Working Party’s successes, and was not too dismayed at its failure to agree in the impossible task of identifying the most beneficial division of functions between private and collective action.(36) A more jaundiced analysis might conclude that the Labour Party had wasted a further year in idle debate. No radically new ideas had emerged from the Working Party, indeed
none had been expected. The main accomplishment of the Working Party had been to reopen old divisions between the employers and the operatives.
Cripps left it to Streat to secure the industry's assent to the broad principles of the Working Party Report. A restless meeting of the industry's leaders at Manchester on 5 June agreed that the Working Party Report should be the basis of future negotiations with the government; that the Cotton Board should begin to frame detailed proposals for the implementation of the non-controversial aspects of the report; that surveys of existing plant and the state of the textile machinery industry should immediately commence; and that all trade organizations should begin talks on the more contentious parts of the report.(37) Work soon began on the surveys of existing machinery and the investigation into the condition of the textile engineering industry.(38) In November 1946 George Isaacs, the Minister of Labour, persuaded the employers and operatives in the weaving section to co-operate in a commission to devise a new wage structure, based on work study techniques, which eventually led to increased earnings and larger loom complements.(39) Steps were taken to implement the Working Party's recommendation that a central factory should be chosen to conduct experiments into new methods of labour utilization, and between January and July 1947 extensive tests were carried out at a spinning mill in Bolton.(40)
the wider issues of reorganization and re-equipment. In September 1946 Cripps told Streat that he intended to introduce legislation directly to subsidize investment in the spinning section. He hoped that this would arouse less controversy among the spinning employers than a scheme financed by a levy on the industry. Firms requiring a re-equipment subsidy would make their
*
application through the Cotton Board, which would advise the Board of Trade on the distribution of the grants. Streat feared that Cripps intended to place the Cotton Board in a position where it, rather than the Government, would receive all the blame if the scheme was unsuccessful.(41) Details of the scheme leaked out over the following couple of months. Firms wishing to take advantage of the 25 per cent re-equipment subsidy would have to combine into groups of 500,000 spindles (this was later reduced to 250,000, although even this was not a rigid figure); the unions would have to agree to the principle of shift working in re-equipped mills; and the employers would have to show that they were willing to scrap some of their older mills. There was a considerable degree of suspicion towards the proposed subsidy among the employers, who vehemently opposed the clause forcing firms to amalgamate or form close groupings before they could qualify for assistance, and from certain sections of the unions (especially the Cardroom Workers) who were reluctant to agree to shift-working.(42) Cripps was dismayed by the industry's initial response to his plans. Having resolved not to
impose compulsory amalgamations upon the spinning industry, and not to force firms to pay a re-equipment levy, he believed that the government had produced an attractive scheme. He blamed the conservatism of many employers' leaders and the difficulty of obtaining agreement among the multitude of small unions for the industry's failure to to respond more positively to the government's offer.(43) Eventually Cripps's proposals were reluctantly accepted and came into operation under the 1948 Cotton Industry (Re-equipment Subsidy) Act. But due to a combination of factors, including continuing hostility to the grouping regulations, and the complacency accompanying a period of high world demand for cotton textiles, only eight new groupings were formed and only £2.6 million of the total of £12 million available in subsidies was claimed.(44)
The abject failure of the Labour's plans for the re-organization and revitalization of the cotton industry during the mid 1940s can hardly be denied. Cripps was unable to construct a generally acceptable policy for reforming the industry. Platt's ambitious plans for the concentration of power into the hands of a dozen or so public-spirited directors, and the Board of Trade Working Party's proposals for a large-scale modernization programme, had been reduced to the rather modest proportions of the 1948 re-equipment subsidy. In a moment of despondency Cripps mused that nationalization might have been a better solution to the industry's problems after all, but that it was too late
(March 1947) to change course. He could not hide his contempt for "ridiculous fools" like A.C.C. Robertson of the Cardroom Workers and H.S. Butterworth of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners Associations (F.M.C.S.A.), who jointly and religiously opposed any attempt to bring the industry up to date. He concluded that: "Lancashire must take the consequences of putting such men in office".(45)
III
The question of the long term regeneration and development of the cotton industry was not the only pressing problem facing the cotton industry in 1945. Lancashire"s short-term contribution to national recovery, and in particular the balance of payments, was possibly of even greater immmediate significance.
World War Two had left Britain heavily indebted. The termination of the Lend-Lease scheme in August 1945 further increased the pressure on sterling. A rapid recovery in exports of manufactured goods was essential to permit Britain to pay for vital imports of food and raw materials, meet overseas military obligations, and service its mountainous debts. Cotton's potential role in this struggle had long been recognised, both in the report of the Cotton Board Committee to Enquire into Post-War Problems and also in government circles. In February 1944 Keynes was beginning to regard cotton as the spearhead of postwar export drive. Wartime losses had crippled Lancashire's overseas competitors: "'Who will export cotton goods if Britain does not?'", Keynes
told Streat, "'Who [sic] are you supposing will do the export trade - Japan, America, who?'".(46) The supply of labour was expected to be the main constraint on the expansion of British cotton textile production. Speaking at an exhibition of textiles in Manchester in January 1944 Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, confronted the industry's leaders with this crucial problem:
"'I realise that you have lost from the cotton industry during the war 175,000 operatives, and the more I think of it the more it gives me a headache as to how I am going to get them back. Well, it is quite clear that the younger generation and the people coming back from the modern [munitions] factory won't be content with the cotton mill they left'".(47)
Table 2.1 illustrates Lancashire's position at the end of World War Two. Between 1937 and 1945 the production of yarn and cloth in the cotton and allied textiles industry had halved. Exports had collapsed to an even greater extent. Employment was significantly reduced and the proportion of the industry's productive capacity that was active fallen from 89 per cent in 1937 to 44 per cent in 1945 (in the case of spinning). If the problem of attracting labour back into cotton could be overcome, there was great scope for a rapid increase in production and in exports from Lancashire, and for cotton to play a crucial role in the government's plans for recovery.
Deconcentration, i.e. the reopening of mills closed under wartime regulations, commenced in March 1945. By the end of October 1946 the Cotton Control had given permission for the reopening of 129 of the 189 closed
Table 2.1.
The British cotton and allied textiles industry, 1937-50.
(1) Spinning section (excluding waste spinning doubling)
(a) (b) (c) (d)
SPINDLES
YARN EMPLOY IN PLACE RUNNING