Voices of Europe; Lord Beveridge

Voices of Europe today Milton Mayer American author and broadcaster lecturer and professor of social research from the University of Frankfurt travels to a tiny house house which is a den to go with several hundred other houses which comprise the new town of Newton a cliff in northern England. There he interviews the chairman of the government established a clift Development Corporation which has constructed this town. The chairman of this corporation is Lord beverage and this small house is his home large beverage the holder of some thirteen honorary degrees from universities all over the world. I was president of the royal economic society of Great Britain from 1940 to 1943 and was the author of the Beveridge report of 1942 on the basis of which he is generally regarded as the parent of present day Britain at the age of 73 this economist administrator civil servant and author is at work on another book in addition to his managing the affairs of this government development of the village of Newton a cliff. Here is Milton mair Lord beverage.

What was the beverage record riveted to a report. Was a report which I wrote a magazine for to do to the government of that time. It embodies a plan for ensuring that nobody in Britain who works while he can. When for any reason sickness accident unemployment over eight years with out the capacity for learning should lack the income necessary to keep body and soul together for himself and all his people. It's a plan for taking money from people when they

have to. By taxation by compulsory insurance contributions and keeping it for when they will need it and giving it to them then not by asking how poor they are. But as of right would you characterize a large beverage as the program for an e-collar Tarion society. What is the very opposite of an equality or society. It simply ensures that nobody shall have less than a certain amount at any time. How much more he has about than one standard of life he can have but there is his consent and the result of his efforts. I once when I was talking about this in the States in 1943 agreed

with a very bright I think he was an American journalist that I was going with what I was really doing was not equalizing anybody but putting a floor below inequalities of floor which will keep you out of the slough of misery and. What would you say. A large beverage of your report. As far as the preservation of a sense of personal responsibility of the individual is concerned or the relieving of the individual out of a sense of personal responsibility and letting the community or perhaps in the end the government take over his responsibilities for him. Oh I found the answer to that which I gave I think in nineteen forty two. Do a friend a civil

servant who wrote to me about children's allowances and he says that's part of my pack and he he wanted but only allowances should be given in car clothes food and so on and so on. And I said no I want to give them enough money so the parent can spend it what way he likes best. Social insurance in a free society doesn't consist of taking people's responsibilities from them. It merely ensures that they are not prevented by misfortune from having the means to meet their responsibilities and plan their spending plan their lives. Now Lord beverage. How far in the present day England who whose economic crisis is so desperate. How far has the Beveridge Report been carried

out. To what extent do you recognise your baby in the development of present day England. Well I recognise my baby in the sense that a great deal that has been done in the field of social insurance is based upon my book. But. I. It's strickly to say that my baby was taken from me at birth. After I had made my point. No member of any government ever consulted me as to how what should be done to carry it out. The baby I think has been brought up in many ways rather badly. I don't recognise the grown men as WANT he would have

been if I had had his bringing up. In what way would you have brought him up differently. In what way would your report have brought him up differently. A large beverage. It's a little it's very difficult to go into the details of the differences. There were differences about what was done about industrial accident differences about what was done about pensions. But I think the main mistake that has been made is that people have come to think that playing about with money incomes which was all that the Beveridge Report did. Is the. Way a two set complete salvation in of and solution of all problems. And it is when I wrote the Beveridge report I did it. It's just playing about with

money and that is necessary. You must distribute the money properly. But that isn't by any means the way to make a good society unless you do many other things which I named in that time. Well I rather think that from the important results which have been pretty by redistributing incomes as I suggest people in this country have got rather too much the IATA lead. You can be happy if you have sufficient money but you cannot if the prices are such that the money won't buy what you need. Frankly at this moment we are in. Serious danger out of. An inflationary rise of wages and prices and costs of living

and the cause of this inflationary rise in your view is the preoccupation on everyone's part with the increase of money income or of capital savings. Yes it will. I guess that doesn't of course come only from the British report. It comes from another thing on which I also wrote a book later full employment. I said that with you have full employment and people are not afraid of unemployment. There is no and you have also free wage bargaining industry by industry. There is no certainty these are preventing competitive bargaining for wages between different industries from ultimately destroying the value of money all together by inflation. But we haven't got to that. But we are getting within sight of that danger in this country today.

And you have serious unemployment besides not very serious now. We would like to what extent here in northern England just in the course of a few days I've encountered in the textile mills which perhaps are not representative of the economy at large. A surprising amount of unemployment more than 50 percent in many cases. Oh yes I mean that that is one of the bad effects of our rising. Standard of many incomes and many costs making it difficult for us to compete abroad. But generally speaking nobody in this country is afraid of violin playing and everybody in this country thinks that he must get more money for doing the same work.

