Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have now described to the Committee a number of
solid factors which have arisen since the Dunkirk period, all
of which have tended to obstruct and reduce output.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I should like to give the Committee.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Some facts and figures to show how far we have
succeeded by improved organization and by the smooth running of
our expanding machinery in overcoming these adverse.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Currents, which I have set out at length.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
But here I encounter a new difficulty. I am told
we cannot.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Have these debates in secret session. They must be in public.
The Germans must read in two or three days.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Every word we say, and therefore I cannot give actual figures.
In addition, I am told by my honorable friends to
let us have none of these comparative percentages. Let us
not be told that we are producing half as much again,
or double what we produced this time last year because
we were producing nothing last year, or something like it.
(01:05):
As my honorable friend said, it is a Lancashire saying
that Price's note is note. So according to these critics,
I am inhibited from all vindicatory comparisons. I must not
say how much better we are at this time last year, when,
after all we've been at war for ten or eleven months,
(01:27):
and so we're presumably making something. I must not say
how much better we are than at the twenty third
months of the last war, nor o our output compares
with the peak of.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The last war.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Because it is contended conditions of change. It is rather
easy money for the critics. A handful of members can
fill a couple of days debate with disparaging charges against
our war effort, and every ardent or disaffected section.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Of the press can take it up, and.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
The whole canig a dismal, cacophonous chorus of stinking fish.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
All around the world. But no answer must be made.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Nothing must be said to show the giant war effort,
the prodigy of national real which excites the.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Astonishment of friend and foe, which will.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Command the admiration of history, and which have kept us alive.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I defy the tyrannical prohibitions.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I intend to make comparisons both through the Dunkirk Dacam
period and with the similar and peak periods of the
last war. Despite all the trouble I've enumerated, the Ministry
of Supply output in the last three months had been
one third greater than the three months of the Dunkirk period.
(02:45):
Though our navy, Army and Air force are larger, the
Ministry had one third more people working in its factory. Thus,
despite dilutions, dispersion, reduced food, the blackout, and all the
troubles we have described, each man is turning out on
the whole each day as much as he did.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
In that time of almost superhuman effort. After Dunkirk.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Let me present the balance sheet. One third more workers
and one third more output equipments.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But all the.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Adverse fact that I have described have somehow or other
been canceled out by superior development of our machinery and organization.
We have made in the last three months more than
price to field guns we made in the Dunkirk period.
The ammunition we are turning out is half as much. Again,
(03:40):
the combined merchant and naval shipbuilding now in active progress,
is bigger not only in scale but in current daily
volume of execution than.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It was at any period in the last form.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And of course the work now is immeasurably more complex
than it was then.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
We are told how bad the labor is behaving, and.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Then a lot of people who never did a day's
hard work in their lives are out after them again,
I claim look back to the last war. In that
war we had many bitter and devastating strikes, and in
the final two years nearly twelve million working days were.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Lost through labor disputes.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So far, in the whole twenty three months of this war,
we have lost less than two million days. I was
ansious to have the latest information about trade disputes in
the country.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I received a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Before I rose to speak a reporter.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
At eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
There was no stoppage of work of any kind arising
from a trade dispute in.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Any part of Great Britain.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He's a fashion nowadays to abuse the Minister of Labor.
He is a workman, a trade union leader. He is
taunted with being an unskilled laborer representing an unskilled union.
I guess say he gives offense in some quarters. He
has his own methods of.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Speech and action. He has a frightful load to carry,
yet a job to do which none would envy. He
makes mistakes that I do, though not so many or
so serious. He has not the same opportunity at any rate.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He is producing at this moment, though perhaps on rather
expensive terms, a vast and steady.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Volume of faithful effort, the like of which has not
been seen before.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And if you tell me that the results he produces
do not compare with those of choketalitarian system to government
and society, I reply by saying, we shall know more
about that when we get to the end.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Of the story.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I dare say that some of our.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Critics will not like this kind of talk.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They call it complacency, living in comparative idleness. They wish
to lash the toilers of body and mind to further
exertions to state fact which are true, in encouraging it
to be accused of cheap and facial optimism.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Our critics do not like it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Neither do the Germans, though for different reasons. But I
consider that if for days on end, the whole national
effort is disparaged and insulted, and if all over the
world we are depicted by our friends and countrymen are slack,
rotten and incompetent, we are entitled nay, it becomes oppressing
(06:29):
duty to restore the balance by presenting the truth. When
I look out upon the whole tumultuous scene of this
ever widening war, I feel it my duty to conclude
by giving a very serious warning.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
To the House and to the country.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
We must be on our guard equally against pessimism and
against optimism.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
There are no doubt temptations to optimism.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It is the fact that the mighty Russian state, so
foully and treacherously assaulted, has struck back with magnificent strength
and courage, and is inflicting prodigious and well deserved laughter
for the first time from the Nazi armies.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It is the fact that the United States, the greatest
single power in the world, is given at aid.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
On a gigantic scale and advancing in rising wrought.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And conviction to the very verge of war. It is the.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Fact that the German our superiority has been broken, and
that the air attached on this country air for the
time being, almost ceased. It is the fact that the
Battle of the Atlantic, although far from one, has parties,
through American intervention, moved impressively in our favor.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It is the fact that the Nile.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Valley is now far safer than it was twelve months
ago or three months ago. It is the fact that
the enemy has lost all pretense of theme or octrine,
and its trunk ever deeper in moral and intellectual degradation
and bankruptcy, and.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That almost all his conquests have proved burdens and sorted
of weakness.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
But all these massive, tiring facts which we are entitled
to dwell on, must not lead us for a moment
to suppose that the work did over the formidable power.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Of nause Germany.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
The vast mass of destructive munitions they have made are captured,
the courage, skill and audacity of their striking forces, the
roots in its cysts of their centralized war direction, the
prostrate condition of so many great peoples under their yoke.
