Monday, May 17, 1943. The Memphis Belle, and its crew, complete twenty-five missions.

The crew of the Memphis Belle became the first complete United States Army Air Force, 8th Air Force B-17 crew to complete twenty-five missions.

This is a somewhat confusing story and is often inaccurately portrayed.

The first bomber and crew to complete twenty-five mission over Europe was the B-24 Hot Stuff and its crew, which did so on February 7, 1943.  Hot Stuff went on to complete thirty-one missions and was being rotated home to sell war bonds when it crashed in Iceland on May 3, 1943.

The first bomber of the 8th Air Force to complete twenty-five missions was the B-17 Hell's Angels, which achieved that on May 13.

The Memphis Belle's crew was the first complete crew.  I.e., nobody who completed that mission was s replacement.  

It's not that this isn't remarkable, the odds were very much against it.  It's just it isn't quite what is generally portrayed.

The US and UK entered into the BRUSA Agreement providing for the exchange of cryptanalysis personal between the US and the British Commonwealth forces.

Saturday May 8, 1943. The plan to defeat Japan.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan.

Count Fleet won the Preakness.

The great Western The Ox-Bow Incident premiered.  Featuring Harry Morgan and Henry Fonda, the film was partially what inspired Fonda to join the Navy.

The book by Walter Van Tilburg Clark is excellent as well.

Friday, May 7, 1943. Fall of Tunis and Bizerte.

 Tunis and Bizerte fell to the Allies

Saturday, May 1, 1943. Strikes and Terminations

480,000 coal mining members of the United Mine Workers went on strike.  President Roosevelt ordered them to return to work by 10:00 a.m. They didn't.

An executive order followed, authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to take possession of the mines, if necessary.

More on the strike here:

“You Can’t Dig Coal With Bayonets”

In case you wondered, 55,156 people are employed in the American coal mining industry today.

On the same day, Ford Motor Company fired 141 employees because of labor disputes.  Most of those fired were African Americans.

800 British troops, mostly Colonial forces, went down with the British troopship Erinpura which was sunk north of Benghazi by German aircraft.

Count Fleet won the Kentucky Derby.

Thrusday, April 29, 1943. The sinking of the McKeesport.

The SS McKeesport was sunk by a U-boat, which lead to a convoy battle that took place that, in the end, sent 47 U-boats to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Forty-seven.  That's really remarkable.

The McKeepsport has not been forgotten.

Sarah Sundin notes:

Today in World War II History—April 29, 1943: 80 Years Ago—Apr. 29, 1943: US War Labor Board demands equal pay for equal work for women in war industries, retroactive to April 5.

She also notes:  

US Civil Air Patrol is transferred from the Office of Civilian Defense to the War Department as an Army Air Force auxiliary.

Strikes spread in the Netherlands, commencing on this day, in reaction to a German decision to reclaim released Dutch POWs.  They had been paroled under conditions that they not rejoin combat, a common parole condition for centuries, but many had instead entered the resistance.

British poster urging natural gas conservation.

Wednesday, April 14, 1943. Code Breaking With Fatal Results, The Death of Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili.

The Japanese broadcast a coded message regarding a visit to the 8th fleet by Admiral Yamamoto, something that would put in place a dramatic chain of events, as the US had broken the code.

Senator Harry S. Truman appeared as a speaker in Chicago and called for the U.S. to respond directly to the Holocaust.  The rally itself was to draw attention to this cause.

Yakov Iosifovich Dzhugashvili, the eldest son of Joseph Stalin, died when he ran into an electric fence at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Oranienburg, Germany, where he was being held as a Prisoner of War.  He ran into the fence after an argument with British POWs.  

He'd never been mentally stable, and the circumstances of his death may be related to that.

Tuesday, March 9, 1943. Rommel departs. Air Force limits. De La Rocque arrested. Goebbels looks in the Stable. We Will Never Die opens. Mardi Gras.

Erwin Rommel was recalled by Hitler from North Africa and put on medical leave. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim assumed command of the Afrika Korps, and would remain in command until its surrender.  Effectively, Hitler had rescued Rommel.

Von Arnim.

Von Arnim bore a remarkable resemblance to actor Keenan Wynn, who played Col. "Bat" Guano in Dr. Strangelove.

Wynn, left.

Von Arnim would go into captivity in the UK and then later the U.S.  He would not enter the Bundesheer following its establishment, perhaps due to age, and died in 1962 at age 73.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 9, 1943: US Eighth Air Force Central Medical Establishment recommends 25-mission combat tour for bomber crewmen and 200 hours or 50 missions for fighter pilots.

Of note, making it through 25 bomber missions at the time was against the odds.  Also, I didn't know that there was a limit for fighter pilots.

De La Rocque.

French right wing political figure François de La Rocque, who had gone from accepting the French surrender and Petain's rule to being a secret opponent of it and founder of a right wing resistance movement, was arrested by the Germans. Regarded by some as a precursor to de Gaulle, he would survive the war and die in 1946 at age 60.

De La Rocque had interestingly gone from the far right into moderation prior to the war, first being part of the Croix de Feu and then being a founder of the French Social Party.  The latter party was a combination of conservative and corporatist, but it was not anti-democratic. Some credit it with giving the French middle class an alternative to fascism, thereby preventing fascism from rising in France.

German poster in Dutch, part of an effort to recruit occupied Europeans to German arms out of fear of Communism.

German propagandist Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary

The anti-Bolshevik theme is the best horse in the stable.

Goebbels' comments are something that are frighteningly relevant in our current society.  Communism was the enemy of mankind, but so was Nazism.  Indeed, they both shared the common trait of mass murder as a central element of their ethos, which gave the regimes an odd sense of being constantly imperiled by huge plots, in their view, which necessitated murder, in their view, which in turn made millions of people culpable, and therefore loyal, through guilt.  

Victory or Bolshevism was the theme of this poster, which ironically portrayed starving Germans in the manner of which recalls Holocaust victims.  After 1943 the theme of this poster was in fact becoming increasingly true, although victory was no longer possible, as the Red Army was now advancing toward the German frontier.  Germans would have recalled that being a threat during the Russo Polish War of the early 1920s, when Trotsky seriously imagined entering Germany after defeating Poland, but now it was rapidly becoming an inevitability, which the German government implicitly acknowledged through this poster.  In fact, the German government would take no action to withdraw the civilian population from Prussia, although individual German commanders sometimes did, which mean that thousands of German men were shot and tens of thousands of German women raped when the Red Army entered the country.  The final months of the war would be a combat blood bath as German soldiers often went down fighting attempting to let the civilian population get out, a situation which was brought upon them by a barbarous Nazi government.

The Nazis, right from the onset, portrayed themselves as the cultural defenders against Communism, which made many forget, and then adopt, their radical views which were not "conservative" in any real sense. After reaching an accord with the Soviets just prior to World War Two, this was downplayed, but it was ramped back up again prior to Operation Barbarossa and kept at a fever pitch through the remainder of the war.  The message to Germans was that the Nazis were the only defense of Western culture against an "alien" Communism, although Communism itself was originally a German movement.  The message was sufficient for many Germans, including high ranking ones, to put aside their doubts about Nazism on the basis that it seemed to be, based upon what they were hearing, their only alternative to Communism.

Of course, for millions of Germans, the end of the war and Germany's fighting it out past mid 1943 would bring Communism to them.

By way of contemporary analogy, millions of Americans today have been listening, and continue to, to populist propagandist who spread lies and whip up panic over their being the only alternative to "wokeism".  Tucker Carlson and his ilk portray the far populist right as the only means of combating a host of truly concerning liberal ideas.  By espousing lies, they bring those ideas closer to implementation.

We Will Never Die, a Jewish pageant featuring spectacular artwork (copyright protected) on its cover, opened on the East Coast.  It acknowledged that it was held in memory of what it then thought to be Europe's 2,000,000 then Jewish dead, showing that knowledge of the Holocaust was in fact widespread, contrary to what some will claim.

Today was Mardi Gras for 1943.  On the same day, readers of the nation's newspapers learned that the wartime ban on sliced bread had been lifted the prior day.  The ban had been to save steel needed for slicing machines.

Poster Saturday: Guard Your Freedom.

 United States Information Agency for the Philippines, circa 1952.

Wednesday, February 17, 1943. Joe DiMaggio joins the Army.

Hitler flew to Erich Von Manstein's headquarters in Zaporizhia intending to dismiss him as Von Manstein had suggested that he be appointed overall chief of staff. While there, he became engrossed with the situation facing Army Group South and did not do so, but, after two days, agreed to allow Manstein to take troops from Army Group A for an offensive aimed at Kharkov. 

The Afrika Korps won the Tunisian battle of Sidi Bou Zid.

Joe DiMaggio enlisted in the U.S. Army.  During his wartime service, he played baseball for the Seventh Air Force.  A request for a combat assignment would be refused.

Monday, February 15, 1943. Princess Elizabeth appears on the cover of Life, We Can Do It appears at Westinghouse.

Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II, appeared on the cover of Life magazine.  The black and white photograph of the young Elizabeth is a shock to see today.

The Battle of Demyansk began, with the objective of encircling German troops in a salient and relieving the front near Moscow.  It'd more or less achieve the latter, but not the former.

Sarah Sundin's blog has a number of interesting items in it:

J. Howard Miller's little seen "We Can Do It" poster.  Note the "Post Feb. 15 to Feb 28" notation on the poster.

Today in World War II History—February 15, 1943: J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It” poster, now identified with Rosie the Riveter, is first posted at Westinghouse for a two-week in-house campaign.

The poster is one of the most recognizable in history now.  Ironically, it was little known to the World War Two generation itself, and only became widely known some forty years later.  In this sense, it's much like the "Keep Calm And Carry On" British poster, which was so rare in World War Two that it's debated if it was put up at all.