From my view is that we shan't really get Britain on a level keel until everybody realizes that we ought to do more work. For the same money. Still the question of prices as well as wages. Sell the same thing cheaper and not more expensive than before. But. Your second point large beverage namely the goal of selling things cheaper rather than more expensively. Sounds like something in the nature of of of a repudiation of the free economy certainly of the profit economy which at least implies selling things more rather than less expensively at a greater rather than at a smaller profit.

Would you call yourself a socialist. Would you call the Beveridge Report socialism. Would you call England today a socialist economy. You know I have. I am certainly not a socialist. I think there are certain industries which should be taken over and managed by the state but very few. I don't think England as a whole is solidly. Socialist. And this business I'll be competitive raising prices and competitive. Wage bargaining is really in a sense the reverse of collectivism. I think it's having no not sufficient control over what individual businessmen and individual trade or

trade unions do. I do myself want to control them by Act of Parliament. But I do I want to Fallacy traders consent to have real competition because the danger is that we're getting rid of competition. So I am a liberal. I would believe in competition. And do you regard the program of the Labor Party which seems to be pretty much still in swing under the Conservative government of Winston Churchill as a. Program which is going too far in the direction our socialization and the elimination of competition. Will the Labor Party Like most political parties have many different strands in it. There are many people in the Labor Party

who are just good ordinary radicals and liberals. There are a certain number of theoretic socialists who think that the more the state does the better. Apart from that there's this very interesting and I think unfortunate tie up with the trade unions or the trade unions are essential but they have tended to that tie up with with one particular party if you to be unfortunate to live out his race did it excellent in many ways but it had good and bad in it. And the conservative party the Conservative government. Of. England. Would you say that its program its present program was substantially or radically different from that of the

Labor the part of the Labor Party or tended perhaps more or less tended more or less in the direction of your own views. It's very good for me too. I don't want to talk about politics really very much. Frankly I'm a little disappointed in the home things that this government has done. I think they could in fact have diminished a number of the controls more than they have done. I think they do tend to govern this too much from London. Still what I'm really concerned about large beverage is not politics or political questions essentially here but the direction of England in regard to its economy. And in further regard to its political liberties. But you know in.

In America I think I may say that there are two views of the present development in England. One is that it is on the way to socialism perhaps beyond socialism to collectivist totalitarianism. On the other hand there are many Americans who regard England as a bulwark of political liberty as a middle way or as the laboratory in which a middle way is being sought. Between extreme individual ism on the one hand and totalitarianism on the other. This is the point to which I should like to direct your attention and get your view. But I think that Britain is a bulwark of liberty because fundamentally the people of Britain.

I believe as in liberty. And believers in talk. So I'm sure we are more tolerant than in the country in the world not excluding the United States. I think we are attitude on the jewish problem is incomparably better than that of any other. In other countries and better even than that of the United States. I think our attitude on the right of people to say what they like very well illustrated by our attitude to that ridiculous old man the Dean For can't play. We think it talks nonsense. Everybody knows he talks nonsense. This is the Lately so-called readin readin but nobody is going to stop him from talking nuts. By law so long as he doesn't break certain very definite

laws at all I think that is a very good instance of Allah. Thought well how can this tower and scan this preoccupation with individual political liberties in your view be maintained indefinitely with the increased ever increasing power economic power of the government and of government controls. This of course is the danger that concerns us in America. Yes of course they do because the is with when you are in a crisis like war you must have control. And today we have still we haven't got out of the crisis resulting from war and therefore we must have certain controls which we don't like. But I think myself we have too many at the moment. But may I just say one other thing for this country. I think the great outstanding merit of this country is

that it's mind this is essentially Central. And not in the extremes. Of the labor and the conservative parties. I would commend those common elements just as all parties and accepted the Beveridge report when it was published. Because it that was something except I have always had admirable friends or political parties people with whom I agreed or central although we might decide that if we came to vote we must vote one way or the other. I think the central the tolerance and the fact that we are so simple and not in the extremes either of socialism or of individualism is the main contribution that this country can make to civilization and will go on. Make you when you are not then in the least afraid that England is on the way to totalitarian

collectivism. Oh nothing of a thought now. No one on the other hand are you do you see the prospect under a change of government in England of a return to the old order of extreme individual as in earlier we're certainly not going to give up those things which the state has undertaken to do like social insurance attacking what like planning of towns taking the evil of squalor like the health service taking preventable disease. We're not out of touch. Give up don't know what it will get. I want to return Lord beverage for a moment to be what you regard as the basic failure in the present economic situation of England namely the

