and factors of production. Many of those who have made the demand have clearly had in mind a return to something like the Ministry of Munitions which, in the last war, covered most of the ground now occupied by the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Aircraft Production, and had its own Labour Department.

There were great advantages in this combination then. But there are serious difficulties in the way of such departmental combination today. Production depends in the last resort upon man-power; a Ministry of Production without authority over labour is a contradiction in terms. In the last war there was no Ministry of Labour till long after the Ministry of Munitions with its Labour Department had been firmly established. In the present war the Ministry of Labour has held a key position from the beginning; it has additional functions of national service which fall outside the sphere of munitions production and fell to another Department in 1914–18. Apart from any question of Ministerial personalities, an attempt to re-create the Ministry of Munitions for this war is out of date. The necessary co-ordination of the different factors of production can be obtained more easily in other ways: by choosing as Ministers for the separate Departments men of cooperative spirit and by setting up an effective War Cabinet on the 1916 model above them.

The same argument applies to other departmental groupings which have been suggested. In theory there is something to be said in favour of grouping under one Minister such offices as agriculture and food, or the three Defence Departments. But it is doubtful whether such grouping yields any advantages which cannot be obtained by the easier method of an effective War Cabinet ready to give decisions between the Departments as they stand. On the other hand, grouping has two grave disadvantages; first, that the super-Minister in charge of a group of Departments is almost bound to interfere with the sense of responsibility and speed of action of his subordinates; second, that he is almost bound to become absorbed in executive details, leaving him no time to think, to read, to discuss, to plan ahead. The tradition that a Minister of a named Department is responsible for everything done by that Department, and therefore must be prepared to know about everything, if asked, is strong and not easily shaken in this country.

The essence of the 1916 War Cabinet was that it consisted of Ministers without Portfolio, that is to say without Departments. This is what is wanted today. But Ministers without Portfolio need not be Ministers without specialization. Assuming a British War Cabinet of the present Prime Minister and four or at most five colleagues—the strongest practical minds in the country—one of these colleagues might well become chairman of a Defence Committee, bringing together the three Services; another might be chairman of an Imperial War Council (with the right of the whole Council to attend meetings of the Cabinet for imperial issues); two others might divide the various problems of industry and the home front; one of these, or yet another, might lead the House of Commons. But these would be their special, not their exclusive, spheres. And they would be Ministers without Ministries or Permanent Secretaries.

On the face of it, and as conceived by most of those who have asked for it, the appointment of a Minister of Production is irrelevant to the main issue of war government. But the considerations set out above against recreating a Ministry of Munitions have clearly had their practical effect already in the detailed arrangements defining the scope of the new Minister. The executive responsibilities of all the other Departments now concerned with production, including the Ministry of Labour and National Service, are formally reserved. The new Minister of Production might conceivably move in the direction of becoming a War Cabinet Minister specialized in a particular field but without executive responsibilities or a Department of his own. He might conceivably become the first of a new set of War Cabinet Ministers without Portfolio. But he should be one only out of several of that type.

The origin of the Government in 1916–18 and the principles upon which it was founded have been described by no one better than by the Prime Minister of today. In his account of The World Crisis, describing the meeting between Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law which led to the new Government in December, 1916, Mr. Churchill states:—

The main principle uniting the two Ministers was that the existing Cabinet system whereby the executive heads of the various Departments each with his special point of view formed the supreme directing authority was not adapted to the unprecedented peril of the time.*

The appointment of a Minister of Production, as now arranged without authority over labour, means that there is no method short of action by the Prime Minister himself to co-ordinate the vital factors in production. It adds, therefore, to the burdens of the Prime Minister, instead of lightening them. It does nothing to give to the Prime Minister colleagues who can be trusted to decide large issues of policy wisely because they have had time for thought and forethought. It cannot be the last step in reconstruction if the nation is to have leadership adequate to the unprecedented peril of 1942.

 

* The Times, 16th February, 1942.

† See Note 2.

* The World Crisis, vol. iii, p. 249

2

A NEW SPIRIT FOR TOTAL WAR*

THE recent changes in the Government are a long step forward towards more effective conduct of the war.† But they are a first step only, of little avail unless change of form in government leads to changes of spirit and of policy. Three such changes, at least, are required, for in three fields at least we have carried into this third year of fighting ways of thought and action which are desirable in peace but dangerous in war.

