The unemployed in this country (excluding the seasonal figure) number less than 700,000 out of a total working force of nearly 25,000,000. They all get National Assistance on such a level that there is hardly any real hardship in the sense we understand it in India. Still the conscience of the whole community is uneasy. The economic debate is dominated by this figure of unemployment and it looms large on the political scene as well.
As an illustration I might recall that BBC Television ran a programme on unemployment in one of the difficult spots. Several of the young men who were interviewed got between £8 to £10 a week as National Assistance. One farmer protested that there was no reason to be conscience-stricken on their account because that was the average earning of the farming community. His protest was described as a cruel joke. To me this collective sense of social responsibility seems to be one of the most significant developments in post-war Britain and in fact the whole of western Europe.
If one followed only the discussions in the press and Parliament on unemployment and the slow rate of expansion one could easily end up by underestimating this country’s economic strength. Figures serve as the necessary corrective. Last year the Gross National Product rose by £868 million to £24,820 million. Personal incomes rose by £1,025 million and spending by £856 million to £18,370 million (£347 for every individual man, woman or child). These figures, of course, do not discourage the Chinese propagandists.
Gambling
Talking of figures I might add that the turnover on gambling last year has been estimated at £853 million compared with £762 million in the previous year. These figures do not include the amount for gaming clubs. Horse-racing still led with a turnover of £540 million. The turnover is, of course, not to be confused with net spending because the winners reinvest. No one knows the net figure but it could not be as low as the £100 million mentioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
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The other day London witnessed a strange race. The participants were a car, a scooter, a cycle, a horse and a pedestrian, and the course a six-mile stretch through the centre of the metropolis. The scooter won the race with the cycle a close second. The horse also beat the car and the pedestrian was barely a few minutes behind. No one was surprised and many recalled the old joke about the ordinary cold being cured with medicine in seven days and without in one week.
Today there are about six and a half million cars in Britain and the number goes up by a half million every year. In and around London it means chaos on the roads and in the other parts of the country an ever-declining number of passengers for trains. The railway deficit has risen to the colossal figure of £ 170 million. The trend appears to be irreversible and yet Dr Beeching’s plan to rationalise the working of the railway system has provoked a furore, the like of which has not been seen here for years. If the Government tries to implement it, the political consequences could be grave.
Bitter Dose
Dr. Beeching is an administrator, a man borrowed from industry at £24,000 a year. He is apparently unconcerned with any such trifles as popular reaction. The dose he has prescribed is a large one – closure of 2,363 stations out of 4,709, withdrawal of passenger services from 5,000 route-miles out of the total of 17,800 miles, and retrenchment of 100,000 railway men, to list only the most controversial features of his plan.
Incidentally, the sale of cars has to be encouraged to help the industry function efficiently. Last November the Chancellor of the Exchequer cut down the purchase tax from 45 per cent to 25 per cent. Naturally the internal demand rose. But, more interesting, the exports rose too. The experience here has been that to depress the home demand is to lose the capacity to compete abroad. The Government is already beginning to discourage savings. In course of time to save might come to be regarded as anti-social behaviour.
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The Freedom From Hunger Campaign appears to have caught the imagination of the people in this country. A Government-backed committee was launched only last June by Prince Philip; there are now 750 local committees throughout the country. Already nearly £4 million has been earmarked by the British committee for projects like irrigation schemes and agricultural training centres in underdeveloped countries of Asia and Africa. The target is five million pounds by 1965. This year the collection is expected to exceed a million pounds.
India is one of the principal beneficiaries of the campaign. The British committee is helping to finance two projects for the crossbreeding of dairy animals and increased food production in Allahabad. It collaborates with UNICEF in a milk scheme in Andhra and with the Oxford Famine Relief Association in a feed-making scheme at Anand. It is assisting Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s gramdan movement in providing better agricultural implements and credit facilities and for improving the water supply for draught animals in 40 villages in Assam. In all, these projects would cost the committee £700,000.
This year the spotlight has also been on India. On the eve of the International Freedom From Hunger Week BBC TV screened an award-winning Canadian documentary on the rickshaw-pullers of Calcutta. The Week itself was launched with the screening of another documentary on the migration of hungry peasants from the parched countryside of Bihar to Calcutta in search of employment. The living conditions in the shanty townships summed up India’s difficulties for millions of people in this country. The effect can well be imagined in a community which is not prepared to tolerate an unemployment figure of 700,000.
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One of the most fabulous stories in recent weeks has been the export of “antiques” from this country to America. Most of the “antiques” came not from family collections in English country seats, but from London’s rubbish dump. Old glass, china, and metal bric-a-brac discarded by housewives have been commanding high prices in New York. Birmingham manufactures “Byzantine” pottery on a mass scale.
As soon as the American Customs officials detected the import of fakes there came a prompt confession by antique-dealers in London. One of them sends two shipments of the “antiques” to New York and one to California every month. Last year his trade was valued at a million pounds. He told a reporter, “I get practically all my stuff for America from dustbins. Men called totters have an arrangement with dustmen and demolition men. They sell the junk they get to fifteen runners I employ.” Among his customers is the President’s wife who bought four copper coaching horns to be given away as presents.
Another antique dealer was equally frank. He had some pennies used for target practice. He sold them to an American tourist, saying they were dented when a soldier had them in his pocket during the war. She did not notice that the coins bore 1952 as the date. What a pity that all that some “enterprising” art dealers in New Delhi could think of was to organise thefts in ancient temples and get the heads of statues removed so that they could be exported abroad.
Official American interest was aroused because genuine antiques are allowed to be imported free of duty. A genuine antique is defined as “an artistic and homogeneous entity that was in existence prior to 1830”. To beat this deadline one bust of an old bearded man was labelled “Bust of Alfred Lord Tennyson circa 1820”. There was only one snag. Tennyson was only 11 in that year. A similar mistake was made in the case of a “Queen Anne sideboard”.
As it is being recalled here, this is not the first time that the Americans have discovered the phenomenon of fakes sold as antiques. On a European tour, Mark Twain was shown two skulls of Emperor Constantine on the same day, one of them being described as the skull of the Emperor as a young man. And why should Americans, said an evening paper, complain when John Rockefeller spent £20 million in restoring the colonial town of Williamsburg in Virginia?
The Times of India, 14 April 1963