The poster, which is in fact not particularly skillfully executed, was limited to 1,800 runs and 17" x 22" in side.  In its original posting, it was put up only in Westinghouse factories, and in fact the female subject in the image wears a Westinghouse Electric floor employee badge. The workers who would have seen it were engaged in making helmet liners, and the poster was part of a gentle effort, in part, from dissuading strikes.  It was part of a 42 poster series by Miller.

Miller himself may be regarded as a somewhat obscure illustrator.  He was busy during World War Two and issued other posters that had an industrial theme.

Miller's female worker was based on a photograph of Geraldine Doyle, nee Hoff or Naomi Parker, it isn't really clear which, although some claim that it's definitely Parker.  It might have been both women, and more than just the two. The poster was painted from a photograph or photographs, and not a live model.

During the war itself, the Rockwell Saturday Evening Post illustration of a stout, defiant female riveter was the accepted depiction of Rosie the Riveter.  Rockwell, with his keen eye for detail, had painted "Rosie" on her lunch box.  

The name, Rosie the Riveter, was first used in a song by that name by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, recorded by The Four Vagabonds, which came out prior to Rockwell's May 1943, illustration.  The song, in turn, had been inspired by a newspaper column about 19-year-old Rosalind P. Walter who had gone to work as a riveter in Stratford Connecticut as part of the war effort. The model for the Rockwell painting was not an industrial worker, but a telephone operator, Mary Doyle Keefe, née, perhaps ironically, Doyle, who was Rockwell's neighbor.  She actually posed for a photograph for Rockwell's photographer, rather than for Rockwell live.

Keefe, who was not yet married, didn't like the painting as Rockwell had made her image so beefy, for which he apologized.  She attended Temple University, became a dental hygienist, married and passed away in 2015 at age 92.  Rosalind P. Walter went on in later life to become quite wealthy and was a noted philanthropist, particularly supporting public television.  She died in 2020 at age 95.

J. Howard Miller lived until 2004, but remained obscure, unlike his famous poster.

It should be noted that the depiction of the women and their story itself is interesting.  Vermonter Keefe was the daughter of a logger, but was obviously from a solid middle class Catholic family, something that would not have been surprising in any fashion at the time. As noted, she was not an industrial worker herself.  Geraldine Doyle worked only very briefly as an industrial worker in 1942, quitting as she feared injuring her hands as she was a cellist.  She later married a dentist later in 1943.  They met in a bookstore.  While her association with the painting is disputed, her World War Two factory photograph is remarkably similar to the poster.  Parker was employed in a factory prior to the war and continued to be during it.

The Miller image is used for a sign on the outside of the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in California, a Federal park dedicated to the World War Two home front.  World War Two, immediately following the Great Depression, had an enormous and permeant (and probably not good, really) impact on California, so the location is well placed.

Democracy returned to Uruguay.

Friday, Febraury 12, 1943. Roosevelt addresses the nation.

World War Two U.S. poster, part of a series, which sought to portray all Allied soldiers as fighting for the same cause.  This poster depicts a Red Army sniper, although the photograph is a bit odd.  The soldier wears an Adrian French style helmet, which the Soviets did in fact use, but which they had started to replace in 1939.  Therefore, this photograph would have had to have been from very early in the war.  Additionally, the scope on his rifle is much more substantial than that typically used by the Red Army.  In truth, of course, the Red Army soldier was not fighting for freedom, but for the preservation of the Soviet Union at this point in the war. Earlier in the war, he'd fought for the reincorporation of lost regions of the Russian Empire into the USSR.  He was also fighting directly for his family and the Russian people, who were subject to German barbarism, but freedom wasn't really part of the equation. This topic would be loosely addressed by Roosevelt in his speech.

President Roosevelt address the nation on the result of the recent Casablanca Conference, in which he stated:

It is nearly two years since I attended the last dinner of our White House Correspondents' Association. A great deal of water has flowed over the dam since then.

And several people have flown over the water.

Two years ago—many months before Pearl Harbor—I spoke to you of the thought that was then uppermost in our minds— of the determination of America to become the arsenal of democracy. Almost all Americans had by that time determined to play their full part in helping to save civilization from the barbarians. Even then, we were in the midst of the historic job of production- a job which the American people have been performing with zest and skill and, above all, with success.

Tonight, as I speak to you, we are in the war, and another thought is uppermost in our minds. That is our determination to fight this war through to the finish- to the day when United Nations forces march in triumph through the streets of Berlin, and Rome, and Tokyo.

Last September, as some of our publisher friends here tonight knew at the time, I made a tour of inspection through this country. I saw war plants at work. I saw Army and Navy training camps and flying fields. I saw American men and women—management and labor alike—working with the objective of beating production schedules. I saw American soldiers and sailors and fliers doing the job of training for the fighting that lay ahead.

Now I have returned from one of the fronts overseas, where the production from American factories and the training given in American camps are being applied in actual warfare against the enemy. I have seen our troops in the field. I have inspected their superb equipment. I have talked and laughed and eaten with them.

I have seen our men- the Nation's men- in Trinidad, in Belem and Natal in Brazil, in Liberia, in Gambia. We must remember that in these places there is no actual fighting, but there is hard, dangerous, essential work, and there is a tremendous strain on the endurance and the spirit of our troops. They are standing up magnificently under that strain. And I want them to know that we have not forgotten them.

I have seen our men—and some of our American women—in North Africa. Out there it is war. Those men know that before this war is over, many of them will have given their lives to their Nation. But they know also that they are fighting to destroy the power of the enemies of this country, that they are fighting for a peace that will be a real and lasting peace and a far better world for the future.

Our men in the field are worthy of the great faith, the high hopes that we have placed in them. That applies as well to the men of our Navy, without whom no American expeditionary force could land safely on foreign shores. And it applies equally to the men of our merchant marine who carry the essential munitions and supplies, without which neither the United States nor our allies could continue the battle.

No American can look at these men, soldiers or sailors, without a very great emotion and great pride—and a deep sense of our responsibility to them.

Because of the necessary secrecy of my trip, the men of our armed forces in every place I visited were completely surprised. And the expression on their faces certainly proved that.

I wish that I could pay similar surprise visits to our men in the other fields of operations. And don't let anybody assume, because I have said that, that next month I am flying to Guadalcanal. But I wish I could see our men, and our naval bases, and the islands of the Pacific, and Australia, on the mainland and the islands of Alaska, the islands of the Atlantic, the two Guianas, the Canal Zone, Iceland, Britain, Central Africa, the Middle East, India, Burma, and China. I wish I could tell them face to face that their Government and their people are very proud of the great job that they are doing, in helping to strengthen the vise that is slowly but surely squeezing the breath out of our enemies.

In every battalion, and in every ship's crew, you will find every kind of American citizen representing every occupation, every section, every origin, every religion, and every political viewpoint.

Ask them what they are fighting for, and every one of them will say, "I am fighting for my country." Ask them what they really mean by that, and you will get what on the surface may seem to be a wide variety of answers.

One will say that he is fighting for the right to say what he pleases, and to read and listen to what he likes.

Another will say he is fighting because he never wants to see the Nazi swastika flying over the old First Baptist Church on Elm Street.

Another soldier will say that he is fighting for the right to work, and to earn three square meals a day for himself and his folks.

And another one will say that he is fighting in this world war so that his children and his grandchildren will not have to go back to Europe, or Africa, or Asia, or the Solomon Islands, to do this ugly job all over again.

But all these answers really add up to the same thing; every American is fighting for freedom. And today the personal freedom of every American and his family depends, and in the future will increasingly depend, upon the freedom of his neighbors in other lands.

For today the more you travel, the more you realize that the whole world is one neighborhood. That is why this war that had its beginnings in seemingly remote areas—China—Poland—has spread to every continent, and most of the islands of the sea, involving the lives and the liberties of the entire human race. And unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind.

Yes, I talked with many people in our armed forces, along the coast and through the islands of the Western Hemisphere, and up the coast of West Africa. Many of our soldiers and sailors were concerned about the state of the home front. They receive all kinds of exaggerated reports and rumors that there is too much complaining back here at home, and too little recognition of the realities of war; that selfish labor leaders are threatening to call strikes that would greatly curtail the output of our war industries; that some farm groups are trying to profiteer on prices, and are letting us down on food production; that many people are bitter over the hardships of rationing and priorities; and especially that there is serious partisan quarrel over the petty things of life here in our Capital City of Washington, D.C.

I told them that most of these reports are just gross exaggerations; that the people as a whole in the United States are in this war to see it through with heart and body and soul; and that our population is willing and glad to give up some of their shoes, and their sugar, and coffee, and automobile riding—and privileges and profits—for the sake of the common cause.

I could not truthfully deny to our troops that a few chiselers, a few politicians, and a few—to use a polite term—publicists -fortunately a very few- have placed their personal ambition or greed above the Nation's interests.

Our troops know that the Nazis and the Fascists and the Japanese are trying hard to sell the untruths of propaganda to certain types of Americans. But our troops also know that even if you pile up a lot of molehills of deception one on top of the other, you still cannot make a mountain big enough, or high enough, or solid enough to fool many people, or to block the road to victory and to an effective peace.

I think a fundamental of an effective peace is the assurance to those men who are fighting our battles, that when they come home they will find a country with an economy firm enough and fair enough to provide jobs for all those who are willing to work.

I am certain that private enterprise will be able to provide the vast majority of those jobs, and in those cases where this cannot be accomplished that the Congress of the United States will pass the legislation that will make good the assurance of earning a living.

There are still a few men who say we cannot achieve this and other honorable, reasonable aims for the postwar period. And in speaking of those professional skeptics—those men of little faith -there comes to my mind an old word in our language- the word "petriloggers."

The formal dictionary definition and derivation of the word are neither here nor there. To most of us "pettifogger" brings to mind a man who is small, mean and tricky, and picayune. In a word—petty. It is the type of man who is always seeking to create a smoke screen and fog, for the purpose of obscuring the plain truth. And you and I know some pettifoggers.

