§ VISCOUNT ASTOR rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether, in view of the admitted success of the juvenile unemployment centres in preventing physical and moral deterioration among young people due to continued unemployment, they propose to close these centres on June 30, thus wasting the work and money already expended and turning on to the, streets large numbers of juveniles who have no prospect of immediate employment.
The noble Viscount saidMy Lords, I desire to submit to your Lordships the Question which stands in my name upon the Paper. I need not remind your Lordships that in spite of a slight improvement in trade there is still a tremendous amount of unemployment in this country. Hundreds of thousands of men and women are unable to find work, and the labour market is not able to absorb them. Nor need I remind your Lordships that at the present moment tens of thousands of children leave school every year, and no opportunity is provided to these juveniles between fourteen and eighteen to find employment. A man who is out of work 236 for any considerable period of time becomes demoralised. Nothing is so demoralising as hanging about with nothing to do. If that is what happens to adults, how much more demoralising is it for young men and women, boys and girls, who have no regular training, to wait for months and even years with absolutely nothing to do. It is particularly demoralising when they are able to draw what is called the dole, and do nothing all the time.
After the Armistice the Government decided that it would not be in the national interest that this sort of thing should go on. Training centres for juvenile employment were established, and were so successful that something like 200 of them were in existence at one period. Unfortunately, when the cry for economy was raised the Government grant was diminished, and eventually withdrawn altogether. These unemployment centres were consequently closed clown. As a result there was such a popular clamour for their re-establishment that last December the Government decided on 75 per cent. grants to juvenile unemployment centres which were started by local authorities. I regret to say, however, that it was announced recently in another place that the Government contemplated the closing down of these juvenile centres at the end of Tune.
I raise the question to-day because, if the Government are not able to announce that they intend to continue these juvenile centres, I am very anxious that people should realise what the policy of the Government is going to be in order that public opinion may be mobilised and make itself felt, and that the Government, not for the first time in relation to this question, may reconsider its decision. I find it difficult to understand the attitude of the Government, because only the other day the Minister who is responsible for the administration of these juvenile centres paid eloquent tribute to their success. As recently as last December the Government, in a circular which was sent to local authorities, stated that it was thought most desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education, that is the Department primarily interested in the welfare of persons of this age, to revive these centres which had been closed down, and thus to mitigate the evil effects of unemployment.
237 If it was desirable in. December, 1922, to mitigate the evils of unemployment by setting up these juvenile unemployment centres it is equally desirable now.
It has been my good fortune to visit several of these centres, and I can say from my personal experience of those which I have visited that they have been extraordinarily successful. Young men and young women, boys and girls, have been taught occupations such as carpentry, they have had organised games, they have learnt the principles of citizenship, the responsibilities of leadership and esprit de corps. I know of another centre, which I have not myself visited but which I have heard about, where when it was started those who were responsible for running it were horrified to find how quickly young men who came to the centres had lost all that discipline which had been instilled into them during their period of school training and had become disobedient. I am glad to say that after six months those responsible for the centre are able to report that the boys again act under their control, and are working well, and that the effect upon them of the discipline and training which they get in the centre has been entirely beneficial.
I agree that there may be some centres which are not so good as others, but that is no reason for sweeping away those which have done good work. If there are any which are not satisfactory let us change the conditions governing them, but do not let us scrap the whole lot. The other day I noticed a letter written by Sir Arthur Yapp, of the Y.M.C.A., to The Times, in which he stated that he had heard with consternation that it was proposed to close down these centres, and he heard the news with consternation because of the excellent results achieved. I submit that there is absolutely overwhelming evidence that these centres have been successful, not merely in manual training and in developing the intellects of the boys and girls attending them, but, a matter which I think is oven more necessary and desirable, in developing their characters.
