Location of Industry.

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 18 November 1936.

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Photo of Mr Hugh Dalton Mr Hugh Dalton , Bishop Auckland

The Debate has shown that a late sitting of the House is not always disadvantageous in its subsequent effect on the temper of the House. It may be that weariness is not incompatible with greater mental activity and harmony of spirit. Anyhow, I think my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Burke) has performed a service in moving this Motion. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Mr. Kelly), who seconded it, has additional qualifications for speaking in that he not only represents a Lancashire division here, but across the water, in the County Hall, he is, I believe, vice-chairman of the Town Planning Committee of the London County Council, and therefore he sees this problem from two points of view.

The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade has made a proposal which we gladly accept, so far as the formalities of the Debate are concerned, namely, that he will put his own interpretation upon certain phrases which may be contained in the Motion but that he is willing that it should go on the records of the House thus interpreted; and he appealed to his hon. Friends behind him to withdraw their Amendment. We are very content with such a result of this Debate. I did not think that the speeches of either the Mover or the Seconder of the Amendment were in violent conflict with the speeches made by my two hon. Friends who moved and seconded the original Motion. I did think that the chief differ- ence between the terms of their Amendment and the terms of the Motion was merely a difference of emphasis and definiteness, and in particular I did regret that they left out any specific reference to London, about which I wish to say a word.

We can certainly claim that the idea of the planning of the location of industry is making great progress in many sections of opinion. We are, by agreement, not making party points, but there was a time when many of my hon. Friends were alone in putting up the idea that the powers of the State, by one means or another, should be employed in order to influence powerfully the flow of economic life and the geographical distribution of population and industry. I think there has now been some considerable acceptance of this idea, though with some qualifications by those who normally are our political opponents, and naturally we welcome this advance.

The purpose of the Motion of my hon. Friends is, I think, two-fold. There are two principal points. First of all, there is the question of directing additional industries and means of livelihood into the distressed areas, which many of us represent, and, on the other hand, there is the proposal that London should be limited in its future growth. The arguments for these two propositions are partly similar and partly separate. If you are to bring more industry into the distressed areas, it is evidently indispensable that to some extent you should prevent industry going elsewhere, and in particular that you should prevent it from clustering around the outer London ring. But, in addition to that, there are separate reasons, which I hope to emphasise before I sit down, for regarding the growth of London as a menace in itself, quite separate from any problem of the distressed areas as we usually define them.

So far as the distressed areas aspect of the matter is concerned, I have nothing to add to the very admirable statement of the case by my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton-le-Spring (Mr. W. Joseph Stewart). He was kind enough to refer to certain conditions in the South-West corner of Durham, where I have the honour to be one of the Parliamentary representatives, and he painted that picture very vividly and very truly. I think there is a growing sense of shame, independent of party divisions altogether, at the spectacle of the increasing contrast between the depressed areas, in which no appreciable improvement is taking place at all, and the rest of the country, in which, whatever we may say about the reasons for it or as to the probable permanence of it, none the less industrial improvement of a marked character is for the moment evident. With the growth of prosperity elsewhere the contrast is sharpened. The case has been put so well by many hon. Friends of mine that I do not need now to develop it along the ordinary lines.

