THE TABLET, September 3rd, 1955. VOL. 206, No. 6015

Published as a Newspaper

HE TA BL fc I ' A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER & REVIEW

Pro Ecclesia Dei, Pro Regina et Patria

FOUNDED IN 1840

SEP TE MBER 3rd, 1955

NINEPENCE

The Cyprus C on fe r en ce : The Deeper Reality behind the Movement for Enosis D r . A d en a u e r ’s J ou rn ey : Prospects for German Unity. By Roland Hill Mr. D u l le s and th e M id d le East: The Future of the Holy Places. By Paul Rôdeur P a r ity o f E steem : Egalitarianism in Education. By Christopher Hollis The G row th o f P rob a t io n : The Alternative to Prison. By Sarah F. McCabe M â c on , Past and P resen t: An Academic Anniversary in Burgundy. By A. D. McLean A t th e E d in burgh F estival: I : The Drama. By George Scott-Moncrieff

II : The Music. By Peter Railing

B o o k s R e v i e w e d : The State o f France, by Herbert Liithy ; English Religious Drama o f the

Middle Ages, by Hardin Craig ; A Prospect o f the Sea, by Dylan Thomas ; Neither Will I Condemn Thee, by Franziskus M. Stratmann ; Abbé Pierre and the Rag-pickers, by Boris Simon ; Waterfront Priest, by Allen Raymond ; City Divided, by Ewan Butler ; A Woman in Berlin ; A Sign o f the Times, by Robert Kee ; Draughts in the Sun, by Richard Parker ; Home-Coming, by Jiro Osaragi ; My Several Worlds, by Pearl S. Buck ; Fools o f Choice, by Peter de Polnay ; and Every Other Sunday, by Jean Rennie Reviewed by Ronald Matthews, Alex Matheson Cain, David Ballard-Thomas, Timothy Matthews,

Uvedale Tristram, Hugh Dinwiddy, E. W. Martin and Isabel Quigly

THE FUTURE OF WORK

B EHIND the immediate balance of payments crisis, which each month’s trade figures underline, a larger and even more intractable problem is taking shape, as many unforeseen developments flow from the full employment which is now accepted as the first duty of any Government to maintain. One of these consequences is likely to become more and more marked with the growth and popularity of television ; an unwillingness to take, or keep in, any employment which involves working in shifts or in the evening and at weekends, when the best programmes are on. This week’s dispute in the north-country coal-fields turns on this question, the management being unwilling to let men work on Sunday, when double rates can be earned, who will not work on Saturday afternoon at a time-and-a-half. The hotel keepers drawing to the end of a record summer, with the prospect of a total of a million foreign visitors, have never had so much trouble in finding or keeping staff; and this, they report, is not only because of shift hours and evening work, but also because thereris a widespread reluctance to render any services of a personal or menial character, carrying unwelcome associations from past social history. The bus companies, in both the provinces and the' capital, are finding increasing difficulty in obtaining sufficient drivers and conductors, again largely because working in shifts has become unpopular. All these jobs, and the essential activity in the mines and on the farms, are always being compared with conditions now common in factories or offices with a five-day week of ordinary office hours of the 9.30-5.30 type.

As this becomes the norm, the possibilities are not very numerous which are open to employers. There is a certain amount of room for the expedient of increasing the pay ; but this, which is always the immediate suggestion from the trade union side, is only of limited application in industries like catering which are to serve the mass of the population, the real employer and ultimate consumer, with limits to what itr can afford. There are some improvements to be made, and more will come, by the provision of automatic services, the development of self-help. The age-old problem, in. which England compares so badly with the Continent, of the quality of refreshments which can be obtained in the evening on the railways, can be partially alleviated if some of the developments in America, where service has always been a problem, are introduced over here, like prepared food obtained from automatic slots and kept at the required hot or cold temperature : much less attractive than continental buffets but better than the present bleakness.

The whole question of shift-working in industry may be alleviated through automation, as more and more men are employed not in making things but in making machines which make things. But all this is some years ahead, and the immediate solution which presents itself not only to the British Government but to the_ Dominions Governments, and everywhere where full employment and trade union rigidities are leaving a whole range of necessary occupations unpopular and Unfilled, is to invite into the country foreign labour, people from countries which have not been caught up in rapid