Today, those pettifoggers are attempting to obscure the essential truths of this war. They are seeking to befog the present and the future, and the clear purposes and the high principles for which the free world now maintains the promise of undimmed victory.

To use one example, in a small sector of the world's surface in North Africa—we are now massing armies—British, French, and American- for one of the major battles of this war.

The enemy's purpose in the battle of Tunisia is to hold at all costs their last bridgehead in Africa, to prevent us from gaining access to the Straits that lead to Nazi-dominated Europe.

Our prime purpose in this battle of Tunisia is to drive our enemies into the sea.

The British First Army in this battle, commanded by General Anderson, contains many veterans of Flanders and Dunkirk. Those men have a score to settle with the Nazis, and they are going to even that score.

The British Eighth Army, commanded by General Montgomery, has to its eternal credit the smashing defeat of Marshal Rommel's Army, and the now historic fifteen-hundred-mile pursuit of those once triumphant Nazi-Fascist forces.

The enemy in Tunisia will be attacked from the south by this great Eighth Army, and by the French forces who have made a remarkable march all the way across the Sahara Desert under General Le Clerc, one of General de Gaulle's officers. From the west the enemy will be attacked by the combined forces of British and Americans, together with French troops under the command of General Giraud.

And I think that we take a certain satisfaction tonight that all of these forces are commanded by General Eisenhower. I spent many hours in Casablanca with this young general- a descendant of Kansas pioneers. I know what a fine, tough job he has done, and how carefully and skillfully he is directing the soldiers under him. I want to say to you tonight—and to him—that we have every confidence in his leadership. High tribute was paid to his qualities as a man when the British Government, through Mr. Churchill, took the lead at Casablanca in proposing him for the supreme command of all the great Allied operations which are imminent in North Africa.

The deputy to General Eisenhower is General Alexander, one of Britain's greatest fighting men. He commanded all the British forces in the Middle East, including the Eighth Army that won the decisive battle at El Alamein. He and General Montgomery planned that engagement and the stupendous advance that followed. At this moment—as I speak to you tonight—General Alexander is standing at the right hand of General Eisenhower planning new military operations.

These important facts reveal not merely cooperation but active collaboration between the United Nations. Let these facts be duly noted by our enemies.

Our soldiers in Tunisia are well trained and equipped, but they are facing for the first time actual combat with formidable opponents. We can be absolutely certain that they will conduct themselves as bravely and as effectively as did those young Americans under General Pershing who drove Germany's best troops through the Argonne forest and across the River Meuse.

I think we should be prepared for the fact that Tunisia will cost us heavily in casualties. Yes, we must face that fact now, with the same calm courage as our men are facing it on the battlefield itself.

The enemy has strong forces, and strong positions. His supply lines are maintained at great cost, but Hitler has been willing to pay that cost because he knows the consequences of Allied victory in Tunisia.

The consequences are simple. They are the actual invasions of the continent of Europe. And we do not disguise our intention to make these invasions. The pressure on Germany and Italy will be constant and unrelenting. The amazing Russian armies in eastern Europe have been delivering overpowering blows; we must do likewise in the west. The enemy must be hit and hit hard from so many directions that he will never know which is his bow and which is his stern.

And it was made clear also at Casablanca that all Frenchmen outside of France, for we know little of what is happening in France, but all Frenchmen who can, are uniting in one great paramount objective—the complete liberation of France and of the French people who now suffer the torture of the Nazi yoke. As each day passes, a spirit of unselfishness is more greatly uniting all Frenchmen who have the opportunity to strike that blow for liberation.

In the years of the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, the fundamental principle that guided our democracies was established. Indeed the whole cornerstone of our democratic edifice was the principle that from the people and the people alone flows the authority of government.

It is one of our war aims, as expressed in the Atlantic Charter, that the conquered populations of today- shall again become the masters of their destiny. There must be no doubt anywhere that it is the unalterable purpose of the United Nations to restore to conquered peoples their sacred rights.

French sovereignty rests with the people of France. Its expression has been temporarily suspended by German occupation. Once the triumphant armies of the United Nations have expelled the common foe, Frenchmen will be represented by a government of their own popular choice.

And it will be a free choice in every way. No Nation in all the world that is free to make a choice is going to set itself up under a Fascist form of government, or a Nazi form of government, or a Japanese war-lord form of government. For such forms are the offspring of seizure of power followed by the abridgment of freedom. Therefore- and this is plain logic- the United Nations can properly say of these forms of government—Nazism, Fascism, Japanism—if I might coin a new word-the United Nations can properly say to that form of government two simple words, "Never again."

For the right of self-determination included in the Atlantic Charter does not carry with it the right of any Government anywhere in the world to commit wholesale murder, or the right to make slaves of its own people, or of any other peoples in the world.

And the world can rest assured that this total war, this sacrifice of lives all over the globe, is not being carried on for the purpose, or even with the remotest idea of keeping Quislings or Lavals in power anywhere on this earth.

The decisions that were reached, and the actual plans that were made at Casablanca were not confined to any one theater of war, or to any one continent, or ocean, or sea. Before this year is out I think it will be made known to the world, in actions rather than in words, that the Casablanca Conference produced plenty of news; and it will be bad news for the Germans and Italians—and the Japanese.

We have lately concluded a long, hard battle in the Southwest Pacific, and we have made notable gains. That battle started in the Solomons and New Guinea last summer. It has demonstrated without question our superior power in planes, and most importantly in the fighting qualities of our individual soldiers and sailors.

American armed forces in the Southwest Pacific are receiving powerful aid from Australia and New Zealand, and also directly from the British themselves.

We do not expect to spend the time that it would take to bring Japan to final defeat merely by inching our way forward from island to island across the vast expanse of the Pacific. It would take too many years.

Great and decisive actions against the Japanese will be taken to drive the invader from the soil of China. Yes, important actions are going to be taken in the skies over China—and in the skies over Japan itself.

The discussions at Casablanca have been continued in Chungking with the Generalissimo by General Arnold, and have resulted in definite plans for offensive operations.

Remember that there are many roads that lead right to Tokyo. And we are not going to neglect any of them.

In an attempt to ward off the inevitable disaster that lies ahead of them, the Axis propagandists are trying all their old tricks, in order to divide the United Nations. They seek to create the idea that if we win this war, Russia, and England, and China, and the United States are going to get into a cat-and-dog fight.

This is their final effort to turn one Nation against another, in the vain hope that they may settle with one or two at a time- that any of us may be so gullible and so forgetful as to be duped into making "deals" at the expense of our allies.

To these panicky attempts- and that is the best word to use: "panicky"—to escape the consequences of their crimes, we say —all the United Nations say- that the only terms on which we shall deal with any Axis Government, or any Axis factions, are the terms proclaimed at Casablanca: "unconditional surrender." We know, and the plain people of our enemies will eventually know, that in our uncompromising policy we mean no harm to the common people of the Axis Nations. But we do mean to impose punishment and retribution in full upon their guilty, barbaric leaders.

The Nazis must be frantic—not just panicky, but frantic if they believe that they can devise any propaganda that would turn the British and the American and the Chinese Governments and peoples against Russia—or Russia against the rest of us.

The overwhelming courage and endurance of the Russian people in withstanding and hurling back the invaders- the genius with which their great armies have been directed and led by Mr. Stalin and their military commanders—all speak for themselves.

The tragedy of the war has sharpened the vision and leadership of the peoples of all the United Nations, and I can say to you from my own full knowledge that they see the utter necessity of our standing together after the war to secure a peace based on principles of permanence.

You can be quite sure that if Japan should be the first of the Axis partners to fall, the total efforts and resources of all the United Nations would be concentrated on the job of crushing Germany.

And, on the other hand, lest there be any question in Nazi or Japanese minds that we are wholly one in the prosecution of the war to a complete victory over our enemies, the Prime Minister wished, at Casablanca, to make a formal agreement that if Germany should be conquered before Japan, all British Empire resources and manpower would, of course, join with China and us in an out-and-out final attack on Japan. And I told Mr. Churchill that no formal statement of agreement along those lines was in the least bit necessary, that the American people accept the word of a great English gentleman and that it is obvious and clear that all of us are completely in accord in our determination to destroy the forces of barbarism in Asia, as well as in Europe and in Africa. In other words, our policy toward our Japanese enemies is precisely the same as our policy toward our Nazi enemies: it is a policy of fighting hard on all fronts, and ending the war as quickly as we can, on the uncompromising terms of unconditional surrender.

Today is the anniversary of the birth of a great, plain American. The living memory of Abraham Lincoln is now honored and cherished by all of our people, wherever they may be, and by men and women and children throughout the British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union, and the Republic of China, and all of our sister American Republics, and indeed in every land on earth where people love freedom and will give their lives for freedom.

President Lincoln said in 1862, "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us . . . in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

Today, eighty years after Lincoln delivered that message, the fires of war are blazing across the whole horizon of mankind from Kharkov to Kunming—from the Mediterranean to the Coral Sea—from Berlin to Tokyo.

Again—we cannot escape history. We have supreme confidence that, with the help of God, honor will prevail. We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the twentieth century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war.

The speech was notable for several reasons.

"English" soldier, who might be Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish or, in fact Irish, in the same poster campaign. He's carrying a Boys Antitank rifle, something not commonly seen by this point in the war..  He was fighting for freedom, but a definition of freedom that included ongoing colonial administration of regions of the British Empire until they were sufficiently developed so as to become part of the British Commonwealth.

For one thing, Roosevelt felt compelled to warn Americans that heavy casualties would be coming in Tunisia, probably steeling the audience to an inevitable increase in loss of life which, while it had certainly occurred in North Africa, had been relatively light so far.  He also hinted at future actions to come.

Australian soldiers, whom were largely volunteers for most of the war, were fighting for freedom, but Australia was actually a colonial power in its own right, with New Guinea being its colony.

And he also had picked up on Axis propaganda, which was in fact trying to split the Western Allies from the Soviet Union.  The fact that it was addressed must have meant that there was some Administration fear about ongoing conservative hesitance about having adopted the USSR as an Ally.

