DEFEATING THE GOVERNMENT

THE vote in the House of Commons on Tuesday was an unhappy business. It is deplorable that at this crisis of the war in the west Ministers like Mr. Churchill and Mr. Eden should be called on to deal with a situation which 'should never have arisen, and hardly less to be regretted that Mr. R. A. Butler, who has worked tirelessly and with conspicuous success to frame his Education Bill on a basis of public agreement such as has never been achieved before, should be put in a position in which he could hardly do less than tender his resignation. It is idle for Members who voted in he majority to protest that they did not intend to defeat the Govern- err ; they must bear the responsibility for the steps they chose to take. Neither, as the Prime Minister most justly pointed out, will it do to contend that defeat of the Government on a domestic ques- tion has no bearing on the Government's authority and prestige in elation to the war. Governments do not in this country work in compartments, and never have done. At the time this is written the result of Mr. Churchill's demand that the House shall formally affirm its confidence in the Government, and consent to the restoration of the Bill to its pre-Tuesday form, is not known, but it is incon- eivable that the response will not be overwhelmingly favourable. As to the amendment moved by Mrs. Cazalet Keir, to the effect that there should be equal pay for men and women teachers, the ase against adopting it was decisive. To say that involves no xpression of view either way on the question of equal pay for men nd women generally—a proposal, indeed, for which there is much o be said—but that manifestly involves so far-reaching a principle, mod so substantial an expense, that it requires to be discussed in all ts breadth atid length, most conveniently no doubt on a resolution in he House of Commons, before any conclusion is reached for or gainst the general application of the principle. For it is clear that ts application must lfe general. To introduce it in respect of one tody of public employees, as the result of a private Member's amend- ent to a Government Bill, is plainly inadmissible. The immediate esult would be an irresistible demand by all Government and muni- ipal employees for similar treatment. That may be a good thing r a bad thing, but it is something that extends far beyond the con- nes of a measure whose basic concern is with the education of the hildren of England and Wales. A secondary argument, on which ir. Butler laid legitimate stress, was the fact that the resolution ran ounter to the whole conclusions of the Burnham Committee, whose ork manifestly ought not to be destroyed as the result of an hour r two's debate in the House of Commons. Mr. Butler left the Louse in no doubt as to his interpretation of an adverse vote. Yet n adverse vote was deliberately cast. The meaning of the vote itself need not be exaggerated ; 117 Mem- bers out of a House of 615 went into the lobby against the Govern- ment. Even when allowance is made for the depletion of the House through the absence of Members on public service, what that suggests more than anything is that the Government whips have been culpably negligent. The Education Bill, of course, must be debated. Amend- ments must be proposed ; many have been, and a large number have been accepted. What is serious is not that this particular amendment should have been proposed, though there were strong reasons against that, but that it should have been pressed to a division when the responsible Minister had made the Government's attitude so unmistakably clear. The action of the Labour Party in voting officially against the Government in such circumstances is peculiarly disturbing. It ought to be unnecessary to stress the importance of this moment in the development of the war or the immensity of the responsibilities that Ministers have to bear. The ordinary citizen does not expect to behave as in the normal days of peace. He knows that certain restraints are necessary, and he accepts them. It is not too much to call on the House of Commons to do the same. Irre- sponsible defiance of the Government will be ill regarded by the country.

The Luftvvaffe's Dilemma

The gradual, systematic, ever-increasing destruction of German war-production by bombing from the air has been a leading aim of British strategy for two years or more, and at the end of 1942 it was already taken so seriously by the Germans that they set themselves to switch over production from offensive to defensive output, concentrating on the manufacture of fighter aeroplanes and anti-aircraft weapons. Since then the Americans have been throwing their growing bomber strength into the campaign, and to the nigh t- bombing of the R.A.F. has been added the day-bombing of the American Air Force ; shattering blows have been dealt, with the object of destroying the fighters of the Luftwaffe on the ground and in the air and the factories in which they are made. A report issued by the United States War Department shows the dilemma with which the Luftwaffe is faced. If it tries to throw a fighter screen against the U.S.A.A.F. and the R.A.F. it may suffer losses beyond its capacity for replacement, while if it avoids battle it allows the free exercise of precision bombing upon vital production centres. In this respect it is estimated that bomber attacks in 1943 prevented the production of 2,500 fighters, and that in the first two months of this year the monthly production of

fightsrs was cut by two-thirds and of born ers y one-third. The immediate goal, according to General Doolittle, is the destruction or neutralisation of the Luftwaffe. The figures, of course, do not admit of exact verification, but the recent reluctance of German fighters to take the air to defend even essential industries shows how anxiously they are conserving the forces which they will need in the hour of invasion. Germany's capacity for recugeration is not overlooked. The bombing must be kept up ceaselessly if her pro- duction is to be kept down. But already great results have been achieved, some of which have already been felt by the Russians. Allied bombers have helped them in the east just as they are paving the way for overwhelming air superiority in the west when the full second front is opened.

