Orders of the Day — Unemployment

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 January 1972.

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Photo of Mr Neil Kinnock Mr Neil Kinnock , Bedwellty 12:00, 24 January 1972

I believe that I am justified in contributing briefly to the debate, for unemployment in my constituency has risen faster in the last two years than at any other period since the war. It is an area which had a high level of unemployment to start with and which felt itself secure from further rises because of that very severity.

The hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) defended what he called the compassionate Government. I should like him to come to my constituency and explain to the thousands of redundant workers there and the thousands of men who for the second time in a working life are experiencing mass unemployment in what way the Government are compassionate or efficient, or have shown even one iota of common sense. If he believes that we do not first need a domestic reflation of the economy but that we shall produce growth simply by an expansion of overseas sales, he is ignoring the lessons of the last 20 years when British capitalism has timidly refused to make any move in overseas markets until featherbedded by an absolutely secured domestic market.

What the British business man always tells every Government when asked to expand trade is that he must first have sufficient security in a home market. It is one of the contradictions of market capitalism and it is a contradiction which will result in the Government pretending to the electorate for probably the last time that a free market and untrammelled capitalism can fill a rôle in a modern civilised society.

What is being proved, not just in this country but throughout the world, where there are rising unemployment rates in Europe and catastrophically high rates in America, while there is starvation for our products in a world of underemployed and unemployed, is that no Government in what is called the free Western capitalist democracies is capable of conquering the twin difficulties of inflated currencies and the unemployed. Only by the kind of planning mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), with a calculated assessment of what is to happen—and science has given in computers the means to measure what is to happen in future—can a Government deal with problems of this kind. Even since the day of John Maynard Keynes, any Government allowing unemployment rates to rise not even as high as this rate have been guilty if not of a criminal act, certainly of criminal negligence, and that is the charge the people make against the Tory Government.

Of the million unemployed, 56,000 are in Wales. We have a half-promise about the great tomorrow and we are to have an announcement about the expansion of training centres. That expansion is certainly necessary, for there are now 7,000 people able to satisfy the entry requirements for Government training centres and awaiting places, and so 7,000 could be absorbed immediately. But that is only scratching the surface of a million unemployed. Instead of a policy by the Prime Minister, all we have had has been a craven appeal to British businessmen to take his word for it that with a market of 250 million in Europe all their difficulties will be solved and all their problems and bewilderments about future possibilities for investment will be removed.

He knows that that is nonsense. We should not be in this mess if British business men had shown the tenacity and the sense of purpose that he hopes for if by some magic accident we get into Europe. He knows that unemployment in Europe is going up and that European products will soon be coming here. If British companies do expand, even if there are extra jobs, we have no guarantee once we are in Europe that those jobs will be created in the British Isles. I am in no sense a nationalist and I regret that tonight some of my compatriots indulged in a demonstration from the Gallery of the House and threw notices into the Chamber.

It is a measure of the kind of anger being generated, referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Fernyhough) through the Government's crass inability, failure and their neglect of the unemployment problem in the regions. The Prime Minister told the Tory Party conference: We stand on the threshold of a period of growth and prosperity unparalleled since the War. Since that time unemployment has broken the million mark. If that is the Prime Minister's idea of prosperity then God knows what is his idea of poverty. But poverty we shall see before this Government leave office.