Canada has never had an empire, unless you consider the Canadian incorporation of the Canadian west to be colonialism, which stretches the definition in my view.   The same claim has been made against the United States, which I also regard as stretching the definition.  Canadian troops were stationed in Hong Kong, which was a British Crown Colony prior to the Japanese attack on it, but Hong Kong's history is really unique and in modern times has not been an example people point to in order to complaint about colonialism.

Of course, while the alliance was a fact and necessary, the concerns about the USSR were well-founded.  The Soviet Union's war aims were never the same as the West's, which perhaps might be best illustrated that the war began over the question of Polish sovereignty, which it would not regain, due to one of its original invaders, the USSR, destroying it.

What the views on the war of the average Chinese soldier were in the war are now probably lost to the ages.  China had fought off and on in a series of civil wars that had seen the country briefly united under the Nationalist before the Communist within the Nationalist government split off and were expelled, at which time the party drifted rightward and the civil war commenced.  China could not be regarded as a democracy in 1943, although it had attempted to become one at the beginning of the movement which had brought the Nationalist to power.

Roosevelt also addressed the French, which is interesting, and in doing so tried to come up with a legal theory as to why the Free French weren't outright rebels against the distasteful legitimate French government.  Sovereignty vesting in the people became the theory of the day.  As large as the French resistance had become at this point, in the form of the French military everywhere outside of France itself, and the Germans having occupied Vichy, its surprising that he bothered really.

Ethiopia was certainly not a democracy, but it was fighting for its freedeom.

The Soviets took Krasnodar, in Ukraine, on this day.

US troops attacked German the Afrika Korps at Faid, Tunisia, while the British repelled an Afrika Korps attack at Ousseltia.

Japanese counter-attacks at Donbaik and Rathedaung, Burma, were unsuccessful.

The University of Wyoming defeated Colorado State University in basketball, 57–34 in the basketball variant of "The Border War", which was a basketball series, not one single game.

Epilogue.

Most of the people who saw this poster probably thought of the Allied sailors of occupied countries who were serving on board ships that had not been captured by the Germans when their nations were overrun.  The Dutch, however, had a sizable naval contingent based in the Dutch East Indes which in fact did fight valiently in 1941-42 when the Japanese attacked there.  Having said that, the irony is that the Dutch were hated in the Dutch East Indes and the Japanese explusion of them was successful in that the British never allowed the Dutch to return.  Indonesian collaborationist were not, moreover, punished by the Indonesian population for their collaboration, and in some instances went on to successful post war political careers.  While the Japanese occupation of anything was not admiralbe, The East Indes, the thing they were attempting to grap at the start of the Pacific War, makes for a lot of odd exceptions.

Of interest, the series of posters I put up above, of which there are additional posters in the series, is well known, but has never struck me as an attractive series of posters.  It's interesting that it was done, as it demonstrates that there was some isolationist, nativist, resistance to the war even well into the war, and the government felt it was necessary to try to influence Americans toward believing that all the Allied soldiers were fighting for the same thing.

Of course, as noted, they weren't.  

By and large, the Western Allies, which would include the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Free French, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium were, although as some latter day critics like to point out, imperfectly.   France, the UK, Australia, Belgium, and the Netherlands were imperial powers who, it can be pointed out, were not in favor of the immediate liberation of their colonial subjects.  Having said that, while the British were not yet in the "winds of change" era, they had moved as far back as the late 19th Century towards a Commonwealth of Nations theory of empire and were well down that path, which resulted in various nations achieving dominion status within the empire, at which point they were free governing nations.  It included a couple of nations that were problematic in that regard, however, as South Africa was a racist democracy at the time, and India clearly wanted out of the Empire entirely.  Nonetheless, saying that the British Commonwealth and Empire was fighting for freedom would be largely accurate.

France, for its part, was evolving in its imperial concepts, but not nearly as quickly and not in the same direction.  It had moved towards a different concept, which was the "overseas department" of France, under which some colonies simply were part of France, but with a weighted voting system.  This would result in anti-colonial wars against France following World War Two, with perhaps the saddest and most ironic one being the Algerian War, as Algerians really rallied to the French flag during World War Two.

The Dutch and the Belgians were fighting for the freedom of their homelands, but they had no concept of colonial liberation at all.  The Dutch in particular are an oddity, as the Netherlands was widely regarded as a very peaceable nation and organically opposed to Nazism, although Dutch volunteers to the German military were notable, so much so that the liberated Dutch feared what Allied soldiers would feel about photographs of family members in German uniforms. Cornelius Ryan notes that in his book A Bridge Too Far, but dresses it up by calling them conscripts.  Having said this, the Dutch resistance as large and really effective.  Anyhow, the Dutch, contrary to their reputation in Europe, were absolutely despised in their East Asian colonies where they had a well deserved reputation for cruelty. This was so much the case that the British, which were seeking to retain their own colonies at the time, would not allow the Dutch to resume control in theirs after the war.

All of this contrasts enormously, of course, with the Soviet Union.  The USSR was a German ally up until 1941, having participated in the invasion of Poland and having been given a free hand by the Germans to invade the Baltic States.  In the 1939 to 1941 period, the Soviets not only did all that, but they attacked Finland and took a piece of Romania from that country.  They were not interested in Freedom at all, and simply eliminated Poland as an entity, as had the Germans.   The German invasion of the Soviet Union came when it did (it would have come sooner or later anyway) as the Soviets overplayed their hand in negotiating with the Germans for material resources, conditioning entering the war upon a transfer of pieces of the British Empire.  Following the war Poland's real sovereignty would not be restored in spite of that being the casus belli of the war in the first place, due to the USSR, and the independence of Hungary and Romania would be lost for two generations, those nations having brought that down on themselves for siding with the Germans.

Anyhow, these posters have surprisingly long legs, in spite of not being visually appealing, in my view.  Witness the following:

The poster above is a Freedom of Russia Legion poster stating "This man is your friend. he fights fir freedom”.   The Freedom of Russia Legion is a Russian unit within the Ukrainian forces, made up of men who have left the Russian Army and turned their guns on Russia.

And then there's this:

This is obviously lifted right from the series, and well done too I might add.  I woudn't have expected this.

And we have this:

This depicts a man who, in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, during which the rioters turned on the Korean population of the town, reported to his employer at his his employer's request, to defend the business.

This, by the way, gives a good reason for the 2nd Amendment.  The rifle his is carrying appears to be an AR180.

And this isn't the end of it, there are all sorts of takes on this poser series.

Monday, January 25, 1943. Soviets split Stalingrad.

Advances of the Red Army in Stalingrad met each other, splitting the German forces in two.

The Reichstag, which wasn't meeting anyway, had its term extended until the end of January, 1947.

Best recruiting poster ever

 

Monday, January 4, 1943. Stalin, Man of the Year.

Stalin appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as the 1942 Man of the Year.

Japanese Prime Minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo, ordered Japanese forces to withdraw from Guadalcanal.

A unit of the Jewish Fighting Organization launched an unsuccessful attack aimed at the Czestochowa Ghetto.  On the following day the Nazis, as a reprisal, killed 250 children and elderly, and shipped the remaining ghetto residents to concentration camps.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was born in Rockville Centre, New York.

January 1, 1923 Transportation Mergers.

The Rosewood Massacre commenced in Rosewood, Florida.  A white woman accused a black man of assaulting her.  When it was learned that a black convict had escaped from a prison work gang, white men from the town of Sumner invaded Rosewood and conducted a house to house search.  Ultimately, houses would be set on fire and five men, four black and one white, were killed.

Twenty-four major British railways were consolidated into four regional ones under the Railways Act of 1921.  The surviving "Big Four" were Great Western Railway (GWR); London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS); London and North Eastern Railway (LNER); and Southern Railway (SR).

Air Union became the largest airline in France via a merger of  Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes and Compagnie des Grands Express Aériens.

A mix of save up posters for Poster Saturday

 

Tuesday, December 1, 1942. Gasoline Rationing goes nationwide.

 

I manged to wipe this entry out, and I'm not going back to research it again, when I updated the nuclear item which should have been posted on December 2, not 1.

Anyhow, gasoline rationing, which had been in place in some localities in the country already, was imposed on the entire country on this day in 1942.

And the Beveridge Report came out in the UK, laying the groundwork for the post-war welfare state.  It stated:

Social Insurance and Allied Services

Report by Sir William Beveridge

Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty

November 1942

HMSO

CMND 6404

What follows is what would these days be called an executive summary of the report, together with the detailed section on Assumptions, Methods and Principles. The full report runs to 300 pages.

THREE GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF RECOMMENDATIONS

6. In proceeding from this first comprehensive survey of social insurance to the next task - of making recommendations - three guiding principles may be laid down at the outset.

7. The first principle is that any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.

8. The second principle is that organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

9. The third principle is that social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual. The State should offer security for service and contribution. The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility ; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.

10. The Plan for Social Security set out in this Report is built upon these principles. It uses experience but is not tied by experience. It is put forward as a limited contribution to a wider social policy, though as something that could be achieved now without waiting for the whole of that policy. It is, first and foremost, a plan of insurance - of giving in return for contributions benefits up to subsistence level, as of right and without means test, so that individuals may build freely upon it.

 THE WAY TO FREEDOM FROM WANT

11. The work of the Inter-departmental Committee began with a reviews of existing schemes of social insurance and allied services. The Plan for Social Security, with which that work ends, starts from a diagnosis of want - of the circumstances in which, in the years just preceding the present war families and individuals in Britain might lack the means of healthy subsistence. During those years impartial scientific authorities made social surveys of the conditions of life in a number of principal towns in Britain, including London, Liverpool, Sheffield, Plymouth, Southampton, York and Bristol. They determined the proportions of the people in each town whose means were below the standard assumed to be necessary for subsistence, and they analysed the extent and causes of that deficiency. From each of these social surveys the same broad result emerges. Of all the want shown by the surveys, from three-quarters to five-sixths, according to the precise standard chosen for want, was due to interruption or loss of earning power. Practically the whole of the remaining one-quarter to one-sixth was due to failure to relate income during earning to the size of the family. These surveys were made before the introduction of supplementary pensions had reduced the amount of poverty amongst old persons. But this does not affect the main conclusion to be drawn from these surveys: abolition of want requires a double re-distribution of income, through social insurance and by family needs.

