W. Keith Hancock and Margaret M. Gowing

“ The consciousness of a million workers still unemployed remained an incubus upon the will to undertake radical action involving co-operation between organised labour, the employers and Government. Problems that seemed easy so long as they were stated merely in material terms proved too difficult for solution when the will to attack them was still lacking. ”

“ The Ministry of Supply and the other war production departments called upon the Ministry of Labour to institute a vigorous policy of transfer, to shift skilled workers not only from factory to factory but from region to region; in short, to bring the men to the jobs. But the Ministry of Labour called upon the war production departments to bring the jobs to the men. ”

“ If mobility of labour is necessary in time of war, so also is stability; it is important that workers should be got into the right places but it is also important that they should thereafter stay put. In the war of 1914–18, excessive labour turnover had been if anything an even greater menace than insufficient mobility had been to industrial productivity. Departments and firms had poached on their neighbours labour supply by much-advertised enticements of higher earning, special bonuses and concessions, special amenities in the factories and any other inducements that could be thought of. ”

“ While the Government’s experts were producing their frightening calculations of future manpower requirements in the munitions industries and emphasising the insufficiencies of supply in the labour market, the immediate effective demand for labour remained disappointingly weak. As has already been seen, industrial unemployment did not sink below the million mark before April 1940. Up to the fall of France, the main immediate cause of anxiety among economists was the deficient absorptive capacity of industry, not the scarcity of labour. ”

“ It still remained true that the demand for skilled workers must be met in the main from within industry itself. Employers, labour leaders and the Government were all agreed upon the need for hastening the processes of dilution and substitution of labour, whereby existing skills could be spread more widely and new ‘semi-skills’ could be employed in mass production technique. ”

“ The nation had roughly nine million men in the age group 16–40: of this total, approximately 5.3 millions or fifty-nine percent, would be retained for industry under the Schedule of Reserved Occupations or excluded from the Forces through age, health, hardship or conscientious objections, while 3.7 millions or forty-one percent would be available for service in the armed forces. Later in the war, the growing stringency of military manpower led to a progressive tightening of the tests of reservation until in the end the Schedule itself became obsolete ”

“ However, improving economic activity began to make a real dent in this hard core in the very months when British and Allied forces were suffering disaster on the battle fields of Norway, the Low Countries, and France. From April onwards, the expansion of war work began steadily and progressively to take up the slack of unemployment. Moreover, the political upheaval of early May gave Britain a Government with enough determination and enough popular support to carry through the new manpower policies that national survival demanded. ”

“ Much more important, the percentage of the total population of working age in the labour force showed a substantial rise for both men and women, as increased numbers were drawn into employment from the ‘non-industrial’ sector—boys and girls leaving school, retired people, students, private domestic servants and women working in their homes. ”

“ Even within the industries of Group III, many workers were shifting over from peace tasks to war tasks, stimulated by the restriction of materials for civilian contracts or, more probably, by the direct increase of government demand—for example, demand upon the textile industries for uniforms and other clothing, or upon the building industry for hutments and factories. ”

“ The administrators and economist who tried, early in the war, to measure the task ahead had no faith that individualism—the uncontrolled personal decisions of millions of British men and women—would be able to perform it. ”

“ The Ministry of Labour wanted the Ministry of Supply to use its Area Boards to seek out the little firms which, it believed, would be able to make available for war production not only a lot of useful plant but also a large aggregate supply of skilled labour. ”

“ In this Council was enshrined the principle of consultation between Government, employers and trade unions—an excellent principle, if only the consultation had produced policies adequate to the nation’s need. ”

“ During the period the total population of working age in Great Britain increased by some 159,000: of this increase about 100,000 was due to net immigration from overseas, including the return of British subjects from abroad and the influx of refugees from the Continent. ”

“ Of the rest, 150,000 had received no more than two months’ training, while many of the others, including the 275,000 veterans from Dunkirk, had a sufficiency of training but an insufficiency, if not an absolute lack, of weapons. Including 22,000 Canadians and 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders, there were in Britain barely half a million men who had both the training and the equipment for violent fighting against the more heavily equipped enemy forces. ”

“ The Stamp Survey estimated in May 1940 that the total increase of labour in the engineering industries was likely to be, at most, twenty percent for the first twelve months of war, in contrast with the seventy percent postulated by the inter-departmental committee as necessary to fulfil the war programmes. ”