Lord Hailsham, J. H. Thomas and King Canute

What connecting link is there between these three worthies, two dead and one living? The two first-named are easily bracketed. Lord Hailsham, Minister in a Tory Government is dealing with unemployment problems, thus re-enacting the role that J. H. Thomas took on for the Labour Government under Ramsay MacDonald in June, 1929. As Lord Privy Seal and Minister of Unemployment he was aided by Sir Oswald Mosley, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and George Lansbury, First Commissioner of Works: both of whom seem to have held the opinion that J. H. Thomas and other members of the Government were problems as difficult as unemployment.

The story is told in the biography, The Right Honourable, by H. R. S. Phillpot, published in 1932, in a chapter suitably called “Beaten by Unemployment.”

Unemployment was already a serious problem before the Labour Government was formed. Thomas and other Labour Party leaders had been campaigning up and down the country denouncing the apathy and callousness of Prime Minister Baldwin and promising to put things right if returned at the election. Thomas concentrated on unemployment, “made it his speciality, worked at it, talked of it and helped to devise plans to arrest its dreadful progress”

He argued that it would be a good idea to pay 10s. or 15s. a week to workers over 65 to get them to retire and make room for younger workers. He attacked armaments. Europe, he said, was like an armed camp. The nations were spending millions on armaments “which, if they spent on production, would help to solve the problem of unemployment.”

Can he really not have noticed that this would simultaneously create unemployment among armament workers and soldiers? There are plenty of people as muddled today, so perhaps it was beyond him.

He favoured building the Channel Tunnel, and raising the school-leaving age to get 400,000 teenagers off the labour market, and when he became Minister he went travelling in Canada to pick up markets for British exports—in Canada he can hardly have failed to notice that there were other gentlemen trying to solve their own unemployment problem. He discussed the problem with spokesmen of the employers and the trade unions.

Some of his oratorial efforts read remarkably like statements made today: “Curing unemployment, he argued, would cost money, but no cost could be too great if by incurring it the progress of demoralisation could be stopped.”

But two years later as a member of the National Government he was supporting government economy measures to cut down the spending of money.

He and the Labour Government rejected the rival schemes for curing unemployment put forward by Lloyd George and the Liberals. Lloyd George (advised by Keynes, among others) favoured the idea of the Government raising big loans and spending the money on the schemes which would create jobs.

Thomas argued that this could only be a temporary measure, whereas what was wanted was something lasting: a complete overhaul and modernisation of the depressed industries to make them competitive.

But he didn’t get any results either short-term or long-term.

His biographer wrote: “The special duty entrusted to Mr. Thomas was that of curing unemployment. It was, of course, an impossible duty. Whether he realised how impossible it was nobody knows, but he undertook the task which eventually proved too much for him.”

When Thomas took on the job of wiping out unemployment it stood at 1,164,000. Six months later it had jumped to 1,344,000 and in 12 months, to 1,911,000. Two years from the start it exceeded 2,700,000.

Which brings us to King Canute. The legend credits him with the modest desire to convince his courtiers that even a crowned head could not command the tide to recede. If he had been a modern politician he would have ordered things differently. He need only have taken up position at high tide, just before the turn, and he could have got away with it.

The story is that that is just what J. H. Thomas thought he was doing. He is said to have consulted a well-known economic expert before taking on the job. and only took it on being assured that the economic tide was about to turn and unemployment would fall.

Perhaps Lord Hailsham will he luckier in his timing.

H.