12. Abolition of want requires, first, improvement of State insurance that is to say provision against interruption and loss of earning power All the principal causes of interruption or loss of earnings are now the subject of schemes of social insurance. If, in spite of these schemes, so many persons unemployed or sick or old or widowed are found to be without adequate income for subsistence according to the standards adopted in the social surveys, this means that the benefits amount to less than subsistence by those standards or do not last as long as the need, and that the assistance which supplements insurance is either insufficient in amount or available only on terms which make men unwilling to have recourse to it. None of the insurance benefits provided before the war were in fact designed with reference to the standards of the social surveys. Though unemployment benefit was not altogether out of relation to those standards, sickness and disablement benefit, old age pensions and widows’ pensions were far below them, while workmen’s compensation was below subsistence level for anyone who had family responsibilities or whose earnings in work were less than twice the amount needed for subsistence. To prevent interruption or destruction of earning power from leading to want, it is necessary to improve the present schemes of social insurance in three directions : by extension of scope to cover persons now excluded, by extension of purposes to cover risks now excluded, and by raising the rates of benefit.

13. Abolition of want requires, second, adjustment of incomes, in periods of earning as well as in interruption of earning, to family needs, that is to say, in one form or another it requires allowances for children. Without such allowances as part of benefit -or added to it, to make provision for large families, no social insurance against interruption of earnings can be adequate. But, if children’s allowances are given only when earnings are interrupted and are not given during earning also, two evils are unavoidable. First, a substantial measure of acute want will remain among the lower paid workers as the accompaniment of large families. Second, in all such cases, income will be greater during unemployment or other interruptions of work than during work.

14. By a double re-distribution of income through social insurance and children’s allowances, want, as defined in the social surveys, could have been abolished in Britain before the present war. As is shown in para. 445, the income available to the British people was ample for such a purpose. The Plan for Social Security set out in Part V of this Report takes abolition of want after this war as its aim. It includes as its main method compulsory social insurance, with national assistance and voluntary insurance as subsidiary, methods. It assumes allowances for dependent children, as part of its background. The plan assumes also establishment of comprehensive health and rehabilitation services and maintenance of employment, that is to say avoidance of mass unemployment, as necessary conditions of success in social insurance. These three measures - of children’s allowances, health and rehabilitation and maintenance of employment-are described as assumptions A,B and C of the plan ; they fall partly within and partly without the plan extending into other fields of social policy. They are discussed, not in the detailed exposition of the plan in Part V of the Report, but in Part VI, which is concerned with social security in relation to wider issues.

15. The plan is based on a diagnosis of want. It starts from facts, from the condition of the people as revealed by social surveys between the two wars. It takes account of two other facts about the British community, arising out of past movements of the birth rate and the death rate, which should dominate planning for its future; the main effects of these movements in determining the present and future of the British people are shown by Table XI in para. 234. The first of the two facts is the age constitution of the population, making it certain that persons past the age that is now regarded as the end of working life will be a much larger proportion of the whole community than at any time in the past. The second fact is the low reproduction rate of the British community today: unless this rate is raised very materially in the near future, a rapid and continuous decline of the population cannot be prevented. The first fact makes it necessary to seek ways of postponing the age of retirement from work rather than of hastening It. The second fact makes it imperative to give first place in social expenditure to the care of childhood and to the safeguarding of maternity.

 16. The provision to be made for old age represents the largest and most growing element in any social insurance scheme. The problem of age is discussed accordingly in Part III of the Report as one of three special problems; the measures proposed for dealing with this problem are summarised in paras. 254-257. Briefly, the proposal is to introduce for all citizens adequate pensions without means test by stages over a transition period of twenty years, while providing immediate assistance pensions for persons requiring them. In adopting a transition period for pensions as of right, while meeting immediate needs subject to consideration of means, the Plan for Social Security in Britain follows the precedent of New Zealand. The final rate of pensions in New Zealand is higher than that proposed in this Plan, but is reached only after a transition period of twenty-eight years as compared with twenty years suggested here; after twenty years, the New Zealand rate is not very materially different from the basic rate proposed for Britain. The New Zealand pensions are not conditional upon retirement from work ; for Britain it is proposed that they should be retirement pensions and that persons who continue at work and postpone retirement should be able to increase their pensions above the basic rate. The New Zealand scheme is less favourable than the plan for Britain in starting at a lower level ; it is more favourable some other respects. Broadly the two schemes for two communities of the British race are plans on the same lines to solve the same problem of passage from pensions based on need to pensions paid as of right to all citizens in virtue of contribution.

  SUMMARY OF PLAN FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

17. The main feature of the Plan for Social Security is a scheme of social insurance against interruption and destruction of earning power and for special expenditure arising at birth, marriage or death. The scheme embodies six fundamental principles : flat rate of subsistence benefit ; flat rate of contribution ; unification of administrative responsibility; adequacy of benefit ; comprehensiveness ; and classification. These principles are explained in paras. 303-309. Based on them and in combination with national assistance and voluntary insurance as subsidiary methods, the aim of the Plan for Social Security is to make want under any circumstances unnecessary.

18. A plan which is designed to cover so many varieties of human circumstance must be long and detailed. It must contain proposals of differing orders of certainty and importance. In preparing the Report, the question arose naturally as to how far it was necessary at this stage to enter into details, and whether it might not be preferable to deal with principles only. For two reasons it has appeared desirable, in place of giving an outline only, to set the proposals out in as much detail as the time allowed. The first reason is that the principles underlying any practical reform can be judged only by seeing how they would work in practice. The second reason is that if a Plan for Social Security is to come into operation when the war ends or soon after, there is no time to lose in getting the plan prepared as fully as possible. The many details set forth in Part V are neither exhaustive nor final; they are put forward as a basis of discussion, but their formulation will, it is hoped, shorten subsequent discussion. Even among the major proposals of the Report there are differences of importance and of relevance to the scheme as a whole. There are some proposals which, though important and desirable in themselves, could be omitted without changing anything else in the scheme. Three in particular in the list of major changes in para. 30 have this character and are placed in square brackets to indicate it. This does not mean that everything not bracketed is essential and must be taken or left as a whole. The six principles named above and all that is implied in them are fundamental ; the rest of the scheme can be adjusted without changing its character: all rates of benefit and all details are by nature subject to amendment.

19. The main provisions of the plan may be summarised as follows:

(i) The plan covers all citizens without upper income limit, but has regard to their different ways of life ; it is a plan all-embracing in scope of persons and of needs, but is classified in application.

(ii) In relation to social security the population falls into four main classes of working age and two others below and above working age respectively, as follows:

Employees, that is, persons whose normal occupation is employment under contract of service.

Others gainfully occupied, including employers, traders and independent workers of all kinds.

Housewives, that is married women of working age.

Others of working age not gainfully occupied.

Below working age.

Retired above working age.

(iii) The sixth of these classes will receive retirement pensions and the fifth will be covered by children’s allowances, which will be paid from the National Exchequer in respect of all children when the responsible parent is in receipt of insurance benefit or pension, and in respect of all children except one in other cases. The four other classes will be insured for security appropriate to their circumstances. All classes will be covered for comprehensive medical treatment and rehabilitation and for funeral expenses.

(iv) Every person in Class I, II or IV will pay a single security contribution by a stamp on a single insurance document each week or combination of weeks. In Class I the employer also will contribute, affixing the insurance stamp and deducting the employee’s share from wages or salary. The contribution will differ from one class to another, according to the benefits provided, and will be higher for men than for women, so as to secure benefits for Class Ill.

(v) Subject to simple contribution conditions, every person in Class I will receive benefit for unemployment and disability, pension on retirement, medical treatment and funeral expenses. Persons in Class II will receive all these except unemployment benefit and disability benefit during the first 13 weeks of disability. Persons in Class IV will receive all these except unemployment and disability benefit. As a substitute for unemployment benefit, training benefit will be available to persons in all classes other than Class 1, to assist them to find new livelihoods if their present ones fail. Maternity grant, provision for widowhood and separation and qualification for retirement pensions will be secured to all persons in Class III by virtue of their husbands’ contributions ; in addition to maternity grant, housewives who take paid work will receive maternity benefit for thirteen weeks to enable them to give up working before and after childbirth.

(vi) Unemployment benefit, disability benefit, basic retirement pension after a transition period, and training benefit will be at the same rate, irrespective of previous earnings. This rate will provide by itself the income necessary for subsistence in all normal cases. There will be a joint rate for a man and wife who is not gainfully occupied. Where there is no wife or she is gainfully occupied, there will be a lower single rate ; where there is no wife but a dependant above the age for children’s allowance, there will be a dependant allowance. Maternity benefit for housewives who work also for gain will be at a higher rate than the single rate in unemployment or disability, while their unemployment and disability benefit will be at a lower rate ; there are special rates also for widowhood as described below. With these exceptions all rates of benefit will be the same for men and for women. Disability due to industrial accident or disease will be treated like all other disability for the first thirteen weeks ; if disability continues thereafter, disability benefit at a flat rate will be replaced by an industrial pension related to the earnings of the individual subject to a minimum and a maximum.

(vii) Unemployment benefit will continue at the same rate without means test so long as unemployment lasts, but will normally be subject to a condition of attendance at a work or training centre after a certain period. Disability benefit will continue at the same rate without means test, so long as disability lasts or till it is replaced by industrial pension, subject to acceptance of suitable medical treatment or vocational training.