What are the objections? We are told, first of all, that we cannot afford the cost; that they are too expensive. There is nothing so costly as false economy. There is nothing so ruinous to a nation as neglecting the welfare and development of 238 its rising generation. If we have to economise, I suggest that it is unfair and unwise to begin with the children. It is also, I understand, suggested that these centres can well be closed down in the summer—that in the summer there is not so much need for them as in winter. I do not believe that to be the case. I believe that it is particularly in the summer that organised games can be developed: that as the summer goes on you will find an increasing number of young men and women with nothing whatever to do, and that it is desirable to have these centres to which they can be attracted. Anybody who has had anything to do with boys' clubs, for instance, will know how difficult it is to get the right men to run them, and the right spirit established within those clubs. The success or failure of these centres must depend upon having the right men to run them, and the right spirit established in them. Therefore I suggest to the Government that it would be unwise, and extravagant, having got sixty or seventy centres established, to close them down for the summer months and then have to re-open them in the winter.
I remember a conversation that I had after the Election with a trade unionist and Socialist, who told me that what had struck him during the last Election was the fact that young men and women were attracted by what he described as the loudest noise. They had lost all sense of control and discipline. They would not even listen to their trade union leaders. It is doubly necessary that we should keep any machinery which promotes discipline in the rising generation. We hear and read about proletarian schools. I have heard it alleged that in these schools boys and girls are taught that there is no God, and that it is not for them to respect law and authority and government as we understand them. Nowadays the man in the street judges the ruling classes not by the labels that they wear but by their actions. There is not a single man in this House who would deliberately take his boy or girl away from school and let him or her run around without any supervision or control. Yet that is what the Government's action proposes to do—to have tens of thousands of young men and women with no control or discipline and no chance of getting work.
If we can only teach citizenship to the rising generation I have no fear whatever 239 of Bolshevism or atheism, but if we turn boys and girls into the street, give them nothing to do, and convert them into hooligans and loafers, we shall have great responsibility, because we shall be providing soil upon which the seed of Bolshevism and atheism will take root and flourish. I trust that the noble Earl, when he replies, will be able to announce either that the Government do not intend to close, or if they have done so are willing to re-open, these centres, because I am convinced that if the Government do shut down these centres they will be prejudicing the welfare of the rising generation. I am equally certain that public opinion will insist upon having them re-opened.
§ LORD ASKWITHMy Lords, I hope that the noble Viscount is drawing upon his imagination when he says what the Government are going to do. I trust that they will not at one moment blow hot and at another moment blow cold upon this subject. Only last December various social bodies asked me to act as leader in efforts which were being made for dealing with these children who cannot be employed owing to lack of work, who are being thrown out of school at the end of their term and getting into no good habits at all but in many ways deteriorating in a very marked manner. This effort was knocked on the head, or rather by agreement stopped, because it was said that the Government were going to do something. The Government did do something, and proceeded to have these juvenile unemployment centres established. If, after six months' trial, they should be stopped, then all the work and all the money will have been entirely wasted.
In six months you cannot do much with the mass of material that has to be dealt with; yet there are a great many associations, like the Y.M.C.A., which have been strenuously working to get hold of these lads and teach them to be good citizens. There are individuals, too, in different cities, who have worked wonders with these unemployed juveniles. There are men in places like Bristol who have managed to provide games of football for, and also given training in various kinds of trades to boys who would otherwise be simply wandering about Clifton Downs and getting into thoroughly bad habits: Their efforts 240 have done wonders. In Liverpool and in many other great cities the same thing has taken place. As the noble Viscount has said, Sir Arthur Yapp recently wrote a letter in which he expressed consternation at the reported closing down of these centres. Some of them may be poor centres. It is not always easy to get a good manager; but in those cases where there is a teacher or a manager who has a capacity for getting hold of the boys and understanding them, who can arrange the proper treatment, teaching, and training, the centres must be of value.
