In a speech at Manchester on June 4, and again on June 5,
before the employers and workmen of Lancashire, the new
Minister of Munitions announced his policy of discontinuing
the methods of red tape that had hindered the mobilization
of labor for the production of arms and ammunition. His
speech at Lancashire appears below in full.
I have come here not for speech but for business, and I shall only
indulge in speech to the extent that speaking is the essential
preliminary to business. I placed yesterday before a meeting in
Manchester my general views of the position, and I have very little to
add to what I then said. But I have come here to appeal for the
assistance of the men of Liverpool and the surrounding districts.
The situation is a serious one. It is as grave a situation as this
country has ever been confronted with. You need have no special
knowledge in order to ascertain that yourselves. A careful,
intelligent perusal of the published dispatches in the newspapers must
have caused you to come to the conclusion that this country is
engaging one of the most formidable enemies that it has ever waged war
against.
The issues are great, the perils are great, and nothing can pull us
through but the united effort of every man in the British Empire. If
you look at what our brave fellows are doing at the front you can see
the perils there facing them, the trials, the privations, and they are
doing it without flinching. ["Hear, hear!"] Never in the history of
this country have our men shown greater courage and endurance than
they have during this war. They have done all you can expect of mortal
man.
We who are comfortable at home, free from privations, free from
danger, let us, each of us, do his part as nobly as those heroes of
ours are doing it at the front. [Cheers.] It would be horrible for us
to think that those who fall fall through our neglect. It would be a
still more ghastly reflection to think that those who fell have given
their lives in vain through any slackness or selfishness on the part
of any one of us in this land.
Yesterday we had a very important gathering of the employers and the
representatives of labor in the great engineering firms in Manchester
and other parts of this great county. The response made to our appeal
was gratifying. Every man there showed a disposition to do all in his
power to assist the country to pull through its difficulties
triumphantly, and I feel perfectly certain that the same ready
response will be given to the same appeal which I am now about to make
to the men of Liverpool and the area surrounding it.
What makes Germany a formidable enemy is not merely its preparation
for war, it is not merely its organization, potent as that is, but it
is the spirit of every class and section of its population. You have
only got to read the papers to see that as far as they are concerned
they are all of them subordinating everything to the one great
national purpose of winning victory for their Fatherland. That is the
least we can do in this country for our land. [Cheers.]
I never doubted where ultimate victory would lie, never for a moment.
Nor have I ever underestimated the difficulties. But although I have
never doubted where victory would rest, all the same I know that
victory will come the sooner for recognizing the difficulties there
are.
You cannot remove difficulties without looking at them, and you cannot
look at difficulties without seeing them, and that is why the business
of a Minister is to point them out, and then to appeal to every
section of the community to assist the Government in overcoming the
obstacles in the way.
Now we want especially the help of those who can contribute to the
increase of the munitions, the equipment, and the material of war. We
want the help of employers, we want the help of the workers. We want
employers and workmen to feel their responsibility in this matter. It
is my intention to utilize as much as I possibly can the business
brains of the community. I hope to get their assistance. Some of them
will be at my elbow in London to advise, to counsel, to guide, to
inform and instruct and to direct, but I want the help of the business
brains in the localities.
This is no time for the usual methods of doing business with the
Government. ["Hear, hear!"] I am assuming that Governments in the past
have done their business in the most perfect way. This is not a time
for the usual roundabout methods of Government business. ["Hear,
hear!"]
We have got to trust business men in the localities to organize for
us, to undertake the business in the particular locality on our
behalf. We want to suspend during the war not merely trade-union
regulations, but some Government regulations, too. ["Hear, hear!"]