Pensions (other than industrial) will be paid only on retirement from work. They may be claimed at any time after the minimum age of retirement, that is 65 for men and 60 for women. The rate of pension will be increased above the basic rate if retirement is postponed. Contributory pensions as of right will be raised to the full basic rate gradually during a transition period of twenty years, in which adequate pensions according to needs will be paid to all persons requiring them. The position of existing pensioners will be safeguarded.

While permanent pensions will no longer be granted to widows of working age without dependent children, there will be for all widows a temporary benefit at a higher rate than unemployment or disability benefit, followed by training benefit where necessary. For widows with the care of dependent children there will be guardian benefit, in addition. to the children’s allowances, adequate for subsistence without other means. The position of existing widows on pension will be safeguarded.

(x) For the limited number of cases of need not covered by social insurance, national assistance subject to a uniform means test will be available.

(xi) Medical treatment covering all requirements will be provided for all citizens by a national health service organised under the health departments and post-medical rehabilitation treatment will be provided for all persons capable of profiting by it.

(xii) A Ministry of Social Security will be established, responsible for social insurance, national assistance and encouragement and supervision of voluntary insurance and will take over, so far as necessary for these purposes, the present work of other Government Departments and of 1-ocal Authorities in these fields.

THE NATURE OF SOCIAL INSURANCE

20. Under the scheme of social insurance, which forms the main feature of this plan, every citizen of working age will contribute in his appropriate class according to the security that he needs, or as a married woman will have contributions made by the husband. Each will be covered for all his needs by a single weekly contribution on one insurance document. All the principal cash payments-for unemployment, disability and retirement win continue so long as the need lasts, without means test, and will be paid from a Social Insurance Fund built up by contributions from the insured persons, from their employers, if any, and from the State. This is in accord with two views as to the lines on which the problem of income maintenance should be approached.

21. The first view is that benefit in return for contributions, rather than free allowances from the State, is what the people of Britain desire. This desire is shown both by the established popularity of compulsory insurance, and by the phenomenal growth of voluntary insurance against sickness, against death and for endowment, and most recently for hospital treatment It is shown in another way by the strength of popular objection to any kind of means test. This objection springs not so much from a desire to get everything for nothing, as from resentment at a provision which appears to penalise what people have come to regard as the duty and pleasure of thrift, of putting pennies away for a rainy day. Management of one’s income is an essential element of a citizen’s freedom. Payment of a substantial part of the cost of benefit as a contribution irrespective of the means of the contributor is the firm basis of a claim to benefit irrespective of means.

22. The second view is that whatever money is required for provision of insurance benefits, so long as they are needed, should come from a Fund to which the recipients have contributed and to which they may be required to make larger contributions if the Fund proves inadequate. The plan adopted since 1930 in regard to prolonged unemployment and sometimes suggested for prolonged disability, that the State should take this burden off insurance, in order to keep the contribution down, is wrong in principle. The insured persons should not feel that income for idleness, however caused, can come from a bottomless purse. The Government should not feel that by paying doles it can avoid the major responsibility of seeing that unemployment and disease are reduced to the minimum. The place for direct expenditure and organisation by the State is in maintaining employment of the labour and other productive resources of the country, and in preventing and combating disease, not in patching an incomplete scheme of insurance.

23. The State cannot be excluded altogether from giving direct assistance to individuals in need, after examination of their means. However comprehensive an insurance scheme, some, through physical infirmity, can never contribute at all and some will fall through the meshes of any insurance. The making of insurance benefit without means test unlimited in duration involves of itself that conditions must be imposed at some stage or another as to how men in receipt of benefit shall use their time, so as to fit themselves or to keep themselves fit for service ; imposition of any condition means that the condition may not be fulfilled and that a case of assistance may arise. Moreover for one of the main purposes of social insurance-provision for old age or retirement-the contributory principle implies contribution for a substantial number of years ; in the introduction of adequate contributory pensions there must be a period of transition during which those who have not qualified for pension by contribution but are in need have their needs met by assistance pensions. National assistance is an essential subsidiary method in the whole Plan for Social Security , and the work of the Assistance Board shows that assistance subject to means test can be administered with sympathetic justice and discretion taking full account of individual circumstances. But the scope of assistance will be narrowed from the beginning and will diminish throughout the transition period for pensions. The scheme of social insurance is designed of itself when in full operation to guarantee the income needed for subsistence in all normal cases.

24. The scheme is described as a scheme of insurance, because it preserves the contributory principle. It is described as social insurance to mark important distinctions from voluntary insurance. In the first place, while adjustment of premiums to risks is of the essence of voluntary insurance, since without this individuals would not of their own will insure, this adjustment is not essential in insurance which is made compulsory by the power of the State. In the second place, in providing for actuarial risks such as those of death, old age or sickness, it is necessary in voluntary insurance to fund contributions paid in early life in order to provide for the increasing risks of later life and to accumulate reserves against individual liabilities. The State with its power of compelling successive generations of citizens to become insured and its power of taxation is not under the necessity of accumulating reserves for actuarial risks and has not, in fact, adopted this method in the past. The second of these two distinctions is one of financial practice only ; the first raises important questions of policy and equity. Though the State, in conducting compulsory insurance, is not under the necessity of varying the premium according to the risk, it may decide as a matter of policy to do so.

25. When State insurance began in Britain, it was felt that compulsory insurance should be like voluntary insurance in adjusting premiums to risks. This was secured in health insurance by the system of Approved Societies. It was intended to be secured in unemployment insurance by variation of contribution rates between industries as soon as accurate valuation became possible, by encouragement of special schemes of insurance by industry, and by return of contributions to individuals who made no claims. In the still earlier institution of workmen’s compensation, adjustment of premiums to industrial risks was a necessary consequence of the form in which provision for industrial accidents was made, by placing liability on employers individually and leaving them to insure voluntarily against their liability. In the thirty years since 1912, there has been an unmistakable movement of public opinion away from these original ideas, that is to say, away from the principle of adjusting premiums to risks in compulsory insurance and in favour of pooling risks. This change has been most marked and most complete in regard to unemployment, where, in the general scheme, insurance by industry, in place of covering a large part of the field, has been reduced to historical exceptions; today the common argument is that the volume of unemployment in an industry is not to any effective extent within its control; that all industries depend upon one another, and that those which are fortunate in being regular should share the cost of unemployment in those which are less regular. The same tendency of opinion in favour of pooling of social risks has shown itself in the views expressed by the great majority of witnesses to the present Committee in regard to health insurance. In regard to workmen’s compensation, the same argument has been put by the Mineworkers’ Federation to the Royal Commission on Workmen s Compensation; as other industries cannot exist without coalmining, they have proposed that employers in all industries should bear equally the cost of industrial accidents and disease, in coalmining as elsewhere.

26. There is here an issue of principle and practice on which strong arguments can be advanced on each side by reasonable men. But the general tendency of public opinion seems clear. After trial of a different principle, it has been found to accord best with the sentiments of the British people that in insurance organised by the community by use of compulsory power, each individual should stand in on the same terms; none should claim to pay less because he is healthier or has more regular employment. In accord with that view, the proposals of the Report mark another step forward to the development of State insurance as a new type of human institution, differing both from the former methods of preventing or alleviating distress and from voluntary insurance. The term "social insurance" to describe this institution implies both that it is compulsory and that men stand together with their fellows. The term implies a pooling of risks except so far as separation of risks serves a social purpose. There may be reasons of social policy for adjusting premiums to risks, in order to give a stimulus for avoidance of danger, as in the case of industrial accident and disease. There is no longer an admitted claim of the individual citizen to share in national insurance and yet to stand outside it, keeping the advantage of his individual lower risk whether of unemployment or of disease or accident.

PROVISIONAL RATES OF BENEFIT AND CONTRIBUTION

27. Social insurance should aim at guaranteeing the minimum income needed for subsistence. What the actual rates of benefit and contribution should be in terms of money cannot be settled now, and that for two reasons. First, it is impossible today to forecast with assurance the level of prices after the war. Second, determination of what is required for reasonable human subsistence is to some extent a matter of judgment; estimates on this point change with time, and generally, in a progressive community, change upwards. The procedure adopted to deal with this problem has been: first, from consideration of subsistence needs, as given by impartial expert authorities, to determine the weekly incomes which would have been sufficient for subsistence in normal cases at prices ruling in 1938 ; second, to derive from these the rates appropriate to a cost of living about 25% above that of 1938. These rates of benefit, pension and grant are set out in para. 401 as provisional post-war rates; by reference to them it is possible to set forth simply what appears to be the most appropriate relation between different benefits and what would be the cost of each benefit and of all benefits together ; it is possible to show benefits in relation to contributions and taxation. But the provisional rates themselves are not essential. If the value of money when the scheme comes into operation differs materially from the assumptions on which the provisional rates are based, the rates could be changed without affecting the scheme in any important particular. If social policy should demand benefits on a higher scale than subsistence, the whole level of benefit and contribution rates could be raised without affecting the structure of the scheme. If social policy or financial stringency should dictate benefits on a lower scale, benefits and contributions could be lowered, though not perhaps so readily or without some adjustments within the scheme.

