Note 684 — Chapter X

The “Whitley Report,” published early in 1917, when possibilities of industrial and social “reconstruction” were much discussed, made a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its recommendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their adoption throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining from any suggestion of “profit-sharing, co-partnership, or particular systems of wages,” the Report emphasised the importance of (a) “adequate organisation on the part of both employers and employed”; (b) the imperative need for a greater opportunity of participating in the discussion about and adjustment of “those parts of industry by which they are most affected” of the work-people in each occupation; (c) the subordination of any decisions to those of the Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations. Among the subjects to be dealt with by the hierarchy of National, District, and Works Councils or Committees were: (i.) “the better utilisation of the practical knowledge and experience of the work-people ... and for securing to them a greater share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the conditions under which their work is carried on”; (ii.) “the settlement of the general principles governing the conditions of employment ... having regard to the need for securing to the work-people a share in the increased prosperity of the industry”; (iii.) the methods to be adopted for negotiations, adjusting wages, determining differences and “ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of earnings and employment”; (iv.) technical education, industrial research, utilisation of inventions, and improvement of processes; (v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years’ propagandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries, such as agriculture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or shipbuilding are unlikely to adopt the scheme; but two or three score trades have equipped themselves either with “Whitley Councils”—the District Councils and Works Committees are much more slow to form—or with “Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committees,” which may be regarded as provisional Councils, in such industries as pottery, house-building, woollen manufacture, hosiery, heavy chemicals, furniture-making, bread-baking, match-making, metallic bedstead manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Government found itself constrained, after an obstinate resistance by the heads of nearly all the departments, to institute the Councils throughout the public service. We venture on the prediction that some such scheme will commend itself in all nationalised or municipalised industries and services, including such as may be effectively “controlled” by the Government, though remaining nominally the property of the private capitalist—possibly also in the Co-operative Movement; but that it is not likely to find favour either in the well-organised industries (for which alone it was devised) or in those in which there are Trade Boards legally determining wages, etc.; or, indeed, permanently in any others conducted under the system of capitalist profit-making. See the series of “Whitley Reports,” Cd. 8606, 9001, 9002, 9085, 9099, and 9153; the Industrial Reports, Nos. 1 to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction; the able and well-informed article, “La politique de paix sociale en Angleterre,” by Élie Halévy, in Revue d’Économie Politique, No. 4 of 1919; Recommendation on the Whitley Report put forward by the Federation of British Industries, 1917; National Guilds or Whitley Councils?(National Guilds League), 1918. For the “Builders’ Parliament,” in many ways the most interesting of these Councils, though as yet achieving only schemes in which the employers, as a whole, do not concur, see A Memorandum on Industrial Self-Government, by Malcolm Sparkes; Masters and Men, a new Co-partnership, by Thomas Foster; and The Industrial Council for the Building Industry, by the Garton Foundation, 1919.