CHAPTER 17: A NEW START The first annual report To pave the way for the new regulations,

the boards first annual report was published at the end of June 1936. At last, the board had an opportunity to defend itself publicly, and it made the most of it. The report ran to over 300 pages, 200 of which consisted of reports by the district officers. An introductory chapter, of which Hallsworth and Markham were the principal authors, expounded the principles of the 1934 regulations, the reasons why they had failed to produce the expected additional expenditure, and the deplorable situation created by the standstill. The district officers reports were in a standard form, with sections on the use of discretion, co-operation with other local services and the good relations established with applicants despite initial suspicion and hostility. Each district report ended with an account of the standstill and the indefensible local variations and unreasonable payments perpetuated by it. The message was clear: the standstill must be brought to an end soon, the board having shown by its actions that it could be trusted to administer assistance to the unemployed sensitively and humanely on the basis of its own regulations. The report was generally well received, though some found the boards unrepentant attitude distasteful and its attempt to portray itself as the embodiment of virtue less than convincing. In a Commons debate on 22 June, Lawson complained that the district officers reports had been edited to give an impression of gross maladministration on the part of the local authorities previous to this virtuous board coming into existence. Aneurin Bevan dismissed the report as a political manifesto, written by the chairman as an attack on the House of Commons for having turned down his Regulations. Graham White commented that, to find what was of importance in the report, one must dismiss from ones mind the vision of a company of guardian angels descending upon the distressed areas to remove in their beneficence the ills to which mankind is subject. Even a solitary backbench defender of the board and its report had to admit that it was inevitably rather highly coloured.
1

For the historian, the report is a valuable factual record of the creation and administration of a new national service. Although much is omitted, what is included, at least in the seven factual chapters preceding the district officers reports, can be accepted as an accurate account within the limits of the available information - an important qualification, since there is no way of measuring the accuracy of the boards statistics. At the time of its publication, however, the reports factual content was less important than its political message. The debate on the regulations The draft regulations were published on 9 July 1936, five days earlier than expected. Chamberlain wrote to his sister Ida on 4 July:
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Now we have in front of us the U.A.B. regulations on which I expect there will be some rowdy scenes. But once we get it through Parliament it should go pretty smoothly in the country for there will be many more increases than decreases and the Board will go slow except in the worst cases. But the largest cuts will naturally be in the worst places and the Communists may try to stage some disorder in South Wales. I hear very bad accounts of the corruption nepotism and blackmail which is going on there.
2

A week later he wrote: The U.A.B. regulations have had a very good press and I think it is evident that the Labour Party are bothered to find any really vulnerable spot. I have no doubt that it will work out all right in practice.
3

With the regulations, a lengthy explanatory memorandum by the board and another by the minister were laid before parliament. An appendix to the latter set out the context in which the new regulations were to be launched: a dramatic improvement in the employment situation and substantial increases in the average amounts paid to the unemployed. From a weekly average of 988,000 transitional payments in 1932-33 and 761,000 transitional or unemployment assistance payments in 1934-35, the number had fallen to 620,000. The average weekly payment had been 19s. at the start of the transitional payments scheme (from November 1931 to March 1932) and had risen to 23s.7d. in June 1936. This was due in part to the effect on transitional payments of the restoration of the pre-1931 insurance benefit rates in July 1934, but since then the average payment had risen by nearly 10 per cent through the combined effects of the boards regulations and the standstill.
4

The long-term effect of the new regulations was estimated to be a further increase of about 750,000 in the cost of unemployment assistance, which in June 1936 was running at an annual rate of 38 million. The immediate increase would be greater, since the improvements would all take effect from the start, benefiting more than 200,000 applicants, while cuts resulting from the liquidation of the standstill would be gradual. Only about 60,000 young single persons and others receiving grossly excessive allowances stood to lose in the first four or five months. By the time liquidation was complete, in the summer of 1938, most existing applicants would have returned to work, and the number of actual reductions over the whole period was expected to be substantially less than the 200,000 who would benefit immediately.
5