We want rifles, we want guns, we want shells, fuses, chemicals, and
explosives. There is one thing we want less of than usual, and that is
red tape. It takes such a long time to unwind--[laughter]--and we
can't spare the time. Therefore, the first thing I am going to ask you
to do is to organize for yourselves in this locality, and in every
other locality, the engineering resources, for the purpose of
assisting the Government. You know best what you can do. I know the
resourcefulness of the engineers of this country, I know, as the Lord
Mayor has already pointed out, their adaptability. I want you to come
together and form your own committee of management. Having done that,
organize among yourselves the engineering resources of the locality,
with a view to producing the greatest result in the way of helping our
gallant forces at the front.
That involves a good deal more confidence and trust than usual. We
have no time to go through the same processes of examination, of
bargaining, as you get usually in the matter of Government contracts.
["Hear, hear!"]
Whatever is done has got to be done with promptitude. That involves
our trusting to the integrity, to the loyalty, to the patriotism of
the business men to do their best for us in these localities, and do
it on fair terms. That is the first thing I have got to say to the
business men of the community. I want you to regard this as your
business as well as ours. This is not a Government entering into
negotiations with you. You are the Government, you have got an
interest in this concern, it is your concern, just as much as it is
ours, and I want you to help us.
This is a business for all of us, and we want every business man in
the community to give his very best to help the old country through in
the great emergency and crisis. [Cheers.] That means that you will, as
soon as you possibly can, get your committee of management, and,
through that committee of management, organize your district for the
purpose of producing such material of war, or such other component
parts of any particular material of war, you can help us to produce.
I would make the same appeal to labor. I want them also to feel that
this is their business. Should Germany win, God help labor! ["Hear,
hear!"] It will come out of it worst of all. The victory of Germany
will be the victory of the worst form of autocracy that this world has
seen for many a century. There is no section of the community has
anything like the interest in the overthrow of this military caste
which labor has--["Hear, hear!"]--and the more they realize that,
difficulties will vanish, obstacles will go, and bickerings and
slackness. We have to get to work as one man to help to win a triumph
for democratic free government against the autocratic systems of
Germany and Austria. [Cheers.]
Now, I should like to say one or two words beyond what I said
yesterday on this particular aspect of the business. I have had the
privilege, both yesterday and today, of meeting some of the leading
representatives of labor in Manchester and Liverpool. And let me say
this: As far as the official representatives of organized labor are
concerned, we have had nothing but help. The difficulty has been when
you get beyond.
I am not saying a word about trade-union regulations during a period
of peace. I have no doubt they were essential safeguards to the
protection of labor against what otherwise might have been a serious
interference with their rights and with their prospects. But as I have
already pointed out to you, Government regulations have to be
suspended during the period of the war because they are inapplicable
in a time of urgency. The same thing applies to many trade-union
regulations and practices. ["Hear, hear!"]
The first I should like to call attention to are those rules which had
been set up for very good reasons to make it difficult for purely
unsullied men to claim the position and rights of men who have had a
training--that is true in every profession.
I happen, my Lord Mayor, to belong to about the strictest trade union
in the world--[laughter]--the most jealous trade union in the world.
If any unskilled man--and by an unskilled man we mean a man who has
not paid our fees--if any man of that sort, however brainy he was,
tried to come in and interfere with our business, well, we would soon
settle him. [Laughter.] But if during the period of the war there were
any particular use for lawyers--[laughter]--if you find that upon
lawyers depended the success of the war, and it requires a good deal
of imagination; even my Celtic imagination will hardly attain to the
exalted height--[more laughter]--but if that were possible for a
moment, do you suppose that even the Incorporated Law Society, the
greatest and narrowest of all trade unions, could stand in the way of
bringing in outside help in order to enable us to get through our
work?
Well, now, the same thing applies here. If all the skilled engineers
in this country were turned on to produce what is required, if you
brought back from the front every engineer who had been recruited, if
you worked them to the utmost limits of human endurance, you have not
got enough labor even then to produce all we are going to ask you to
produce during the next few months. Therefore, we must appeal to the
patriotism of the unions of this country to relax these particular
rules, in order to eke out, as it were, the skill, to make it go as
far as it possibly can go, in order to enable us to turn out the
necessary munitions of war to win a real and a speedy triumph for our
country in this great struggle.