widespread conviction if I understand you that the distribution of money and of money income alone is of and is the salvation of our economic problems. In what way are people to be persuaded to work harder. To produce more. To accept lower wages. Higher taxes smaller profits. In what way are people to be so persuaded. If this is in your view the only economics elevation how are we to go about it. Right. Away probably a common sense of a British people to assert itself. And of course go on say. Your standard of living doesn't depend on your money in the standard of living of this country depends upon how much it produces in

each week that governs how much you consume in each week. Will be I think best so for the great many of us. I've gone a little too wild about leisure. It's no good having venture if you haven't got things to do in your own nation. I I think we have got I think. All of us to turn round. Everybody's got to try and work as hard as the hardest people. But in your view large beverage and the development of social insurance is not a contributing factor to the desire of getting more for less than the state being responsibility and having infinitely more leisure. No no no no. I have none sir. Not in the least. Social insurance. It takes money from people when they

need in order they may have it and they can't. Then you got to do anyhow and I want them to have it. As of right the mothers of Chad and it's all the socially charged stuff. There's really nothing whatever to do with this. What I think is most likely wrong in this country and our preoccupation with. Money wages and money prices or beverage Two last questions first was the way out for England. And second was the way out for the world to build up an entirely different and much more important and larger septic. One of the reasons why. None of us have been the risk that we have the kind of the standard of living that we like is that we have to spend so much upon preparing for war the only possible way out for the world is to abolish war. I don't believe that ordinary people in the whole world want war.

I don't you can abolish war without a change of heart of the human race because race hate. You can't abolish world war without a change of heart and mind in the governments of the world with govern the national governments. You got to realize that they cannot do. I've been absolutely suffering about everybody else. Then you find. You find the cause of war. A large beverage not in any people of the world but in the government of course and the love and lust for power. I take it then in your view governments do not represent their peoples including even democratic governments such as England. They don't represent the fundamental desire of the happy for peace. But of course the people is rather dumb as to how it will get because all I see is you don't.

If people don't want a good drop atomic bombs and be bombed just for the country they don't they hated all of us want peace. We don't know how and the only way you can get it is by getting some authority above all national governments and you've got to get the whole national governments be ready for that. And how is this to be done is the United Nations a way or not our way. Or would it be the nightly right of nations we might to be OK. What of course were wrong with it was giving the great five great powers a veto upon any action I mean that put them above the law to be made for everybody. You must have the same you must have the same law for all nations great and small. Now that's a this is my pretty big deal. Different topic though.

Got but and still a related one that is I take it that the the economic charge upon all of the people of the world in the preparation for either defense or attack. Is itself a very large factor in the economic plight of every country. Terrible of course. And in your view then a an organization a world organization or a world government with more our sovereign power than the United Nations Organization now it has is the only solution. Yes of course you could develop it after the United Nations. You may develop in other ways. I've written all sorts of books and pamphlets about that much too long for me too. Gift it would I work with body people. Anybody who is prepared to substitute a real Law party above national governments which will substitute justice between them for the use of force.

Thank you very much Lloyd beverage. Milton Maier has been interviewing Lord Beveridge author of the famous report which established part of Great Britain's cradle to grave social insurance plan in the new town of Newton a cliff in Northern England in this the 13th program of the series voices of Europe. In earlier programs you have heard Pastor Herman Stubber and his son Horace stabber in the village of capital Germany. And what it was to live in Germany during the war and what it is to live there today from Serbia broadly and Roman doctor P.F. know up in Geneva and the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. From Professor Cee-Lo Slovenian senor of Unyoro Marsan on the economic situation in Italy from Dr G J van Hooven gold heart United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and from Germany's most famous clergyman Dr. Martin emailer in VSE pardon. And from Mr. Kingsley Martin editor of The London Weekly magazine The New Statesman a nation on the press the magazines and

newspapers of Britain and the United States from the Italian author Carlo Levy and in Milan from Dr. Ricardo Bauer from Professor Karl Frederick from vied secure and good in Germany. And Pastor Bill mentioning in Pittston Germany on the rules of science and religion in the world today from John Street in London and soon Europe all of it to rally in Rome on communism and counter or anti communism in Europe from Senora al-Sadah mean but they know Italy and Minola save it in Brussels Belgium and travelling throughout Europe from Professor and Frau Carl Harriman and Marburg Germany on how on heroic they were under the Nazis from Mr. Marx Harvick international lawyer of Geneva Switzerland and Swiss and World Federation. And finally today from Lord beverage in England on the Beveridge report in the present economic condition of Great Britain the program you have just heard is made possible under a grant from the fund for adult education an independent organization established by the Ford Foundation. These programs are prepared and

distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This program was introduced by Norman McKee and this is the end E.B. tape network.