The noble Viscount hinted that as the summer is coming on and there might be better weather, there might be some sort of employment obtainable in the harvesting I am not sure that the summer is not one of the very best times to get hold of these lads and girls, and to give them the best training available. Some of those holiday camps, costing extraordinarily little, helped in many cases by Rotary Clubs, either on the downs inland, or else upon the seashore, have caused a wonderful revolution in the habits and outlook of children who have been to them; have taught them cleanliness, have taught them to work for themselves and for others, and have given them some idea of the dignity of service and of what it means to have some of the elements of citizenship. I hope, therefore, that the answer of the noble Earl may be favourable, and that the threatened action of the Government—the sudden action, really, after what was stated last January—may not take place.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARKMy Lords, I desire to join with those who are pleading for the continuation of these centres. I am prepared to admit quite frankly that a number of them have not yet fulfilled the expectations of their promoters, and there are certainly some of these centres in London where the attendance has been disappointingly small and irregular. But these centres are still in an experimental stage, and, more than that, they are the only method which is used by the State at present to deal with an extremely grave problem. We are concerned, not with a few thousands, but literally some tens of thousands, of adolescents who are out of work, and there is nothing more discouraging than 241 to see the deterioration which follows when a lad who has left his school full of hope, believing that he is on the threshold of manhood, realises, after a year or two, that no one wants him and that there is apparently no place in which he can work. To the majority of these lads it means the life of the streets. But in these days of overcrowding it is a point of honour with the older lads to remain as long as possible, until late at night, outside their houses—the two rooms, or the one room, in which they live—so as to leave their accommodation for their mother and the children. They spend their time at the street corners, sometimes gambling, and looking out for any kind of excitement; and, as time goes on, they gradually become demoralised. The stronger of them become filled with a spirit of revolt.
There was no exaggeration by the noble Viscount who introduced this question when he said that there is a real danger of some of them turning into revolutionaries through despair I had an illustration given me the other day. One of the stronger boys, a boy of about eighteen, in one of our clubs suddenly began breaking up the furniture. He was suspended, and, after three weeks, allowed to come back again, but he adopted exactly the same course. He had to be expelled from the, club, and it was heard that he was doing the same thing at another club which he had joined. His friends then told my informant, the manager of the club, that this boy had heard some speaker say that the only thing to end unemployment and bad social conditions was to smash up everything when you had the chance, and this boy deliberately decided that he would go from club to club, remaining in the club smashing up things until he was expelled from it. As a matter of fact, I have very much more hope for that boy, who has some force of personality, than for the vast majority of these unemployed boys, who simply lose heart, and, at the age of twenty or twenty-one, become broken and disillusioned men. And I would remind the Government that it is out of this class that the hooligans are created, and that you are creating a class which in five or six years will be the class out of which mobs are formed, consisting of men who have everything to gain and nothing to lose through riot and disorder.
242 These centres are the only method at present of dealing with unemployed boys. I am not asking the Government to continue the centres exactly as they are at the present time. They need many reforms, and they need to be made more attractive. I do not wish to go into details now, but what I would press upon the Department concerned is the necessity of postponing this decision and holding a conference with some of those who are actively and practically concerned in this kind of adolescent work in order to see whether the work of these clubs, as the result of this conference, cannot be improved. I am sure it will be a retrograde and disappointing policy to close these centres. It will not be an economical policy, for the little we may save now will be more than counterbalanced by the measures which, later on, the State will have to take to provide for those who have joined the ranks of the unemployable, and who, if they had only been assisted over this difficult time, might have made useful and self-supporting citizens.
THK EARL OF SHAFTESBURYMy Lords, the noble Viscount is correct in his surmise that His Majesty's Government do not intend to continue these grants to the juvenile employment centres after June 30 next, and, in the ease of those which have been more recently established, after July 21. That is the intention of the Government at the present moment. The position is briefly as follows. These centres were set up after the Armistice to cope with the sudden and unexpected crisis of unemployment. The whole cost was then borne by the Government. Subsequently, the grant was reduced fifty per cent., which was the normal grant to the local education authorities. It is as the result of that that most, if not all, of these centres were then closed down.
When the present Government came into office the question of the revival of these centres was again considered, and it was decided to give a, grant of seventy-five per cent. towards the cost, the other twenty-five per cent. being paid by the local education authorities, and an invitation was sent out by the Ministry of Labour to all these authorities to ask them to co-operate with the Ministry in setting up these centres upon that basis.