There are sorts of so many lands which made us
(08:47):
some extent become available to them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
All these restrained rejoicing, and forbid that sit relaxation. It
would be madly for us to suppose that Russia.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The United States is going to win this war for us.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The invasion of season is in hand.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
All the armed forties have been worn to be a
constant pitch by the first of September, and to retain
the utmost vigilance. Meanwhile, we have to reckon with a
gambler's desperation. We have to reckon with a criminal obiomere
gesture that decreed the deaths of three or four million
Russian and German soldiers.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
We stand here still the champions. If we fail, all fails,
and if we fall, all will fall together.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It is only by a superb, intense and prolonged effort
of the whole British Empire that the great combination of
about three quarters of the human race against an argydom
will come into vehement.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And dynamic life. More than a we have been all alone,
all alone, we have had to guard the treasure of
men kind.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Although there have been profound and encouraging changes in the situation,
our own vital and commanding responsibilities remain undiminished, and we
shall discharge them only by continuing to pour out in
the common cause the utmost endeavors of our strength and virtue,
and if need be
Speaker 2 (10:21):
To proffer the last drop of our hearts blood,
I have now described to the Committee a number of
solid factors which have arisen since the Dunkirk period, all
of which have tended to obstruct and reduce output.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I should like to give the Committee.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Some facts and figures to show how far we have
succeeded by improved organization and by the smooth running of
our expanding machinery in overcoming these adverse.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Currents, which I have set out at length.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
But here I encounter a new difficulty. I am told
we cannot.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Have these debates in secret session. They must be in public.
The Germans must read in two or three days.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Every word we say, and therefore I cannot give actual figures.
In addition, I am told by my honorable friends to
let us have none of these comparative percentages. Let us
not be told that we are producing half as much again,
or double what we produced this time last year because
we were producing nothing last year, or something like it.
(01:05):
As my honorable friend said, it is a Lancashire saying
that Price's note is note. So according to these critics,
I am inhibited from all vindicatory comparisons. I must not
say how much better we are at this time last year, when,
after all we've been at war for ten or eleven months,
(01:27):
and so we're presumably making something. I must not say
how much better we are than at the twenty third
months of the last war, nor o our output compares
with the peak of.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The last war.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Because it is contended conditions of change. It is rather
easy money for the critics. A handful of members can
fill a couple of days debate with disparaging charges against
our war effort, and every ardent or disaffected section.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Of the press can take it up, and.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
The whole canig a dismal, cacophonous chorus of stinking fish.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
All around the world. But no answer must be made.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Nothing must be said to show the giant war effort,
the prodigy of national real which excites the.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Astonishment of friend and foe, which will.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Command the admiration of history, and which have kept us alive.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I defy the tyrannical prohibitions.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I intend to make comparisons both through the Dunkirk Dacam
period and with the similar and peak periods of the
last war. Despite all the trouble I've enumerated, the Ministry
of Supply output in the last three months had been
one third greater than the three months of the Dunkirk period.
(02:45):
Though our navy, Army and Air force are larger, the
Ministry had one third more people working in its factory. Thus,
despite dilutions, dispersion, reduced food, the blackout, and all the
troubles we have described, each man is turning out on
the whole each day as much as he did.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
In that time of almost superhuman effort. After Dunkirk.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Let me present the balance sheet. One third more workers
and one third more output equipments.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But all the.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Adverse fact that I have described have somehow or other
been canceled out by superior development of our machinery and organization.
We have made in the last three months more than
price to field guns we made in the Dunkirk period.