As to London. I make no complaint, but I think that no Minister charged with the Defence of the country has been present this afternoon. I note that no one is here who is specially charged with Defence, and yet one of the principal arguments in support of this Motion is a Defence argument as far as London is concerned. Mr. Malcolm Stewart, in his latest report, has some very pungent passages; they are in an appendix, but I hope none the less they will be widely read. On page 168 he writes: From the strategic point of view, the position is one of the greatest possible danger. Reference has already been made to the concentration of population and wealth in this small area dependent on an extremely complicated mechanical organisation. It would take very little in the way of systematic attack to destroy the most vital parts of this organisation, with the result that the feeding of the population would become impossible. Having developed the argument a little further he proceeds: It is remarkable that, out of the 25 aircraft manufacturing firms. 12 are in or near London and a further 5 are in the South Eastern Counties. Further, some of our most important electrical firms are in the London area, and it is understood that the only manufacturers of large scale cold storage equipment are also situated in London.London is not only open to attack from the air but could be bombarded from the Continental Ports on the other side of the Straits of Dover should these be in enemy hands. It is high time these things were not only said but generally appreciated, and we must be grateful to Mr. Malcolm Stewart for hitting that nail hard on the head; it needed hitting. The reference to aircraft factories was new to me. It is a disastrous state of affairs that we should have permitted the concentration of aircraft production to take place in the most vulnerable part of this country. Once more I quote Mr. Malcolm Stewart: Over 18 months ago and before the Defence Programme was formulated I made representations to Lord Londonderry, then Secretary of State for Air, that some measure of decentralisation of production of aircraft was desirable to secure increased safety against attack, and put forward the advantages of relative safety offered by some districts in the South Wales and Cumberland Areas. It was not considered possible at that time to take any action in the matter. I hope action will be taken soon to disperse, in the geographical sense, aircraft production, and indeed all our essential industries. I am told that this afternoon news is coming which illustrates in a very dramatic way what may happen to a great agglomeration of population if aircraft are on the wing. Mr. Speaker, I assure you that I do not intend to stray from the point but merely to give this as an illustration. I am told that as we debate here Madrid is burning in many parts; houses, hospitals, art galleries and human bodies are being consumed in flames. Yet it is a low-geared sort of war that is going on in Spain compared with what may happen if some fears are realised. I hope that the Government are taking this matter seriously. I hope that on Defence grounds alone they will accept the intention in broad terms of that part of my friend's Motion which requests that a limit should be set on the growth of what has become both a monstrosity and a national danger.

The ways of Providence are curious, but this question does link up with the distressed areas, because when you look at the Special Areas it so happens that they are almost all to the West. South Wales is relatively very far from those places whence bombers might come. West Cumberland is well away behind a range of hills and as far West as anywhere in the North of England. It is the West of Scotland which is most depressed. In the County of Durham it is the Western end which is most distressed and which is relatively invulnerable, compared with many other centres where essential production is still carried on. The right hon. Gentleman referred, I think, to the case of Messrs. Richard Thomas, who desired to leave South Wales and set up what they hoped would be a more profitable enterprise on the coast of Lincolnshire. What prevented that has been somewhat in the dark, but if it was the right hon. Gentleman's hand that kept them back, metaphorically I shake it. That was a good deed, both from the point of view of preventing the further decay of an already sorely tried area and from the point of view of Defence. Another act of lunacy was prevented. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having knocked some sense into that industrial head. I hope that the Government's influence will be exercised to persuade industry to go west, because if it does not go west in the geographical sense the danger is greatly increased that it will go west in a metaphorical sense. The depressed areas are fortunate in one thing, if only one thing—their geographical situation, from the strategical point of view, and I hope, therefore, that the Government will accept our view and take into their hands one more argument for bringing about that movement desired in the Motion.

If I might cite one foreign example, in France at present, the production of aircraft—I am not trying to score a party point, but it has, incidentally, been taken over by the State—has been arranged in this way. Geographically what is happening in France is that under the new control five public corporations for different regions have been set up and the whole thing has been organised with a view to a Westward and South-Westward movement, and I understand that the French Government are exercising considerable pressure on the location of industry from the strategical point of view.

We have had an admirable Debate, and it has been a pleasure to agree so completely with some of the speeches made from the benches opposite. In particular the speech of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley) appeared to me to be wholly admirable and extremely cogent, and I trust that his influence with the right hon. Gentleman, which I hope is already considerable, will extend. I hope that his influence and that of his friends will extend, because evidently we have now a general agreement in favour of the exercise of public influence—I want to use neutral terms which shall not seem provocative or partisan—on the location of industry. The right hon. Gentleman reminded us that no point in this island is more than 80 miles from the seaboard. That helps to illustrate the fact that within very wide limits you can put industry where you choose. It would be much more difficult to do that if distances to the seaboard were greater. The fact that this is a small island and is shaped as it is does assist us to play draughts with industry. The problem is soluble and the desire to solve it is more and more widely entertained by all sections of opinion.

My hon. Friends are well content with the reception which their Motion has received from the House, and to accept the conclusion suggested by the right hon. Gentleman. I trust that in future Debates we shall learn that a still further advance has been made both in boldness and concrete detail towards the realisation of the ideas for which the Motion was put forward.