I find it very difficult, in following the two previous speakers, to observe what is, I believe, considered to be the custom of this House in making a maiden speech. Nevertheless, I must ask for the indulgence of the House in the comments I have to make and for that tolerance which, I think, is extended to those who find themselves in my position. I only wish that I had been given the opportunity to speak on the Local Government Boundary Commission (Dissolution) Bill. To that subject I could have brought long experience of local government. In this matter I will state my qualifications straight away. First, I have come to this House fresh from a By-election—the 34th which the Government have victoriously defended since they took office. That is a mandate which no Member on the other side has enjoyed. The future is dark and misty for Members opposite, while for me, during the next six months or so, it is fairly firm and clear.

I have delighted in statistics for many years and for the comfort of hon. Members opposite I will give them one or two about West Leeds. It is imagined that there is some sort of resurgence of Conservative faith, if it can be called faith. In my Division the Labour Party had a bare Majority of 27 at the municipal elections, but in the by-election we had a 4,000 majority, which indicates that the stock of the Government is on the upgrade. My second qualification is rather more important. The speech of the hon. Member for Northern Dorset (Mr. Byers) showed that he has had little industrial experience. I come here as one who, until he was elected to this House, worked in a factory, doing the job, using the tools and earning the rate as an engine fitter. If we must produce, then in the most recent sense I represent the producers who will be called upon to do the hard work rather than the talking. I believe that to be no inconsiderable qualification for intervening in this Debate. I would add that my wife has been used to receiving the sort of wage to which Members on both sides have so eloquently referred.

During the Debate on the devaluation of the pound there was much clamour from the benches opposite for a General Election. In view of the West Leeds result I consider that the Government's plain duty is to stay in office and ride the storm. It would be an act of cowardice on their part to pass the ball back to the country at this time. The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown), who is not in his place, charged the then Government, in 1929—I heard him from the Public Gallery—the MacDonald Government, with not having the guts to govern or the grace to get out. I maintain that it is the job of Governments to have the guts to govern at a time like this irrespective of the consequences. At the moment the electoral consequences are of second-rate importance, either to us or to Members opposite.

Bearing in mind all that has been said, I thought it ill became the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) to charge us with reducing the amount of money available for capital investment in the future, when the present state of much of industry—the fact that it needs retooling and is not up to its job—is a result of the Opposition's neglect in the inter-war years. "Lloyds Bank Review" has charged hon. Members opposite with being equal with us in promising anything to the electorate. I go further and say that every time the Government have wished to be cautious, and have reminded the country of the danger and pitfalls into which we were wandering, the Opposition have thrown discretion to the winds. The Bexley by-election, in a Constituency near to where I live, was fought on bread rationing. Two-thirds of our wheat imports come from dollar countries, but the Conservative election address in that by-election said there was no need for bread rationing at all even though there was then a dollar crisis.

Then, at the Gravesend by-election there was the question of potato rationing, when the idea that this step was necessary was completely derided by the Opposition. I also remember the Conservative Party putting out election literature in the municipal elections, saying that there was no need to cut the basic petrol ration. At every turn, when the Government have preached caution, we have been told that we were taking a too despondent view of the situation. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition threw out to the Chancellor the gibe that he would reach strength through misery. The whole record of the Conservative Opposition has been one of complete irresponsibility. "The Right Road for Britain," which has been discarded by the other side, if one is to judge from the constitutional position of their Leader, has promised increased social services with reduced taxation, in spite of what we hear today.

What do the Opposition really want? Do they really want another 1931? I do not wish to intrude any subjective matter of biographical detail, but my memory of 1931 is of a year's unemployment in the first two and a half years of my married life. It is a full memory. I have studied this matter not from the academic point of view, not in the way the Liberals have studied it, but from the point of view of one who was on the job or, rather, out of a job. I remember those who were turned aside as not genuinely seeking work, and how public indignation at the unemployment regulations forced the resignation of one of the Opposition's Front Benchers. The difference between the situation then and now is that this time, there has not been the drama occasioned by the cuts and the betrayals from this side.

