Cripps on wages—or hope deferred (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “We should like shorter hours of work and better pay, but with the urgent need for production and the danger of inflation, neither of these things is now in the national interest. We must discipline ourselves to do without them until such time as they become national economic possibilities.”
(Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, addressing the Band of Hope Union. Reported in the Daily Herald, 12/5/47).

  “They deserve and need reasonable remuneration for their work, whether they are managers or workers, and that ought to be a first charge upon our production. But beyond that it is good working conditions and team work that will produce the results we want. The idea of an ever-rising spiral of inducement wages is one which makes me shudder at the economic consequences that might come.”
(Cripps, House of Commons, 21/11/46. Hansard, Column 1096).

  "It is notable that those who complain most vigorously about high wages are those who are very well off.”
(From the "Labour Party Speakers’ Handbook,” 1945, p.152).

 Edgar Hardcastle