Three days were allocated for the Commons debate on the regulations July 21-23. In the event the second and third days were merged by an all-night sitting. The estimates of rising expenditure, the prospect of large numbers of applicants being better off under the new regulations and the undeniable efforts being made to liquidate the standstill with the minimum of hardship all made it difficult for the opposition to mount
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a convincing attack. After a lengthy exposition by Brown of the benefits to be conferred on the unemployed by the new regulations, the debate concentrated on the evils of the household means test rather than on the details of the regulations. Some of the most effective criticism came from a supporter of the government. Joseph (later Lord) Maclay, a young Scottish Liberal MP, announced his intention of voting against the regulations because they perpetuated the household means test. He described the plight of middle aged unemployed men in his constituency, Paisley, dependent sometimes for years on end on the earnings of their daughters working in the mills: I admit readily ... that my experience has shown that the conditions have not broken up a great many homes. That is to the credit of the families. But these conditions have produced constant, long-felt irritation and friction in some cases ... humiliation on the part of fathers, and also a tendency to remove parental control, which, whether you like it or not, usually lies with the person who has the cash.
6

The board got little credit for its attempts to mitigate the effects of the means test by allowing fathers a small sum as dignity money. Dingle Foot pointed out that, according to the boards memorandum, such payments would be made only where the applicant was an elderly man with a long industrial record, whose sons had already supported him for a long time out of wages which do not leave a large margin for their own lives, and even then only in appropriate cases. The Labour exleader George Lansbury spoke feelingly on the same subject:
7

I am a very old man as years go, and when I heard of the dignity money in the case of old men, it made my gorge rise. Fancy sixpence a week to save an old man from having to go to his children! I would eat dirt before I would take sixpence or submit to anything of that kind ...
8

In defence of the means test, both Simon and Muirhead stressed that all but the closest blood relatives - and even some of them, such as married sons - would either be classed as boarders or, if treated as members of the household, would not be expected to contribute more than if they had been boarders.
9

The Scottish ministers were at pains to assure the House that Scotland had nothing to fear. The Lord Advocate, T M Cooper, described how they had checked and tested these Regulations by every possible method we could devise with reference to the conditions in all parts of Scotland, industrial and rural; he was absolutely satisfied that they would work in Scotland adequately and efficiently.
10

The closing stages of the debate were enlivened by the suspension of the sitting and the expulsion of three Clydesiders, Buchanan, Stephen and McGovern, in circumstances which were reported more fully in the press than in the columns of Hansard:

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Mr Buchanan was immediately reinforced by Mr Campbell Stephen, who, working himself up into a well-simulated frenzy of indignation, suddenly burst into a torrent of abuse against the occupants of the Government Front Bench. You crowd of robbers and murderers of the working classes, he yelled, sweeping an accusatory hand along the whole row of Ministers. You dirty contemptible little rat, he flung at the Minister of Labour, adding, as Labour members encouraged him to go on, why should we listen to this lawyer (pointing to Sir John Simon). Hes talking to us with his tongue in his cheek. Hes deliberately lying - a lying scoundrel of a lawyer.
11

The debate closed six hours later. Tom Jones recorded in his diary: Noisy proceedings throughout and at 6 oclock 3 Glasgow members expelled. But no real kick in the Opposition, and the Glasgow rebellion too obviously staged to be convincing. Muirhead replied for the Government showing admirable temper in face of constant interruption.
12

The new regulations had passed the not too exacting test of parliamentary scrutiny without much difficulty. Now it was up to the board to prove that they were workable. Appointing the advisory committees The new regulations were to come into force on 16 November 1936 and the long-delayed second appointed day, when the board would take over the relief of unemployed people outside the scope of the transitional payments scheme, was to be 1 April 1937. The 18 months allowed for the transition from the standstill to the full application of the regulations would expire in May 1938. In deciding the method and speed of the transition, the board was required to take into account the recommendations of the local advisory committees, which were also to have specific duties in relation to the rent rules and the treatment of applicants in rural areas. The appointment of the advisory committees, therefore, could no longer be deferred. In June 1935, following the proposal in the May memorandum for district advisory committees with area sub-committees, Brown had agreed in principle to the appointment of area committees only, provided that no actual appointments were made before October. By then, with the new emphasis on localism, it seemed likely that the committees would have a significant role in matters of policy, and the possibility of a smaller number of committees covering larger areas was again considered, but Rushcliffe feared that they could become a political platform for members of local authorities and the majority of the board agreed that small area committees would be safer, especially if constituted at an
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early date and given an opportunity of being educated in the principles of the Boards administration by having to deal with the day-to-day contacts. Arrangements were made, therefore, to set up 126 committees, each covering one or more of the boards administrative areas. The appointment of members proceeded through the first half of 1936 and, by the time the regulations received parliamentary approval, the committees were more or less ready to start work.
13 14