The ammunition we are turning out is half as much. Again,
(03:40):
the combined merchant and naval shipbuilding now in active progress,
is bigger not only in scale but in current daily
volume of execution than.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It was at any period in the last form.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
And of course the work now is immeasurably more complex
than it was then.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
We are told how bad the labor is behaving, and.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Then a lot of people who never did a day's
hard work in their lives are out after them again,
I claim look back to the last war. In that
war we had many bitter and devastating strikes, and in
the final two years nearly twelve million working days were.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Lost through labor disputes.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
So far, in the whole twenty three months of this war,
we have lost less than two million days. I was
ansious to have the latest information about trade disputes in
the country.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I received a few minutes.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Before I rose to speak a reporter.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
At eleven o'clock.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
There was no stoppage of work of any kind arising
from a trade dispute in.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Any part of Great Britain.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
He's a fashion nowadays to abuse the Minister of Labor.
He is a workman, a trade union leader. He is
taunted with being an unskilled laborer representing an unskilled union.
I guess say he gives offense in some quarters. He
has his own methods of.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Speech and action. He has a frightful load to carry,
yet a job to do which none would envy. He
makes mistakes that I do, though not so many or
so serious. He has not the same opportunity at any rate.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
He is producing at this moment, though perhaps on rather
expensive terms, a vast and steady.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Volume of faithful effort, the like of which has not
been seen before.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And if you tell me that the results he produces
do not compare with those of choketalitarian system to government
and society, I reply by saying, we shall know more
about that when we get to the end.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Of the story.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
I dare say that some of our.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Critics will not like this kind of talk.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
They call it complacency, living in comparative idleness. They wish
to lash the toilers of body and mind to further
exertions to state fact which are true, in encouraging it
to be accused of cheap and facial optimism.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Our critics do not like it.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Neither do the Germans, though for different reasons. But I
consider that if for days on end, the whole national
effort is disparaged and insulted, and if all over the
world we are depicted by our friends and countrymen are slack,
rotten and incompetent, we are entitled nay, it becomes oppressing
(06:29):
duty to restore the balance by presenting the truth. When
I look out upon the whole tumultuous scene of this
ever widening war, I feel it my duty to conclude
by giving a very serious warning.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
To the House and to the country.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
We must be on our guard equally against pessimism and
against optimism.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
There are no doubt temptations to optimism.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It is the fact that the mighty Russian state, so
foully and treacherously assaulted, has struck back with magnificent strength
and courage, and is inflicting prodigious and well deserved laughter
for the first time from the Nazi armies.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
It is the fact that the United States, the greatest
single power in the world, is given at aid.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
On a gigantic scale and advancing in rising wrought.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And conviction to the very verge of war. It is the.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
Fact that the German our superiority has been broken, and
that the air attached on this country air for the
time being, almost ceased. It is the fact that the
Battle of the Atlantic, although far from one, has parties,
through American intervention, moved impressively in our favor.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
It is the fact that the Nile.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Valley is now far safer than it was twelve months
ago or three months ago. It is the fact that
the enemy has lost all pretense of theme or octrine,
and its trunk ever deeper in moral and intellectual degradation
and bankruptcy, and.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That almost all his conquests have proved burdens and sorted
of weakness.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
But all these massive, tiring facts which we are entitled
to dwell on, must not lead us for a moment
to suppose that the work did over the formidable power.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Of nause Germany.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
The vast mass of destructive munitions they have made are captured,
the courage, skill and audacity of their striking forces, the
roots in its cysts of their centralized war direction, the
prostrate condition of so many great peoples under their yoke.
There are sorts of so many lands which made us
(08:47):
some extent become available to them.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
All these restrained rejoicing, and forbid that sit relaxation. It
would be madly for us to suppose that Russia.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The United States is going to win this war for us.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
The invasion of season is in hand.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
All the armed forties have been worn to be a
constant pitch by the first of September, and to retain
the utmost vigilance. Meanwhile, we have to reckon with a
gambler's desperation. We have to reckon with a criminal obiomere
gesture that decreed the deaths of three or four million
Russian and German soldiers.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
We stand here still the champions. If we fail, all fails,
and if we fall, all will fall together.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It is only by a superb, intense and prolonged effort
of the whole British Empire that the great combination of
about three quarters of the human race against an argydom
will come into vehement.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
And dynamic life. More than a we have been all alone,
all alone, we have had to guard the treasure of
men kind.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Although there have been profound and encouraging changes in the situation,
our own vital and commanding responsibilities remain undiminished, and we
shall discharge them only by continuing to pour out in
the common cause the utmost endeavors of our strength and virtue,
and if need be
Speaker 2 (10:21):
To proffer the last drop of our hearts blood,
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