28. The most important of the provisional rates is the rate of 40/- a week for a man and wife in unemployment and disability and after the transition in addition to allowances for children at an average of 8/- per head per week. These amounts represent a large addition to existing benefits. They will mean that in unemployment and disability a man and wife if she is not working, with two children, will receive 56/- a week without means test so long as unemployment or disability lasts, as compared with the 33/- in unemployment and the 15/- or 7/6 in sickness, with additional benefit in some Approved Societies, which they were getting before the war. For married women gainfully occupied, there will be a maternity benefit at the rate of 36/- a week for 13 weeks, in addition to the maternity grant of £4 available for all married women.. Other rates, as for widowhood and for industrial disability, show similar increases, as set out in detail in paragraph. 284, in dealing with the Social Security Budget. There will be new benefits for funerals, marriage and other needs, as well as comprehensive medical treatment, both domiciliary and institutional, for all citizens and their dependants which, subject to further enquiry suggested in para. 437, will be without a charge on treatment at any point. At these provisional rates, the total Security Budget, including children’s allowances and free health and rehabilitation services, is estimated to amount to £697,000,000 in 1945 as the first year of the plan, and £858,000,000 twenty years after, in 1965. The extent to which these sums represent new expenditure which is not now being incurred and the division of the total cost between insured persons, their employers and the Exchequer are discussed in Part IV of the Report and provisional rates of contribution are suggested in para. 403. The most important of these is the contribution of 4/3 a week by an adult man in employment and 3/3 a week from his employer. At this rate, with corresponding rates for other classes, the contribution of insured employees in class I for cash benefits, when the plan, including contributory pensions, is in full operation, is estimated to amount to about 25 per cent. of the cost of their cash benefits exclusive of allowances for children ; the balance will be provided by the employers’ contributions and by taxation based on capacity to pay. At the outset, the contributions of insured persons will represent a larger proportion of the total cost ; the net addition to the burden on the National Exchequer in the first year, as compared with expenditure under the existing arrangements, will be about £86,000,000.

29. The attempt to fix rates of insurance benefit and pension on a scientific basis with regard to subsistence needs has brought to notice a serious difficulty in doing so in the conditions of modern Britain. This is the problem of rent discussed in paras. 197-216. In this as in other respects, the framing of a satisfactory scheme of social security depends on the solution of other problems of economic and social organisation. But subject to unavoidable difficulties in giving a numerical value to the conception of a subsistence minimum, the scheme of social insurance outlined in this Report provides insurance benefit adequate to all normal needs, in duration and in amount. It is at the same time a scheme from which the anomalies and overlapping, the multiplicity of agencies and the needless administrative cost which mark the British Social Services today, have been removed and have been replaced by co-ordination, simplicity and economy.

UNIFIED SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE CHANGES INVOLVED

30. The advantages of unified social security are great and unquestionable. They can be obtained only at the cost of changes in the present administrative machinery whose necessity needs to be proved and can be proved case by case. The principal changes from present practice that are involved in the plan are set out below. The reasons for each of these changes are given in Part II in one or two cases they are set out there only briefly, in anticipation of fuller discussion.

1. Unification of social insurance in respect of contributions, that is to say, enabling each insured person to- obtain all benefits by a single weekly contribution on a single document (paras. 41-43).

2. Unification of social insurance and assistance in respect of administration in a Ministry of Social Security with local Security Offices within reach of all insured persons (paras. 44-47).

3. Supersession of the present system of Approved Societies giving unequal benefits for equal compulsory contributions [combined with retention of Friendly Societies and Trade Unions giving sickness benefit as responsible agents for the administration of State benefit as well as voluntary benefit for their members] (paras. 48-76).

4. Supersession of the present scheme of workmen’s compensation and inclusion of provision for industrial accident or disease within the unified social insurance scheme, subject to (a) a special method of meeting the cost of this provision, and (b) special pensions for prolonged disability and grants to dependants in cases of death due to such causes (paras. 77-105).

5. Separation of medical treatment from the administration of cash benefits and the setting up of a comprehensive medical service for every citizen, covering all treatment and every form of disability under the supervision of the Health Departments (para. 106).

6. Recognition of housewives as a distinct insurance class of occupied persons with benefits adjusted to their special needs, including (a) in all cases [marriage grant], maternity grant, widowhood and separation provisions and retirement pensions ; (b) if not gainfully occupied, benefit during husband’s unemployment or disability; (c) if gainfully occupied, special maternity benefit in addition to grant, and lower unemployment and disability benefits, accompanied by abolition of the Anomalies Regulations for Married Women (paras. 107-117).

7. Extension of insurance against prolonged disability to all persons gainfully occupied and of insurance for retirement pensions to all persons of working age, whether gainfully occupied or not (paras. 118-121).

8. Provision of training benefit to facilitate change to new occupations of all persons who lose their former livelihood, whether paid or unpaid (para. 122).

9. Assimilation of benefit and pension rates for unemployment, disability. other than prolonged disability due to industrial accident or disease, and retirement (para. 123).

10. Assimilation of benefit conditions for unemployment and disability including disability due to industrial accident or disease, in respect of waiting time (paras. 124-126).

11. Assimilation of contribution conditions for unemployment and disability benefit, except where disability is due to industrial accident or disease, and revision of contribution conditions for pension (paras. 127-128).

12. Making of unemployment benefit at full rate indefinite in duration, subject to requirement of attendance at a work or training centre after a limited period of unemployment (paras. 129-132).

13. Making of disability benefit at full rate indefinite in duration, subject to imposition of special behaviour conditions (paras. 129-132).

14. Making of pensions, other than industrial, conditional on retirement from work and rising in value with each year of continued contribution after the minimum age of retirement, that is to say, after 65 for men and 60 for women (paras. 133-136).

15. Amalgamation of the special schemes of unemployment insurance, for agriculture, banking and finance and insurance, with the general scheme of social insurance (paras. 137-148).

16. Abolition of the exceptions from insurance

(a) of persons in particular occupations, such as the civil service, local government service, police, nursing, railways, and other pensionable employments, and, in respect of unemployment insurance, private indoor domestic service;

(b) of persons remunerated above £420 a year in non-manual occupations (paras. 149-152).

17. Replacement of unconditional inadequate widows’ pensions by provision suited to the varied needs of widows, including temporary widows’ benefit at a special rate in all cases, training benefit when required and guardian benefit so long as there are dependent children (paras.’153-156).

18. Inclusion of universal funeral grant in compulsory insurance (paras. 157-160).

19. Transfer to the Ministry of Social Security of the remaining functions of Local Authorities in respect of public assistance, other than treatment and services of an institutional character (paras. 161-165).

20. Transfer to the Ministry of Social Security of responsibility for the maintenance of blind persons and the framing of a new scheme for maintenance and welfare by co-operation between the Ministry, Local Authorities and voluntary agencies (paras. 166-170).

21. Transfer to the Ministry of Social Security of the functions of the Assistance Board, of the work of the Customs and Excise Department in respect of non-contributory pensions, and probably of the employment service of the Ministry of Labour and National Service, in addition to unemployment insurance, and the work of other departments in connection with the administration of cash benefits of all kinds, including workmen’s compensation (paras. 171-175).

22. Substitution for the Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee of a Social Insurance Statutory Committee with similar but extended powers (paras. 176-180).

23. Conversion of the business of industrial assurance into a public service under an Industrial Assurance Board.] (paras. 181-192).

31.This considerable list of changes does not mean that, in the proposals of the Report, either the experience or the achievements of the past are forgotten. What is proposed today for unified social security springs out of what has been accomplished in building up security piece by piece. It retains the contributory principle of sharing the cost of security between three parties -the insured person himself, his employer, if he has an employer, and the State. It retains and extends the principle that compulsory insurance should provide a flat rate of benefit, irrespective of earnings, in return for a flat contribution from all. It retains as the best method of contribution the system of insurance documents and insurance stamps. It builds upon the experience gained in the administration of unemployment insurance and later of unemployment assistance, of a national administration which is not centralised at Whitehall but is carried out through responsible regional and local officers, acting at all points in close co-operation with representatives of the communities which they serve. It provides for retaining on a new basis the association of Friendly Societies with national health insurance. It provides for retaining within the general framework of a unified scheme some of the special features of workmen’s compensation and for converting the associations for mutual indemnity in the industries chiefly concerned into new organs of industrial co-operation and self-government. While completing the transfer from local to national government of assistance by cash payments, it retains a vital place for Local Authorities in the provision of institutions and in the organisation and maintenance of services connected with social welfare. The scheme proposed here is in some ways a revolution, but in more important ways it is a natural development from the past. It is a British revolution.

32. The Plan for Social Security is put forward as something that could be in operation in the immediate aftermath of the war. In the Memorandum by the Government Actuary on the financial aspects of the plan, which is printed as Appendix A to the Report, it is assumed, for the purpose of relating the estimates of expenditure to the numbers of the population, that the plan will begin to operate on 1st July, 1944, so that the first full year of benefit will be the calendar year 1945. But in view of the legislative and administrative work involved in bringing the plan into force, so early a date as this will be possible only if a decision of principle on the plan is taken in the near future by the Government and by Parliament.

PART V

PLAN FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

ASSUMPTIONS, METHODS AND PRINCIPLES

300. Scope of Social Security : The term " social security " is used here to denote the securing of an income to take the place of earnings when they are interrupted by unemployment, sickness or accident, to provide for retirement through age, to provide against loss of support by the death of another person, and to meet exceptional expenditures, such as those connected with birth, death and marriage. Primarily social security means security. of income up to a minimum, but the provision of an income should be associated with treatment designed to bring the interruption of earnings to an end as soon as possible.

301. Three Assumptions : No satisfactory scheme of social security can be devised except on the following assumptions

(A) Children’s allowances for children up to the age of 15 or if in full-time education up to the age of 16

(B) Comprehensive health and rehabilitation services for prevention and cure of disease and restoration of capacity for work, available to all members of the community;

(C) Maintenance of employment, that is to say avoidance of mass unemployment.

The grounds for making these three assumptions, the methods of satisfying them and their relation to the social security scheme are discussed in Part VI. Children’s allowances will be added to all the insurance benefits and Pensions described below in paras. 320-349.