Now, the same thing applies to the work of women in the factories.
There is a good deal of work now done by men, and men only, in this
country which is done in France at the present moment in shell
factories by women. Why is that? They have not enough men to go round.
The men are working as hard as they can, for as long hours as they
possibly can support, but in spite of that they would not turn out a
sufficient number of shells and other material of war without doling
out a good part of the work to women in those factories. Well, now, if
there are any trade-union regulations to prevent the possibility of
that being done, I hope during the period of war these will be
suspended. ["Hear, hear!"]
Now, I am coming to another thing--and I am here to talk quite
frankly--it is very much better to do so. ["Hear, hear!"] There must
be no deliberate slowing down of work. I have had two or three very
painful cases put before me. One was from an arsenal upon which we
were absolutely dependent for the material of war. There was a very
skilled workman there who worked very hard and who earned a good deal
of money. He was doing his duty by the State. He was not merely warned
that if he repeated that offense he would be driven out, I am not
quite sure that he was not actually driven out.
The same thing happened in another factory. Now, in the period of war
this is really intolerable. ["Hear, hear!"] We cannot do with it. We
cannot afford it, I say again. There may be reasons, there might be
very good reasons, that a policy of that sort should be adopted in the
period of peace. I am expressing no opinions about that. I am simply
stating the case of this particular emergency, and I am sure that the
only thing in this emergency is that everybody should put forward all
his strength in order to help the country through. [Cheers.]
Therefore, I do hope that whatever regulation, whatever practice,
whatever custom there may be in existence at the present moment which
interferes in the slightest degree in the increase of war material,
will be suspended during the period of war.
We have given our undertaking as a Government, and that undertaking
has been inherited by a new Government. That is that those safeguards
which have been established by trade-union action prior to the war
will be restored exactly to the position they were when the war is
over, in so far as the action of the Government is concerned. We can
only ask for a suspension of these regulations during the period of
the war, then afterward the same process of discussion will go on
between capital and labor as has gone on, I have no doubt, during the
last fifty or one hundred years.
Those are two or three of the things which I wanted to put. The lives
of our men at the front depend upon the amount of war material we are
able to equip them with, success depends upon it, the lives of men
depend upon it. Everybody ought to do his best. There is no room for
slackers. ["Hear, hear!"] I don't want to get rid of the slackers, I
only want to get rid of their slackness--[laughter and cheers]--and we
really must.
In this war every country is demanding as a matter of right--not as a
matter of appeal--as a matter of right from every one of the citizens,
that he should do his best--[cheers]--and that is one of the problems
with which we have to deal in this country. It ought to be established
as a duty, as one of the essential duties of citizenship, that every
man should put his whole strength into helping the country through.
[Cheers.] And I don't believe any section of the community would
object to it, if it were made a legal right and duty expected of every
one. [Cheers.]
I don't know that I have anything further that I want specially to say
to you, because I want to get to business as quickly as possible. Sir
Frederick Donaldson of Woolwich Arsenal and Sir Percy Girouard are
here to answer any question you may put to them on the business of the
meeting. They can inform you on the technical side in a way that I
can't pretend to. I can only ask you to help us. I know that appeal to
you won't be in vain.
We are engaged in the greatest struggle this country has ever been
precipitated into. It is no fault of ours. ["Hear, hear!"] We sought
peace, we asked for peace, we avoided all the paths that led to war,
but we should have forever been dishonored if we had shirked the
conflict when it came. [Cheers.]
Harried into it, we are there to champion the deepest, the highest,
the greatest interest ever committed to the charge of any nation. Let
us equip ourselves in such a way that Great Britain through the war
will be still great, and when the war is over it will be a Greater
Britain than ever. [Cheers.]
[Illustration]