The members were selected from two sources: the Ministry of Labours local employment committees, comprising employers and workpeoples representatives, and lists submitted by local authorities. Finding suitable people to help the Board in its dirty work (as Graham White put it) was not always easy. It was particularly important that the committee chairmen should be respected and trusted in the locality. Hallsworth and Reynard both expressed misgivings as to the suitability of some of the people appointed as chairmen, and Hancock admitted that in some areas there was considerable difficulty in finding the right people. He was particularly worried about the nominations from Labour authorities such as Sheffield, Rotherham, Barnsley, Hull, Durham and Glamorgan, which included party leaders supported in some cases by a phalanx of Labour Councillors. Some district officers tried to redress the balance by nominating opposition leaders. I should prefer, Hancock wrote, to seek the balancing element in persons of standing not so prominently associated with politics, even if this meant that the case for moderation may sometimes go by default. The board endorsed this policy but, as late as March 1938, the district officer for Cardiff was complaining of the difficulty of finding suitable committee members and commenting adversely on the personal qualifications and reliability of existing members. Attendance could also be a problem: some of the South Wales committee meetings were at first reported to have been thinly attended, due to illness and domestic circumstances rather than to a boycott by opponents of the means test. In general, however, the board seems to have got what it wanted: advisory committees which could be relied upon to make acceptable recommendations and did not try to usurp the boards authority.
15 16 17 18 19 20

In addition to the committee members, panels of persons nominated by the Local Employment Committees were appointed, to be available to serve on sub-committees when required. The main purpose for which they were used was the interviewing of applicants under 30 which commenced at the end of 1937. Liquidation - a cautious start This time, Millett was to write three years later, no concerted protests greeted the execution of the assistance regulations. The Government and the Unemployment Assistance Board had learned some lessons. That statement would have surprised the thousands who gathered in Hyde Park on 8 November 1936 to greet the National Protest March of unemployed men from all parts of the country. Nevertheless it is true that November 1936 was in no way a repetition
21

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of January 1935. The combined efforts of the board, the minister and the cabinet had ensured that the immediate effect of the new regulations was to increase rather than reduce the incomes of the unemployed and that many of those who stood to lose would have left the unemployed register before the reductions could take effect. The board was anxious to commence liquidation of the standstill, in accordance with the advisory committees recommendations, as soon as possible. Before the committees could make comprehensive recommendations, however, they needed a detailed picture of the expected impact of the regulations in their area. This could not be provided until the allowances had been reassessed under the regulations, a process which would have to be spread over several weeks and could not start until the committees had made recommendations on the treatment of high and low rents. The first stage of liquidation, therefore, was confined to small categories of cases in which the allowances payable under the standstill were so anomalous that reductions must be made as soon as possible. Consultation with the advisory committees at this stage was largely a formality: the board circulated a memorandum setting out its own views and invited the committees to endorse them, which they duly did. The memorandum covered two types of cases in particular. The first and more numerous consisted of some 5,000 applicants whose weekly earnings from casual part-time work were more than enough to meet their needs. The boards 1936 annual report quoted examples of single men earning over 5 for four days work as dock labourers on Merseyside and receiving a standstill allowance for the rest of the week. It was proposed that initially, in such cases, earnings over 25s. should be deducted from the weekly allowance - generous treatment compared with the regulations, under which at most 8s. of an applicants earnings could be disregarded.
22 23 24

