Robbing the People

Socialist Norman Dodds, M.P., sat staring out of his study window at a group of workmen. They were tearing up the streets of Dartford (pop. 40,544) to replace old electrical cables, and Dodds had had numerous complaints that they were taking an unconscionable time about it. Dodds compiled a timetable:

8:00 a.m.--work began. Should have begun 7:30 a.m.

8:45 a.m.--a little digging. Two shovelfuls exhausted them.

9:30 a.m.--tea break . . .

10:15 a.m.--men rested on their shovels.

11:15 a.m.--sack of apples arrived and men left off work to eat them, lounging and talking.

1:00 p.m.--lunchtime. Men had long since disappeared.

2:00 p.m.--straggling back to work.

2:15 p.m.--trek to lavatory.

3:30 p.m.--afternoon tea break.

4:00 p.m.--back on job.

5:00 p.m.--men drifted off.

5:30 p.m.--official end of working day.

In an outraged speech to a meeting of his women constituents, Dodds snapped: "Men were absolutely wasted. I have never in my life seen men taking things as easy as that. One young man's sole purpose seemed to be watching and making tea. They are robbing the people." He dispatched an angry letter to the London Electricity Board: "I did not support nationalization for it to be abused in this way."

Foreigners had hinted it, and unreconstructed Tories had grumbled it from the upholstered safety of their clubs. But Dodds's timetable was the first to dramatize what many a Briton has long suspected--that the British workingman, lulled by the padded security of his welfare state, no longer works as hard as he might. That the charge came from a Socialist made it all the more emphatic.

The workers challenged Dodds to do a week's work on a construction gang but were turned down ("From what I've seen I should almost die of monotony"). So last week they offered him a "safe conduct" if he would meet them on a street-corner to debate his charges. Dodds went, encountered storms of abuse but not much logic. "You really ought to be in a circus and not a Labor M.P.," shouted one. "What was I doing?" demanded another. "You kept the flies off the tea," said Dodds imperturbably. Dodds refused their pleas to apologize. "You cannot talk me out of what I saw. I saw it. It was a sickening sight."

"It was time the truth was told," agreed the august London Times. And Henry Randall, chairman of the London Electricity Board, replied to Dodds's letter with hearty concurrence. "Mr. Dodds has my thanks. But are the nationalized industries the only ones in which it occurs? This kind of thing is the cause of much of our economic trouble . . . Present circumstances of full employment, while welcomed by good employer and good employe, inevitably provide opportunities for acquiring maximum pay for minimum amount of work."

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