Orders of the Day — Unemployment.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 26 March 1925.

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Photo of Sir Archibald Sinclair Sir Archibald Sinclair , Caithness and Sutherland

It is my enviable privilege to be the first to congratulate the hon. Member for Stockport (Mr. Hammersley) on his admirable speech. All of us who have had the good fortune to listen to it will hope that before long he will give to a larger House the benefit of further contributions to our Debates. I make no apology for referring, for this is the first time during the last two Debates that any speaker has referred, to the question of unemployment in the Highlands, but, as I know that several other Members want to speak. I will undertake to be brief. The problem in the Highlands is a very special one, in more respects than one. It is a far more important problem, I think, than is recognised by many Members of the House and by many officials in the Government Departments, because, whereas in large cities it is quite easy to ascertain the number of unemployed by referring to the hooks of the Exchanges, in Highland townships and villages the men and women who are unemployed do not go and register on the books of the Exchanges. Moreover, one of the most serious aspects of the problem up there is not so much sheer unemployment as a tremendous amount of under-employment. It, therefore, follows that the problem in the Highlands is far more difficult and far more serious than is revealed by a study of statistics in the Employment Exchanges. Moreover, there is this further aspect, that in the Highlands you have a task which you could deal with far more easily than you can deal with it in the cities. You can give people useful work to do there in exchange for the unem- ployment benefit that they draw. You can give them work in addition to their unemployment benefit, which will leave behind it an asset of permanent value to the community. I would like to refer to a few directions in which this work could be provided.

There are two main industries in the Highlands. The first is the fishing industry. This industry has been heavily hit since the War, mainly owing to the fact that it has been deprived of its foreign markets. Eighty per cent. of the herring catch was formerly cured and exported, and the fact that the Highlands have lost their herring market in Germany and Russia has been mainly responsible for the difficulties with which the industry is faced. Last year there was some recovery in those markets, but the difficulty we have had is that there have, been so many lean seasons and so many difficult years that the fishermen cannot afford to buy the necessary nets and gear in order to put to sea. In Wick we have fine crews and splendid ships, but the men cannot afford to buy the gear necessary in order to put to sea. In these circumstances the last. Government came to our rescue, to some extent. They introduced a scheme—I gave them all credit for it at the time, and I have given them credit for it in my constituency—by providing £150,000 to enable the fishermen to replace their lost and damaged gear; but I warned the Government at the time that unless they modified certain of the conditions, particularly the payment of 5 per cent. the payment back of the loans within three years, and, above all, the condition that the men—and it must be remembered that the men whom it was intended chiefly to help were the poorest and had been the hardest hit—were to provide 50 per cent. of the money in cash. These conditions killed the scheme.

In these circumstances, what did the new Government do? Instead of modifying the scheme and making it more useful to the fishermen, they said that the scheme had been a failure, and they abandoned it. I am not going to argue as to how far that attitude was justified, but I wish to say that if the Government will reconsider their decision—and I think it ought to be reconsidered—and if they will give us an improved scheme on the lines of the scheme brought forward by the last Government, with the objection- able features to which I have referred removed, they will not only help the herring fishery in my constituency, but all up and down the North and East Coast of Scotland, and they will not only help the men and women directly engaged in the industry, but all the various ancillary trades, coopers, transport workers who handle the fish, the net makers and, incidentally, the cotton industry; in fact, ancillary trades over a very wide range will get a little help from such a scheme.