The second, much smaller, category selected for early action were those where the household included an earning member and the allowance was at least 15s.-20s. above the amount payable under the regulations. It was left to the committees to advise on the precise limit above which action should be taken and the stages by which allowances should be reduced. The board assured the Ministry of Labour that cuts under this head would be kept down to about 1,000 in the first month.
25

This initial stage was intended to start as soon as possible after the introduction of the regulations on 16 November, but the board was forced to reconsider its plans by a report in the News Chronicle on 3 November that no cuts were to be made before Christmas, which was followed by recommendations to that effect by a number of local advisory committees. It was decided, therefore, that during December applicants should receive four instead of two weeks notice of any cuts. By Christmas, about 4,500 applicants with earnings of their own had received notice of reductions, while the number of cuts notified in household resources cases was less than 500 at the end of January. The cuts actually made in this first phase of liquidation seem to have
27 28

26

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been fewer still: only 394 by the end of January and not more than 3,000 in all according to the boards annual report. Presumably many of those threatened with cuts either found full-time work or decided to manage on their own or their families resources.
29 30

Liquidation - the main task After this cautious start, the board turned to the major task of bringing all, or nearly all, weekly payments in line with the regulations. Reassessment of existing cases in November-December 1936 showed that the regulations were, on the whole, as beneficial as the board had predicted. Out of about 619,000 cases, about 230,000 were due for increases, 209,000 were unchanged and 180,000 were assessed at less than the standstill figure. As expected, these 180,000 were concentrated in Scotland and Wales, where they were 39 per cent of all cases compared with 24 per cent in England. In Scotland, however, most of the potential cuts were relatively small, while in Wales, where the main problem was the failure to take household earnings into account, nearly half were over 5s. a week. The number of applicants facing cuts in the first four or five months single persons under 25 and others with excess payments of more than 10s. a week - was considerably smaller than expected: about 24,000 under-25s and 12,500 others, a total of 36,500 compared with the published estimate of 60,000. A large part of the difference was due to the estimate being based on the situation in mid-1935; since then the number of allowances had fallen from over 700,000 to about 580,000.
31

By February 1937, about 165,000 applicants were still benefiting from the standstill. Another 12,000 were to be added when the transfer from public assistance to unemployment assistance took place on 1 April, the second appointed day. But the total included some 25,000 single applicants over 55 living in lodgings and with no other resources, whose allowances the board had undertaken not to disturb (they were getting, at most, an extra 2s. a week) and some 10,000 between 25 and 55 who would retain their existing allowances under the boards discretionary power to vary the 15s. single persons rate. The number of potential reductions remaining, therefore, was around 140,000.
32

In April 1937 the advisory committees were asked to consider how these reductions should be made. This time, the board decided that the committees should be given a wide latitude in the choice of both methods and timing. Some degree of diversity was, indeed, essential if liquidation was to be seen to have been carried out in association with local opinion. The memorandum circulated to the committees did, however, suggest a rough order of priorities. A distinction was drawn between applicants living in households, where the income of the whole family would be affected, and single people in lodgings. Among the latter, early action was suggested for the small group aged under 25 and others with resources of their own. The committees were asked to defer consideration of other lodgers under 55 pending a review of these
33

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cases by the boards officers. For household cases, it was suggested that the excess payments should be reduced by stages.
34

By the end of May, recommendations, nearly all unanimous, had been received from 95 of the 126 committees. The timetables varied considerably, as the boards annual report explained: Some Committees with a very small problem e.g. for Birmingham and parts of the Midlands, for areas on the outskirts of Greater London and for rural parts of East Anglia and northern Scotland, recommended that the whole matter should be left to the discretion of officers and that the work should be completed during the summer. Others with a more substantial problem e.g. Sheffield and south Yorkshire, the Tyneside, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton, St. Helens and Merseyside, recommended that the work should be substantially completed by the autumn but at the same time laid down the general lines of the method to be followed. Others again with very substantial numbers e.g. South Wales, Nottingham, Sunderland, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Dundee, recommended that the process of adjustment should be spread over the whole or the greater part of the period allowed under the Regulations (till May, 1938). Some of these, in turn, e.g., Hull, Glasgow, recommended that the work should be substantially completed before the winter, small excesses of 2s.6d. or so being left untouched during the winter.
35

