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Post-War Reconstruction in Great Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

H. Finer
H. Finer*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics
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Extract

There is an almost universal expectation of considerable social reconstruction in Great Britain as soon as the United Nations have achieved victory, and even of instalments in the course of the war itself. This expectation rests upon keen disapproval of certain British social and economie institutions, but also upon confidence in and respect for a national character, which, in the centuries of its development, has achieved mighty and noble works in the building of its political and economic habitation.

In the following observations on the subject of reconstruction we shall be chiefly concerned with four factors: the influences that have produced the manifestly strong impetus to reconstruct; the cardinal reforms that are in mind; the agencies which have been established to collate, ponder, and implement the proposals; and finally, it will be well to find an answer to the question, what are the prospects of substantial advance?

Britain entered the war in a deliberate, not a romantic frame of mind. There was a job to be done, a terrible problem to be solved, not an adventure to be enjoyed. This sobriety led to the immediate raising of the question, “How can this shocking event be prevented from recurring, and to what extent are we as a nation responsible for it?” The result was a widespread canvassing of war aims and peace aims—the newspapers were at once full of the discussion. Generally, the first phase of attention was to international arrangements, and, in the course of time, this produced a spate of suggestions revolving around the conception of federalism. We need not do more than point to the establishment of Federal Union, and the series of papers written on the subject of World Order under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , November 1942 , pp. 493 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1942

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in May, 1942.

References

1 See Wells, H. G., The Rights of Man (Penguin Books, 1940).Google Scholar

2 For example, World Destiny and the U.S.A. (World Citizens Association, 1941).Google Scholar

3 About the beginning of June, 1942, a Gallup Poll taken in Britain showed 11 per cent suggesting that the prospects of a better world make people keener to work and fight; and another 11 per cent suggesting “more equality of sacrifice; more equality of treatment, and protect and increase the liberties of the ordinary man and woman”; 36 per cent made no reply, or were “miscellaneous”; others were more concerned about better immediate organization of the war effort. Cf. London Nnvs Chronicie, June 6, 1942.

4 For example, Social Justice and Economic Reconstruction (London, 1941).Google Scholar

5 Cf. SirAcland, Richard, Unser Kampf: What It Will Be Like in the New Britain (London, 1942)Google Scholar, and Forward March (Prometheus Library, 1941)Google Scholar; and Priestley, J. B., News from England (London, 1940).Google Scholar

6 Cf. Pick, Frank, Britain Must Rebuild (Democratic Order, no. 17, 1941)Google Scholar; Towndrow, F. E. (ed.), Replanning Britain (London, 1941)Google Scholar; and Osborn and others in the Rebuilding Britain Series (Faber and Faber).

7 Lord Justice Scott's Committee. See below, p. 509.

8 “The object of that liaison [Ministry of Labour and Foreign Office] is, in future, to get the whole of the Diplomatic Service to move and have their being in a new environment; to recognise that the limited Court Circular society of the Chancelleries will never return; that if there is to be a reconstruction of the world, then that reconstruction has to be brought about by harnessing and utilizing the rising mass of labor to whom the future really belongs, and who must be the dominant factor in a new democratic world. There must be an absolute broadening of the curriculum, and of the right of entry into the Diplomatic Service. If the boys from the secondary schools can save us in the Spitfires, the same brains can be turned to produce the new world.” Oct. 12, 1940. Cf. The Balance Sheet of the Future (New York, 1941), pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

9 Parliamentary Debates, June 11, 1941.

10 Cf. Finer, , English Local Government (New York, 1934)Google Scholar; and Municipal Trading (New York, 1941).Google Scholar

11 Parliamentary Debates, Jan. 22, 1941.

12 “The Ministry of War Transport are preparing their own scheme; the Ministry of Works are doing likewise; the Paymaster-General is dealing in the first instance with electricity, until the Ministry of Fuel and Power gets into its stride, while water comes under the Ministry of Health. Gas will come under the new Ministry of Fuel, Light and Power. The location of industry will come under the Board of Trade. Reports in regard to all these are being collated at the present time and presented to a Ministerial Committee presided over by the Paymaster-General” ( Parliamentary Debates, House of Lords, 06 17, 1942, cols. 444-5Google Scholar, extract from speech of Lord Portal, Minister of Works and Buildings).

13 The Observer, March 8, 1942, rather mis-timed a compliment to Lord Reith. It said, “Lord Reith has never lost the reputation with the public for high idealism combined with administrative drive, that he first earned at the B.B.C. As Minister of Works and Buildings he has won a degree of respect from local authorities that is not usually vouchsafed to Whitehall.”

14 The transfer of the town and country planning functions from the Ministry of Health is an excellent example, by the way, of departmentalization theory—that to focus attention and encourage development a function is better transferred to a special department. The retention of the housing powers by the Ministry of Health, again, is a good example of mixing a function in the same department with others where it is so closely interwoven, as in this case, with the many other local government services supervised by the Ministry of Health.