243 The scheme was limited to three months; at any rate, it was not to be carried on after May 31 of this year. That was extended later on to the date that I have mentioned—June 30—and, in the case of the more recently established centres, July 21. The total amount of the grant payable under the arrangement will be considerable. The aim was to make these places curriculum centres for the teaching of something practical wherever possible, but, of course, there was no Intention at any time of leaching any definite trade.
I think the noble Viscount was perfectly right in stating that these centres have been admittedly successful in preventing the moral and physical deterioration of these young people during their long period of unemployment and as such, of course, these centres are undoubtedly deserving of sympathetic treatment. But the decision to bring the grant to an end on June 30 has been arrived at partly because the original scheme was not to continue for more than three months if it was extended—it was really set up to deal with the later winter and the early spring months—and partly because it was thought there would be no real need, or at any rate no considerable need, for these centres during the summer months. It is surely, therefore, an open question whether it is either economical or useful to maintain these centres if the attendance is small, especially as that attendance may possibly be materially reduced during the summer months. There is something to be said, I know, for the manner in which these young people can be usefully employed during the summer. It is not entirely a matter of study, although I understand that a certain amount of study is required of those attending the centres. On the question of study, if the noble-Viscount will recall to mind that period of his life when he was completing his education he will remember, as I do and as I am sure other noble Lords do, that any sort of study was a real mental and physical difficulty during the hot weather.
At any rate it is for the reasons I have given and, as the noble Viscount surmised, because of the pressing need for economy in national expenditure at the present time—a need which calls for the very careful watching of these and other grants—that it was decided that these grants could not be continued after the time that was designated. But my right hon. friend the Minister of Labour has stated 244 in another place that he has set on foot inquiries to obtain full information as to the utility of these centres, and it is not altogether inconceivable that the information he will obtain may induce His Majesty's Government to give the matter further consideration. Personally, I hope that the result of these inquiries will justify the continuance of such a grant to these centres as will have the effect of keeping them open. But the noble Viscount will understand that I am not in a position to-day to say more than that the decision is that these grants cannot be continued for the reasons I have stated. I certainly shall not fail to represent to my right hon. friend the forcible and very clear ar[...] ments which have been brought forward by the noble Viscount, the noble Lord, Lord Askwith, and the right rev. Prelate in favour of these centres, and I hope that the Minister of Labour and His Majesty's Government, in consequence, will, perhaps, be able to give the matter further consideration.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, on behalf of those who are interested in this matter I should like to express the gratitude they feel to the Government for the hope which is held out that these centres will not be closed, and that it is quite possible that, as the result of the inquiry which is proceeding, there may be a decision to keep some of them open and to arrange for their being adequately subsidised so as to enable the work to go forward. In matters of this kind where an experiment is being tried not only in the Metropolis but in other large centres in England and Scotland, there is a great variety of experience as to the success or failure that is attained. The value of the centre depends on many things. It depends on the sort of person who is in charge. It depends on the nature of the employment, or recreation, or teaching that is offered, and it depends to some extent on the tone and character of the neighbourhood in which those live who take advantage of the unemployment centres, and the conditions under which they live, which may be either mischievous or helpful.
But there can be no doubt of the fact that dangers have arisen in the past from the absence of some such opportunity for those who are of the age with which we 245 are specially concerned to-night. Those dangers are very real, and I should like, with all the earnestness I can command, to press upon His Majesty's Government the importance and the need, in the inquiry which is now being made, for taking counsel both in London and the provinces with those whose experience of the matter is the best. It is well worth while to inquire into the necessity for the continuance of these centres which are doing great and magnificent work. And I earnestly hope that the ray of hope which has been given us to-night as to the possibility of a reconsideration of the matter, may grow and intensify, and that at a later date we shall hear that the centres which it is now proposed to close are still in active operation and are doing an immense amount of good.