In some areas such as Sheffield, the pace of adjustment was faster than the board had envisaged, but it was decided that the safest course was to accept the recommendations and keep an eye on areas where some modification might prove necessary. Differences between the recommendations for neighbouring areas were generally considered defensible, except in Glasgow where differences in the treatment of young people in lodgings in different parts of the city had to be ironed out.
36

Despite the boards acceptance of the principle of assimilation of new and old cases during the liquidation period, the advisory committees were invited to consider whether all new cases of single persons in lodgings should be assessed in accordance with the regulations and most of them recommended this policy. It was to be a major factor in the rapid reduction in the number of excess allowances in the months that followed.
37

At the beginning of June 1937, reductions were being made at the rate of over 1,000 per week. By the end of September, only about 50,000 applicants were still receiving excess payments - a reduction of some 90,000 compared with the situation in the spring - and by the end of the year the number had fallen to about 30,000. Yet the number of actual cuts made, up to September, was only about 30,000. The combination of a fall in the number of unemployed and the replacement of older applicants by single people assessed under the new regulations had a far greater effect than the cuts. Of the 30,000 excess payments remaining to be liquidated, 25,000 were of 4s. a week or less, including
38 39

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over 10,000 living in lodgings with excess payments of not more than 2s. By the deadline of 15 May 1938, the board reported, the process of assimilation was complete.
40

In all, therefore, probably not more than 50,000 applicants suffered cuts, about a quarter of the number that would have resulted from bringing the new regulations into force without a period of transition. Even 50,000 was a substantial number, but in all areas there were far more increases than reductions. In Glasgow I district, for example, where the number of cuts was expected to be above average, 9,600 applicants got increases whereas only 311 were receiving reduced allowances in June 1937 and only 1,346 in September. The cases likely to cause most resentment were those where applicants faced a succession of cuts over a period of up to a year. The board decided in July 1937 that they should be invited for an interview so that the procedure, including the right of appeal, could be explained and any special circumstances brought to light.
41 42 43

These facts help to explain why the liquidation of the standstill proceeded with relatively little opposition. It is also true that by 1936 protests against the means test were running out of steam. October and November 1936 saw both the Jarrow Crusade and the arrival in London of a national hunger march organised by the National Unemployed Workers Movement; but the Jarrow march was about industry and jobs rather than unemployment relief, and although the hunger march was a protest against the means test and the UABs new regulations, it was the last of its kind and achieved little, despite the claims of its organisers which have sometimes been accepted uncritically by historians. Some 1500 hunger marchers, of both sexes, in six contingents from different parts of the country, reached London on 8 November, eight days before the regulations came into force. They were greeted in Hyde Park, according to the Daily Herald, by a crowd of 250,000 people. The police put the number at about 12,000. On 12 November, after the House of Commons had rejected a demand that the marchers should be allowed to appear at the Bar and explain their grievances, Ernest Brown agreed to receive a deputation of MPs accompanied by some of the marchers. At the end of this meeting, according to the NUWM leader Wal Hannington, Brown
44

announced that the new U.A.B. scales, due to come into operation four days later, would again be suspended, for a period of two months for reassessment, that no cuts in the scales would then be immediately operated, and that there would be a spread-over system covering 18 months, during which the Government would only gradually apply the new scales, and that the full scales would not therefore be in operation until July 1938. Further, in no case would there be any re-assessment or cut in the scale of any applicant without a two weeks notice after re-assessment.
45

In fact, the 18 months spread-over, far from being a new concession, was provided for in the regulations, while the intention of giving two weeks notice of cuts had been announced in July in the white paper on
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the regulations. The one new announcement Brown had made, if Hanningtons account is accurate, was that the cuts would be suspended for two months. But is Hanningtons account accurate? The decision by the boards liquidation sub-committee to recommend deferment of the initial cuts until the second week of January was made on 19 November, a week after the marchers met Brown. There is nothing in the note of the sub-committees discussion to suggest that they were aware of Browns announcement, and it is unlikely that Brown would have made such an announcement without the boards knowledge and approval. Nor was there any mention of such a concession either in the official press release issued on 12 November or in The Times report of the reaction of members of the deputation after the meeting. A more probable explanation is that Hannington, whose account was not published until 1940, exaggerated the results of the meeting with Brown so that he could claim another striking victory for mass action led by the National Unemployed Workers Movement.
46 47

