Repair of Bomb-Damaged Houses

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 10 April 1945.

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Mr. Bellenģer:

That is a typical official explanation. If you are going to treat your workmen that way, you will not get the best out of them. It is bad enough to use some of these flat-footed, flat-chested, and comparatively disabled men—because that is the material the builders have to work with—without treating them in that fashion, by simply measuring on a map the distances that the men have to travel. Everybody knows that the underground railway and the buses do not go like that.

I should have thought that, with the number of workmen we have working on war damage in London, we should have got better results. I do not want to say anything against the workmen. I hope that I have always been a good workman, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was when he was in the trade. He will agree that for a fair day's wage there should be a fair day's work. We are not getting a fair day's work at present. I am not going to say that it is the men's fault. Much of the labour is unskilled, and many of the men have never been in the building trade before. They have to be organised; and they cannot organise themselves. If they are dumped down on a job, waiting for the foreman to turn up or for the material to turn up, you cannot blame them if they stand about. We hear some cases of men playing cards on the job; but what do you expect when a man has nothing else to do but twiddle his thumbs, because the work is not organised for him. I have talked to individual after individual, and they have told me how work is not planned so that some men spend a day putting a couple of panes of glass into a window. It is not the men's fault. Even if they go into the Army they have to look to their officers or non-commissioned officers to lead them. Those men, who have been organised under the Ministry of Works, are not getting results. I would not mind if this matter were treated as a military evolution, but I would then ask for military conditions to be considered. You cannot fight wars with an unorganised mob. The only discipline and organisation which many of these men recognise is in their allegiance and loyalty to their own employers.