My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyExploitation of cheap labourWe British in particular can draw full warning from our past against the errors whichall Europe is now committing. It is not a matter of theory but of fact that the chiefindustries of Britain were ruined in the twenties and thirties by the exploitation ofcheap labour in undercutting competition, not only on world markets but by import oftheir goods to our own market. The experience of the cotton industry of Lancashireand the woollen industry of Yorkshire is evidence of what can occur when advancedcountries export machinery to countries where finance can exploit labour with lowerwages to compete disastrously against them. The uncontrolled competition developedby a greedy and anarchic capitalism within the Empire from India and Hong Kong,and without from China and Japan, was responsible for the ruin of Britain's mainindustries in its primary effect, and for the throwing of China to communism by theruthless brutality of the exploitation in its secondary effect.Britain was saved from the full consequences of these errors, against which I warnedat the time, not by the wisdom of statesmanship but by the genius of science. Thediversification of our industries through the new inventions of science saved us asclearly in the economic sphere as the development of nuclear weapons saved us in themilitary sphere. No one could have foreseen either event with certainty at that time; itis the task of statesmanship to deal with facts as they are, not to entrust the destiniesof great peoples to the vagaries of chance or the luck of other people's inventions. Ourscientists and technicians are singularly gifted and we can rely upon them to keep usin the forefront of the nations if we do not treat them so badly that we drive themabroad, but we cannot be sure that every time and in every sphere their talents willprovide at exactly the right moment a life-raft for politicians drowning in the sea oftheir own follies.The lessons of this experience have not been learnt either by Britain or by Europe,now busily engaged in including within its economic community the same possibilityfor the exploitation of backward labour by finance to provide a cheap internalcompetition in many of the relatively new industries which have recently beendeveloped. This tendency is maturing slowly in the particular conditions prevailingsince the war, because finance has had so many profitable distractions from theprocess which previously made vast fortunes in the East at the expense of the West,but the opportunity is still present in Africa and it will undoubtedly be exploited ifnothing is done about it.The three phases of industrial development which I concluded were inevitable in myearly observations of Detroit and Pittsburgh are still a valid forecast, and are liable tooccur in a world of free and intensifying competition. We have already passed theperiod of the classic economics when skilled labour in competition was sure to defeatthe unskilled, and are progressing into the period of rationalised industry andsimplified mechanical processes which enabled India to beat Lancashire in the cottonbusiness. I long ago observed in Detroit that the elementary individual tasks of theconveyor belt could ensure the victory of unskilled labour, even in the motor industry.We are in the phase of rationalised industry which is eminently suited to theexploitation of cheap African labour under the supervision of relatively few whitesurveyors, and it will inevitably occur if nothing is done about it because it can be soimmensely profitable.404 of 424