The cuts in South Wales Whatever might be said of the rest of the country, opposition to the regulations in South Wales could not be dismissed as a communistinspired agitation. The size of the cuts faced by many unemployed people, combined with the tradition of militant protest, posed a potentially dangerous situation. Eady wrote to the boards Welsh member, Tom Jones, in June 1936 about the inevitability of a row and demonstrations in South Wales: It is a miserable business that one of the certain effects of the new Regulations is to take money out of South Wales. It is true that this is only a tardy act of equity to other parts of Great Britain, but it is unfortunate that that act is timed when South Wales is suffering badly as compared with the rest of the country, and when it is quite certain that popular opinion will not understand why the Government and the Board should have chosen this moment to hit the South Wales coalfields. To offset the propaganda and the agitation, he suggested that the board could make more generous use of the power to make exceptional needs payments for clothing and household goods: Beginning it fairly soon and as part of our normal procedure, rather than as a propaganda stunt, we could legitimately give a grant for household equipment to several thousands of households in the next 3 or 4 months. To the extent that we do give it presumably we reduce the numbers of persons who take part in the subsequent riots! The total expenditure would of course be regarded as relatively small, though the number of households whom we would really have helped would be appreciable. There is no doubt, from the letters that we are getting, that where we do make these grants we really do bring a little bit of life into the household we help.
48

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The suggestion was not pursued immediately but, as we shall see, a timely opportunity of putting it into effect presented itself a few months later when large numbers of school children in the county of Glamorgan were found to be in need of footwear. Violet Markham, too, expressed her concern in a letter to Jones in midAugust, after reading the Commons debate on the regulations: I confess I was a good deal moved by many of the Welsh speeches. For all the exaggerations there was a note of indignation and pain which struck home. It is intolerable that we are going to take purchasing power out of that unhappy country and put nothing in its place.
49

About the same time, a correspondent from South Wales wrote to Jones: ... I am deeply concerned with the agitation that is gathering strength, especially in the industrial areas against the new regulations of the U.A.B. The Rhondda is seething, and the agitators are recruiting prominent laymen and ministers into their ranks. The ministers are even taking advantage of their pulpits to encourage the agitation - a typical R.C. practice, and the usually cautious and reliable leaders are following the course of least resistance ... The anthracite area, from Brynammon to Burry Port is being whipped into action and the reins are in the hands of Horners disciples and supporters.
50

In the four months between publication and implementation of the regulations, the Ministry of Labour received 220 resolutions protesting against them from local authorities and other organisations in South Wales. Yet the threatened explosion did not occur. Once the regulations were in operation, it was not easy to present them as a vicious attack on the unemployed. At a meeting of the board in June 1937, Hancock reported that local Councils of Action were doing their best to stir up resentment: but the process of liquidation in South Wales would be so gradual that these activities might be expected to exhaust themselves. The fact was that, even in South Wales, the immediate effect of the regulations was to put more money into the pockets of the unemployed. The cuts that followed, unlike those resulting from the boards original regulations, were both gradual and much less numerous than had been feared, and the reduced allowances could be defended as a reasonably liberal interpretation of the principle of the household means test.
51 52

The board and the ministry The relatively trouble-free introduction of the new regulations marked an important stage in the relationship between the board and the Ministry of Labour. This is, therefore, a convenient point at which to

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survey the development of that relationship from the low point it had reached at the beginning of the standstill. With the departure from the scene of Stanley and Hudson, diplomatic relations between chairman and minister had been restored, though relations between their officials remained strained. One thing was abundantly clear: the drafting of new regulations could not be undertaken by the board in isolation, despite its statutory responsibility. When, on 22 May 1935, Hudson informed the House of Commons that the board had submitted a report to the Ministry (the May memorandum) which discussed in some detail the lines along which the regulations should be amended, the clear implication was that this time, before submitting a formal draft, the board would ensure that it was acceptable to the minister. The form of words used in the October 1935 election manifesto implied, equally, that neither the timing nor the content of the regulations was to be left to the independent judgement of the board. Five months later, replying to a question about the means test, the parliamentary secretary, Muirhead, told the House that Brown had been in almost continuous communication with the board on this and other subjects for many months past - a fact confirmed by the boards first annual report, which admitted that since the standstill it had been in constant touch with Stanley and Brown as to the recommendations it should make to bring the standstill to an end.
53 54 55