I can imagine the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) announcing cuts with an alliterative phrase such as "Slashing the body politic from helm to breastplate with one stroke of surging steel." The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford has a record in this matter. It is revealed in Lord Snowden's memoirs that when he took over the Chancellorship in 1929 he met the right hon. Gentleman coming out of the Chamber and said, "I have not left a penny in the till." Yet the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford said in the devaluation Debate that we were met in a strange and new situation. Do the Opposition want 10 or 15 per cent. wage cuts, such as we had then? Do they want to harm the social services, as was done at that time? Do they want to see the break-up of the noble fabric of family life by another means test? If there has been no drama from this side as a result of these cuts at least there has been no blind step in the dark.

In this speech I do not want to go too deeply into the general policy of the Opposition. If I did, it would be difficult to preserve that cool and considered calm that ought to characterise the utterances of an hon. Member making his maiden speech. I want to refer very briefly to what was said by the hon. Member for Northern Dorset speaking for the Liberal Party. It never occurred to him that a local authority, in planning a housing estate, ever provided any one or two bedroomed houses. He seemed to think they were all three bedroomed. It may astonish him to know that occasionally they build four and five bed-roomed houses.

In regard to the shilling on National Health prescriptions, I welcome it. The weakness of some of my hon. Friends on this side of the House is that they do not realise that much of their propaganda—and it may be some of the legislation—springs from the time when we were dispossessed instead of being the ruling classes as we are at the present time. As a decent standard of life by means of full employment is built up over the years, a certain sturdy spirit of independence is created, which turns aside from public assistance and even from the welfare State. The National Health Service is threatened with ruin by elements which everyone in this House will despise. If it is a fact that certain prescriptions have cost a lot of money, then this tax will keep the expenditure down. I hope, if necessary, even something more will be done, because if we have to build this thing properly we shall have to face up to the position.

In conclusion, I want to say that if it had been necessary to inflict more severe cuts on the social services, which I have spent a life time to promote, especially in local government, I should have been in favour of them if they preserved full employment. I am one of those who believe that full employment today is no accident. Further, I believe that if we on this side are charged with some responsibility for the losses, equally, we must have some responsibility for full employment, because it is part of our social system. I am glad to see it here. Hon. Members on the other side of the House have not shared the type of experience that has been my lot, nor can they imagine for one moment what unemployment really means to the tradesmen, the man on the bench, the man who earns the wages.

I sometimes think that hon. Gentlemen opposite think that we take this matter rather too seriously, but we do not. Full employment means a regular wage at the end of the week, which is a contribution in itself to human dignity. But it can mean something more than the regular paying of the wife at the end of the week, or a reasonably stocked cupboard maintaining an existence even though it is not luxury. It means more, too, than clothes and footwear for the children, rather than such things as funds like "Boots for the Bairns," over which I presided, and from which we supplied school children with boots. If full employment only meant these things I would not be impressed, because they could be achieved under something else than a democracy, and it would not be of first-class importance.

Full employment means something more. It means that the great bulk of the self respecting working classes, especially the trade unionist, of whom hon. Gentlemen opposite know so little, can stand on their feet in the full stature of manhood and be men on their feet rather than toadies on their knees. It means that a workman can face up to the foreman, the manager in the workshop and the employer in the sure and certain knowledge that there is not a crowd of unemployed men outside ready to take his job and batter down his standard of living.

In effect, full employment means that respect for the individual personality, about which hon. Gentlemen opposite so often prate but of which they know very little. The other day I listened to the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) speaking about parcels sent abroad which were franked, and he somehow thought that that was an affront to our pride. I appreciated his sentiment, and I sympathised a good deal with his expressions, but the real pride of a people is not expressed in franking an envelope here and there or in protestations in this House, but it is how we care for their future. What really emerges from this Debate today is the security of the standard of life of our people. That sort of dignity and pride will be far better expressed in doing all we can to maintain a policy of full employment, which the great bulk of our people deserve.