First, we have carried on into the war with too little change the peace-time economic structure of the country and the system of economic rewards. We have continued to rely upon individual capitalism with its accompanying machinery of wage-bargaining, even .though the excess profits tax and other financial relations between the State and business managers have deprived both private capitalism and wage-bargaining of their logical basis. We have left vital production in the hands of individuals whose duty it was to consider not solely the needs of the nation in war but the interests of shareholders and of what would be the position of their businesses after the war. We have allowed some of the farmers’ spokesmen to talk as if putting their utmost effort into the use of our land depended upon the terms of a price bargain. We have, generally against the advice of economists, treated our workpeople as if they were “economic men,” unamenable even in war to any motive stronger than personal gain.

Meanwhile the State has set out to direct the employment of all men without taking responsibility for ensuring a fair distribution of income. The main evil of this economic policy is not the bogey of inflation nor is it that a few people may make large profits or large wages: its evils lie, partly in the indefensible and dangerous inequalities that have resulted between civilians and the members of the fighting forces, between different civilians, and between different businesses; partly in the fact that bribery by price or wage is often an ineffective spur to output.

The time calls for two changes: first, for the State to take direct responsibility for the control of vital industries and for the distribution of income; second, for assertion of the principle that service rather than personal gain should be the mainspring of war effort in industry as in fighting. To say that wage and price bargains are out of place in war is not to criticize the actions or to deny the value of associations of workpeople and of employers. Trade unions are an essential element in the British democracy, and for peace I, at least, want trade unions after the British model—autonomous associations, pursuing sectional ends—rather than trade unions after the Russian model—associations forming part of the regular machinery of the State. But is it too much to suggest that, in war and for the war only, our trade unions should become, after the Russian model, the conscious agents of national policy?

To say, again, that service rather than gain should be the main motive for all men’s acts in war is not to say that exceptional effort should never receive special reward; exceptional effort—to put it no higher—needs exceptional sustenance and freedom from economic care. But to treat private gain as the dominant motive for war effort is to slander our people; British workpeople are not by nature profiteers, and can be made to act as profiteers in war only by mismanagement or misleading. If it is true that output of our factories improved suddenly when Russia came into the war, this does not mean that the workers are stupid in preferring Russia to their own country; it means that in war the most effective spur to heroic effort is an idea, not the hope of personal gain.

Second, we have carried on with too little change in our political as well as our economic structure. We need now to substitute national government for coalition government. The organization of parties is a necessary element in peacetime; a one-party State is not a democracy. Since party organizations will be needed after the war, they must be kept alive during the war, but war government should not be based on them. To base government in war on a coalition of party organizations is to appoint or retain Ministers not because they are the best men for their work but because of their political aptitudes and relations. To do this is to entrust the fortunes of the country to men of divided loyalty. Just because a party leader has responsibilities for his party after the war he cannot even in war be single-minded. To blame business men for conducting their businesses in war with an eye to post-war advantage, and at the same time leave the government of the country in the hands of men who should feel—and do feel—a duty to their parties, is to strain at gnats and swallow camels whole and kicking.

In the circumstances of today reliance on party coalition as the basis of war government has the added weakness that the House of Commons itself gets increasingly recruited, not by popular election, but by nomination of the party machines. It was a misfortune when the present Prime Minister accepted the leadership of a party and thus consecrated the practice of party bargaining as the basis of war government. In the recent change of Government, the misfortune might have been redeemed and a good change made even better, if the change could have come through the Prime Minister resigning at once his office and his party leadership, and being invited, as himself the one indispensable leader and saviour of the country two years ago, to form a fresh Government free of all party trammels.

This argument does not mean that a war Government should take no thought of post-war problems: on the contrary, it should set in hand ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. Government for War: a Comparison with 1916-18
• 2. A New Spirit for Total War
• 3. The Meaning of Total War
• 4. The Five Christian Standards
• 5. Maintenance of Employment
• 6. Plan for Social Security
• 7. Third Time Lucky?
• 8. Four Questions on the Plan
• 9. New Britain
• 10. The Pillars of Security
• 11. Finance of The Beveridge Report: Questions and Answers
• 12. The Government Proposals and the Beveridge Report
• 13. Social Security and Social Policy
• 14. Children's Allowances and the Race
• 15. The Massacre of the Jews
• 16. Four Stones for Goliath Squalor
• 17. On Going to America
• 18. The Pace of Government
• 19. "Back to Our Job"
• Chronological and Other Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Large or Small Nation? A Postscript
• Index