Replying to another question on 26 May 1936, the Prime Minister, Baldwin, explained that the government had felt it necessary to make a very exhaustive examination of the possible effects of any changes. The variety of conditions in different parts of the country had made this examination much more protracted than expected. But he refused to say whether the delay was due to the boards difficulties in drafting the regulations or the cabinets in accepting them. Finally, on 30 June, following Browns announcement that the regulations were to be laid on 14 July, the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, admitted that it had taken considerable time for the Government to reach the conclusions that they are ready to present to the House. Attlee then asked why, if the Government have now come to a decision, we have to wait until 14th July for the Regulations; to which Simon replied that, as far as he knew, neither the draft regulations nor the accompanying white paper was yet ready. This could only mean that the board and the government had spent the past fourteen months reaching agreement on the content of the regulations without the board formally submitting a draft, and thus without the need to reveal to parliament any differences of opinion between them. Two days later, when asked if he would inform the House of the differences that had arisen between him and the board, Brown replied I do not know of any points of difference to be reported to the House.
56 57 58

The Local Government Chronicle summed up the situation in a wellinformed comment: The Board has obviously been in close consultation with the Ministry. After long consultations it produced a set of draft
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proposals - not Regulations - which were submitted to the Cabinet by the Minister and considered by the Cabinet at no less than three sittings. The Cabinet having agreed (or explained how far it disagreed, for there is no information on this point), the Board has proceeded to draft Regulations. It then submitted them formally to the Minister. So the whole idea of the Board has been completely frustrated in practice. The Regulations have not been taken out of politics at all. The only shred of independence which remains is that the Minister will not be responsible for the actual day to day administration of the Board, so that he cannot be called upon to defend individual decisions.
59

With the new regulations safely launched, however, day to day administration was to be the boards main concern; and, as an autonomous body, it wanted the freedom to make and implement its own administrative decisions without political interference. But where did politics end and administration begin? Much of the detail of the boards policies was promulgated in the form of administrative instructions, which were not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, but the policies embodied in them could be debated in parliament. The minister, therefore, had a legitimate interest in the boards administration, going far beyond his formal responsibility for the regulations. While it was natural for the board to regard itself as the proper source of advice to the minister on unemployment assistance matters, the officials of the ministry never took that view. They had been actively involved in the battles over the drafting of the boards first regulations. During the standstill and the negotiations on the new regulations, their position became still more firmly entrenched. In the light of experience, it was easy to argue that the board could not be trusted to conduct its affairs in a way that would not cause embarrassment to the minister and the government. It followed that the minister must be protected, and it was the job of his officials at the ministry to protect him by keeping a close watch on the boards actions and intentions. The ministrys role in relation to the boards instructions had been discussed by Phillips and Eady in January 1935, when it was already clear that a political storm was about to break over the regulations. A procedure was established which came near to giving the ministrys officials a power of veto. It was set out in peremptory terms in a letter from Phillips to Eady: In principle, all general instructions as to which there seems any possibility of criticism in Parliament, are to be shown to the Ministry before they are submitted to the Board and this will apply also to particular instructions or decisions where this possibility arises. The working rule would be to consult the Ministry upon all draft instructions addressed to Area Officers. ...

