My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyMy short-term programme immediately to put people to work was not in itselfparticularly original. Work was to be provided for 700,000 to 800,000 by three mainmeasures: an emergency retirement pensions scheme opened places in industry for280,000, raising the school age accounted for another 150,000, and a further 300,000were to be found employment in constructive works.In addition, my resignation speech made a novel suggestion for land drainage andslum clearance by 'a more direct intervention on the part of the State with a view toshort-circuiting the local delays' and advocated 'something approaching a mobilelabour corps under decent conditions of labour and wages'. So far as I am aware, thiswas the first time there was any proposal for a national approach to the housing andslum-clearance problems, superseding the slow-moving machinery of local authorities.While the three main schemes to provide work for 700,000 to 800,000 people werenot entirely original, the method and machinery for doing this was in those days notonly novel, but a direct challenge to current thought, for it was to be done by loans.Even granting the Keynsian principle of deficit financing, which was thenrevolutionary, the detailed methods evolved with the aid of the departments had someingenuity. The annual Exchequer charge incurred was the surprisingly low figure of£10,000,000 a year. Even today it may be quite interesting to study the contrivancesfor averaging and amortising the costs of the scheme over a period of years andreducing to a minimum the budgetary burden. These schemes rested for their successon a mass of detail which I explained in my resignation speech of an hour and aquarter, and the House was good enough to follow it closely and manifestly tounderstand.Why then did the Government not welcome the provision of employment for 700,000to 800,000 men at the remarkably low annual charge of £10,000,000 to the Exchequer,particularly when the detail of the financing was unchallenged by its spokesmen indebate? The answer is that the loan method, or deficit financing, during a depression,shocked to the very core the financial orthodoxy of this socialist administration;surprising, but a fact. When I asked: 'Is it wrong in days of depression to raise a loanon the revenue of the Road Fund for the provision of an emergency programme whichin days of prosperity is repaid by a Sinking Fund from the Road Fund?'—the answerwas that Mr. Snowden thought it very wrong indeed; in fact, the suggestion outragedhim even more than it would have shocked Mr. Gladstone. The orthodoxy of theperiod utterly rejected such policies with a background of Keynsian economics, andboth front benches were united in this negation. Mr. Churchill, while he was goodenough to welcome the method and manner of my exposition, was equally with Mr.Snowden a prisoner of the old economics; they detested each other, but in financeshared the same opinions.The argument on this crucial matter I stated as follows: 'It must be remembered that toset many men working for a year costs a great deal of money. It costs £1,000,000 toemploy 4,000 men at work for a year, and £100,000,000 to employ 400,000 men for ayear. Therefore, if you are going to do this work on any large scale, large sums ofmoney will have to be raised by the State or local authorities to carry it out. How is itto be raised, out of revenue or out of loans? £100,000,000 out of revenue! Who willsuggest it in the present situation? It is 2s. on the Income Tax. It must be raised byloan. If the principle of a big loan is turned down then this kind of work must come to209 of 424