Housing and Plann:ng

The specific charge against the Government that it has failed to produce a policy for town and country planning is not in any degree met by 'saying that it has produced programmes in other spheres of reform, still less by the equivocation of Lord Beaverbrook, who devoted half his speech in the Lords last week to saying that the Prime Minister has been brilliantly planning the war. Of course he has, and few deny it, but that does not excuse the Ministers directly concerned with planning at home if they neglect their job. Nor is the criticism met by pointing out that short-term emergency programmes have been adopted by setting Lord Portal to produce pre-fabricated dwellings (useful as they may be for an interim period) or by Mr. Willink's plans for building 200,000 or 300,000 permanent houses in the first two years after the war. This means that the task of permanent building will have to be begun in the dark, and without proper relation to the permanent plans of building and development which ought to govern action by the local authorities in a period which it was hoped would be one of orderly, enlightened progress. To start permanent building in this haphazard way before the principles which should govern planning have been laid down, and before due consideration has been given to the urgent questions of the location of industry and of betterment and development, is a disorderly retreat from the conception of planned reconstruction. Mr. Churchill on Sunday suggested that all this will be "child's play" compared to what we have gone through. Then why should not the children be turned on to it now—those who are not busy with the tasks of war? It is going much too far _to ask that critics should be silent about anything and everything because there is a war on. The best means of silencing the critics is to produce a programme of planning as thorough as the Government's Education Bill and health scheme.

The Siting of Industry

Lord McGowan, chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries, speak- ing at Cardiff on Tuesday, was sanguine enough to express the view that the Government would soon deal with the location of industry, and that it might take powers to tell manufacturers where they should not erect new factories. It may be hoped that the Government will go still further and give positive encouragement to manufacturers to set up factories in the old depressed areas. I.C.I., it appears, is not waiting till there has been legislation, but intends to start on its own account by setting up a post-war enterprise in South Wales if certain negotiations with the Government go satisfactorily, though it would not choose that locality solely on business grounds There are industrial concerns all over the country which are now making their plans for -the conversion of factories from war work to peace work, and for expansion and new enterprise to meet the needs of consumers at home and abroad ; it is of the greatest importance that plans should be laid now so that the former depressed areas get their share, and that there should be no uncontrolled expansion in the Greater London area. The unsightliness of some of the derelict areas is undoubtedly one of the deterrents to development within them ; but if industrialists generally would take the advice offered by Lord McGowan they themselves could do much to dispel the depression of unpleasant surroundings by setting up new plants, well sited, with ample space between the buildings, which themselves

should be attractive, clean, air-conditioned, and provided with modern amenities. In the past industry and hideousness have gone together. That need not be so today, but if the evils of the past are not to be repeated enlightened industrial management must go hand in hand with enlightened Manning.

New Ways With Offenders

Last week Mr. Herbert Morrison made the interesting and impor- tant announcement that he intends to appoint an Advisory Council to assist the Home Secretary to draw up a programme of reforms in methods of dealing with 'offenders. He was replying to a question about juvenile delinquency, and it is to that question that the Ccuncil will be asked to give special and early attention. But le wisely recognises that the study of crime should not be divided into water- tight compartments ; the persistent offender was once a first offender, and by knowledge of the former we may better understand how to treat the latter. The. subject has been studied by experts of the Home Office and by experienced persons outside, and it is highly desirable to pool the knowledge gained from different angles and put it at the disposal of the Minister. Reviewing the whole question of delinquency, juvenile and adult, in a speech at Birmingham on Tues- day, Mr. Morrison discussed the progress that has already been made in the direction of reformative treatment, and the greater progress which should lie ahead. The trend of enlightened opinion today—though there are some who think it is going too far—is to put the emphasis less on punishment and more on remedial treatment. Mr. Morrison does not lose sight of the necessity of deterrence, though he is surely right in saying that the shame of trial and sentence alone affords a considerable measure of deterrence, at least in deterring possible first offenders and preventing second offences. The fact that 90 per cent, of the older offenders and 70-per cent, of the younger do not reappear before the courts shows how important it is not to treat a first crime as if it were the beginning of a habit. We have a long way yet to go: first, in perfecting our knowledge ; secondly, in adjusting the machinery of treatment to that knowledge ; and thirdly, in educating those who have to administer the law—the justices and the justices' clerks. Mr. Morrison has reached a wise decision in proposing to appoint a Standing Council, and it may be hoped that soon he will see his way to introduce a measure of penal reform on

the lines of the Bill which had to be postponed in 1939. A th th

Railways and the Home Front in Of all the hard-worked industries in this country it is doubtful mi if any can be shown to be more essential to the conduct of the fia war than the railways. They hold a key position, bearing the in largest part of the burden in conveying munitions, troops, coal and Ac raw materials to the places where they are needed, and the whole eff of their war-time task has been superimposed on their normal func- Tu tion of carrying passengers and goods. The Select Committee on of National Expenditure in a recent Report shows how severely they eff( have been handicapped through insufficient labour—and if they have tha been handicapped, it follows that all the activities which they serve mo have suffered 'with them. A glaring example is affokled by the san fact that at some collieries stocks of coal have been piling up at pit- intl heads because lack of labour prevented the wagons being moved, tint with the result that miners have wondered why the maximum effort

hat was required from them. Often it has been not the coal that has

been lacking, nor the Wagons, but railway workers. It may reason- mu ably be asked whether some of those youths who were directed to the An mines might not more usefully have been sent to work on the rail- urn ways. The Committee urges that the railways should not be further pro denuded of men and, indeed, that there must be a substantial increase wh in their labour force to cope with normal wastage and further needs ma The whole question of transport demands attention. The Com- one mittee consider S that there. is much waste in road haulage through err( the extravagant use of vehicles. Everyone has now come to realise far what communications mean to armies at the front. The roads and by railways in this country WIC the essential communications by which one the war on the home front is .supplied.

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