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I assume that you will put this procedure into operation at once. When it has had a period of trial we can see whether it needs any alteration.
60

Eady was profoundly unhappy with this arrangement, as he explained in a note to Rushcliffe and Strohmenger on 4 March 1935, the day before Chamberlains tea party to restore diplomatic relations between Stanley and the board: It was not intended that the Minister would have to defend in Parliament each action of the Board in the administration of the Regulations, or each decision, still less that he should have to concur in each action before it was taken. ... the Minister after making the Regulations must trust the Board to administer them properly, and must allow the Board to work out their own administrative policy and methods without his intervention. ... The Minister by saying that he must be in a position to defend the action of the Board in Parliament, and must therefore see important instructions of the Board before they are issued is mistaking his position in relation to the Boards statutory duties. Under his instruction and on his behalf, the officers of the Ministry are claiming to have referred to them a great deal of work which is solely the statutory responsibility of the Board. This process, unless it is stopped at once, can only lead to the subordination of the Board to the Minister and his department on all points, with the destruction of the whole utility of the Board. The situation cannot be dealt with entirely at the official levels, for it is the Minister who has got the position wrong.
61

Eady decided not to circulate this note to other members of the board, hoping that in discussion with Brown and his officials we shall get things gradually back onto the right lines. But that hope was not fulfilled. The unemployment assistance division of the ministry, reduced in size at the end of 1934, was expanded again in the early months of 1935, despite Treasury doubts about what seemed to be a duplication of the boards work.
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The relationship between the ministry and the board called for a degree of diplomacy on both sides which was at times conspicuously absent. A typical incident occurred in March 1936. A memorandum by the board in August 1935 had stated that it would be necessary to have work centres in operation in some of the large cities by the second appointed day as a precaution against the attraction of large numbers of persons who had hitherto managed without recourse to public funds. As the negotiations on the termination of the standstill dragged on, Phillips could not resist reminding Eady of this statement. Markham reported to Jones:
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There was an ugly incident at the Board when Eady told us there had been one of these bobbery messages from the M. of L. to say that as we had stated in a Memorandum that we could not have the Second Appointed Day without work centres, and as work
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centres were politically impossible, the Board couldnt have a Second Appointed Day.
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Eady was obliged to write back with a retraction of the boards statement.
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The ministry official on whom the boards resentment focussed was J S Nicholson, head of the unemployment insurance department, of which the unemployment assistance division was a part. The advice that the minister received on UAB matters was Nicholsons, not Eadys. So long as the standstill continued, however, Eady seems to have accepted this as inevitable. After a conversation with Eady in April 1936, Hallsworth wrote to Markham: A point I think we have insufficiently realised is that since the Standstill is an Act, and not part of the Regulations, it is the Minister and not the Board who is responsible for its administration. Constitutionally therefore he must answer questions on its administration in the House, and therefore technically is entitled to a department in the M. of L. to advise him. This Eady told me on Friday had been his main difficulty in dealing with the Nicholson situation. ... But once the Regulations are passed with assimilation it is the Board and not the Minister who is responsible for their administration, and we shall once more be masters of our own house, even though the house has a wing we would rather have been without.
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As an explanation of the constitutional position, this is unconvincing. Unemployment assistance as a whole, not just the standstill, rested on an act of parliament. What was different about the standstill was that it had been imposed on an unwilling board as an act of political expediency. The difference was psychological rather than constitutional. The effect of the 1936 regulations, despite the compromises and retreats preceding their adoption, was to restore the boards selfconfidence, reflected in Hallsworths term masters of our own house. In February 1938, when the staffing requirements of the ministrys unemployment assistance division were again under scrutiny, the head of the division reported that its work not only showed no sign of decreasing but had actually increased; it had more parliamentary questions and ministerial correspondence to deal with than any other division of the ministry. Nevertheless, the relationship between board and ministry was gradually changing. There was less interference from the ministry, and the boards officials were able to resolve day-to-day policy issues without constant fear of political repercussions. Rushcliffe, at a meeting with Brown in January 1937, questioned the need to refer all draft instructions to the ministry, and it was agreed that only those likely to raise criticism in parliament need be referred in future. The period from 1937 to the outbreak of war was one of consolidation of the boards competence and reputation, preparing it for the new tasks it was to undertake during and after the war years. By 1940 its status as an administrative body, separate from the Ministry of Labour, was
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generally accepted, and the myth of its political independence largely forgotten.

Reinventing the dole: a history of the Unemployment Assistance Board 1934-1940 by Tony Lynes is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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