The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRING MEMORANDUM

By Jess—E Hawkes, J.P.,

PRESIDENT HEMEL HEMPSTEAD DIVISIONAL LABOUR Party.

THe Executive of the Hemel Hempstead Divisional Labour Party finds itself greatly interested in the Tring proposals for replacing the obsolete House of Lords by a much-needed House of Industry (and Service) and, after unhurried consideration and discussion, has decided to support it.

Our feeling is that things will be as wrong, fundamentally, with half-a-million unemployed as with two or three millions. Unemployment is a tragedy for the willing but idle man and his family even if he stands alone; and society must accept full responsibility for the tragedy. The sight of him should, every time, give his luckier fellow citizen a pang beneath his own waistcoat.

Reconstruction of the foundation and fabric of the economic life of the nation and then its smooth administration will be a bigger expert job than any kind of Parliament yet known to the world can undertake. The setting up of a House of Industry and Service is due and overdue, for the transition stage is already here. The case for it was established at the passing of the first Factory Act. One might go further back and say it came in with the first Poor-Relief Act. There is no logical stopping place between the first social guarantee of bare existence to the otherwise starving and the offer to the individual of the fullest economic liberty and status that may prove to be practicable under completely organised

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