302. Three Methods of Security : On these three assumptions, a Plan for Social Security is outlined below, combining three distinct methods: social insurance for basic needs ; national assistance for special cases; voluntary insurance for additions to the basic provision. Social insurance means the providing of cash payments conditional upon compulsory contributions previously made by, or on behalf of, the insured persons-, irrespective of the resources of the individual at the time of the claim. Social insurance is much the most important of the three methods and is proposed here in a form as comprehensive as possible. But while social insurance can, and should, be the main instrument for guaranteeing income security, it cannot be the only one. It needs to be supplemented both by national assistance and by voluntary insurance. National assistance means the giving of cash payments conditional upon proved need at the time of the claim, irrespective of previous contributions but adjusted by consideration of individual circumstances and paid from the national exchequer. Assistance is an indispensable supplement to social insurance, however the scope of the latter may be widened. In addition to both of these there is place for voluntary insurance. Social insurance and national assistance organised by the State are designed to guarantee, on condition of service, a basic income for subsistence. The actual incomes and by consequence the normal standards of expenditure of different sections of the population differ greatly Making provision for these higher standards is primarily the function of the individual that is to say, it is a matter for free choice and voluntary insurance. But the State should make sure that its measures leave room and encouragement. for such voluntary insurance. The social insurance scheme is the greater part of the Plan for Social Security and its description occupies most of this Part of the Report. But the plan includes national assistance and voluntary insurance as well.

303. Six Principles of Social Insurance : The social insurance scheme set out below as the chief method of social security embodies six fundamental principles

Flat rate of subsistence benefit

Flat rate of contribution

Unification of administrative responsibility

Adequacy of benefit

Comprehensiveness

Classification

304. Flat Rate of Subsistence Benefit: The first fundamental principle of the social insurance scheme is provision of a flat rate of insurance benefit, irrespective of the amount of the earnings which have been interrupted by unemployment or disability or ended by retirement ; exception is made only where prolonged disability has resulted from an industrial accident or disease. This principle follows from the recognition of the, place and importance of voluntary insurance in social security and distinguishes the scheme proposed. for Britain from the security schemes of Germany, the Soviet Union, the United States and most other countries with the exception of New Zealand. The flat rate is the same for all the principal forms of cessation of earning unemployment, disability, retirement; for maternity and for widowhood there is a temporary benefit at a higher rate.

305.  Flat Rate of Contribution : The second fundamental principle of the scheme is that the compulsory contribution required o f each insured person or his employer is at a flat rate, irrespective of his means. All insured persons, rich or poor pay the same contributions for the same security ; those with larger means will pay more only to the extent that as tax-payers they pay more to the national Exchequer and so to the State share of the Social Insurance Fund. This feature distinguishes the scheme proposed for Britain from the scheme recently established in New Zealand under which the contributions are graduated by income, and are in effect an income-tax assigned to a particular service. Subject moreover to one exception, the contribution will be the same irrespective of the assumed degree of risk affecting particular individuals or forms of employment. The exception is the raising of a proportion of the special cost of benefits and pensions for industrial disability in occupations of high risk by a levy on employers proportionate to risk and payroll (paras 86-90 and 360).

306. Unification of Administrative Responsibility: The third fundamental principle is Unification of administrative responsibility in the interests of efficiency and economy. For each insured person there will be a single weekly contribution, in respect of all his benefits. There will be in each locality a Security Office able to deal with claims of every kind and all sides of security. The methods of paying different kinds of cash benefit will be different and will take account of the circumstances of insured persons, providing for payment at the home or elsewhere, as is necessary. All contributions will be paid into a single Social Insurance Fund and all benefits and other insurance payments will be paid from the fund.

307. Adequacy of Benefit: the fourth fundamental principle is adequacy of benefit in amount and in time. The flat rate of benefit proposed is intended in itself to be sufficient without further resources to provide the minimum income needed for subsistence in all normal cases. It gives room and a basis for additional voluntary provision, but does not assume that in any case. The benefits are adequate also in time, that is to say except for contingencies of a temporary nature , they will continue indefinitely without means test, so long as the need continues, though subject to any change of conditions and treatment required by prolongation of the interruption in earning and occupation.

308. Comprehensiveness: The fifth fundamental principle is that social insurance should be comprehensive, in respect both of the persons covered and of their needs. It should not leave either to national assistance or to voluntary insurance any risk so general or so uniform that social insurance can be justified. For national assistance involves a means test which may discourage voluntary insurance or personal saving. And voluntary insurance can never be sure of covering the ground. For any need moreover which, like direct funeral expenses, is so general and so uniform as to be a fit subject for insurance by compulsion, social insurance is much cheaper to administer than voluntary insurance.

309. Classification: The sixth fundamental principle is that social insurance, while unified and comprehensive, must take account of the different ways of life of different sections of the community; of those dependent on earnings by employment under contract of service, of those earning in other ways, of those rendering vital unpaid service as housewives, of those not yet of age to earn, and of those past earning. The term "classification" is used here to denote adjustment of insurance to the differing circumstances of each of these classes and to many varieties of need and circumstance within each insurance class. But the insurance classes are not economic or social classes

310. Six Population Classes: the Plan for Social Security starts with consideration of the people and of their needs. From the point of view of social security the people of Britain fall into six main classes described briefly as I-Employees; II-Others gainfully employed; III-Housewives; IV-Others of working age; V-Below working age; VI-Retired above working age. The precise definitions of each of these classes, the boundaries between them and the provision for passage from one to another are discussed in detail in paragraphs 314-319. The approximate numbers in each class and their relation to security needs, as listed in the following paragraph are given in table XVI. Some needs, for medical treatment and for burial are common to all classes. In addition to this, those in Class V (below working age) need children’s allowances, and those in class VI (Retired above working age) need pensions; neither of these classes can be called on to contribute for social insurance. The other four classes all have different needs for which they will be insured by contributions made by or in respect of them. Class I (Employees), in addition to medical treatment, funeral expenses and pension, need security against interruption of earnings by unemployment and disability, however caused. Class II, i.e., persons gainfully occupied otherwise than as employees, cannot be insured against loss of employment, but in addition to medical treatment, funeral expenses and pension they need provision for loss of earnings through disability and they need some provision for loss of livelihood. Class III (Housewives) not being gainfully occupied do not need compensation for loss of earnings through ‘disability or otherwise, but, in addition to the common needs of treatment, funeral expenses and pension, they have a variety of special needs arising out of marriage. Class IV (Others of working age) is a heterogeneous class in which relatively few people remain for any large part of their lives : they all need provision for medical treatment, funeral expenses and retirement, and also for the risk of having to find a new means of livelihood.

311 Eight Primary Causes of Need: The primary needs for social security are of eight kinds, reckoning the composite needs of a married woman as one and including also the needs of childhood (Assumption A) and the need for universal comprehensive medical treatment and rehabilitation (Assumption B). These needs are set out below ; to each there is attached in the security scheme a distinct insurance benefit or benefits. Assistance may enter to deal with any kind of need, where insurance benefit for any reason is inadequate or absent.

Unemployment: that is to say, inability to obtain employment by a person dependent on it and physically fit for it, met by unemployment benefit with removal and lodging grants.

Disability : that is to say, inability of a person of working age, through illness or accident, to pursue a gainful occupation, met by disability benefit and industrial pension.

Loss of Livelihood by person not dependent on paid employment, met by training benefit.

Retirement from occupation, paid or unpaid, through age, met by retirement pension.

Marriage needs of a woman, met by Housewive’s Policy including provision for

(1) Marriage, met by marriage grant.

(2) Maternity, met by maternity grant in all cases, and, in the case of a married woman in gainful occupation, also by maternity benefit for a period before and after confinement.

(3) Interruption or cessation of husband’s earnings by his unemployment, disability or retirement, met by share of benefit or pension with husband.

(4) Widowhood, met by provision varying according to circumstances Including temporary widow’s benefit for readjustment, guardian benefit while caring for children and training benefit if and when there are no children in need of care.

(5) Separation, i.e. end of husband’s maintenance by legal separation, or established desertion, met by adaptation of widowhood provisions, including separation benefit, guardian benefit and training benefit.

(6) Incapacity for household duties, met by provision of paid help in illness as part of treatment.

Funeral Expenses of self or any person for whom responsible, met by funeral grant.

Childhood, ‘provided for by children’s allowances if in full-time education, till sixteen.

Physical Disease or Incapacity, met by medical treatment, domiciliary and institutional, for self and dependants in comprehensive health service and by post-medical rehabilitation.

312. Other Needs : The needs listed in para. 311 are the only ones so general and so uniform as to be clearly fit subjects for compulsory insurance. There is, partly for historical reasons, a problem as to the provision to be made for fatal accidents and diseases arising out of employment, by means of an industrial grant. There are many other needs and risks which are sufficiently common to be suited for voluntary insurance, and to a varying extent are already covered by that method. They include a great variety of contingencies for which provision is made by life and endowment insurance; there are risks of fire, theft, or accident ; there are exceptional expenditures such as those on holidays and education.

313. Explanation of Terms: Before defining more closely the classes into which the people must be divided for purposes of social security, it is necessary to explain three terms. " Exception " means that certain types of persons are not within a particular class, though apart from the exception they would be ; exception is general, not individual, altering the definition of a class’. Exemption " means that a person though within a particular class is exempted individually from paying the contributions of that class; his employer, if he has one, remains liable for contributions, but these contributions are not counted in judging of the insured person’s claim to benefit. " Excusal " means that contributions for which an insured person and his employer, if he has one, would otherwise be liable, are not required, but for the purpose of satisfying contribution conditions for benefit are deemed to have been paid; excusal is normally conditional on the insured person proving that he is unemployed or incapable of work. Exemption and excusal are dealt with more fully in paras. 3

314. Employees (Class I): These are, in general, persons depending for their maintenance upon remuneration received under a contract of service, including apprenticeship. The exact boundaries of this class will be adjusted by certain exceptions and inclusions. There will also be provision for exemption, that is to say, for allowing persons who take work falling within Class I to escape payment of their contributions while still requiring contributions by the employer. Insured persons in this class will hold an employment book which they will present to the employer for stamping.

The principal exception suggested is for family employment, that is to say, employment of one member of a family by another forming part of the same household. This is a development of the existing exception of fathers, sons, daughters, etc., under Agricultural Unemployment Insurance, and is designed to prevent fictitious claims for benefit. Persons excluded from Class I by this exception will fall into Class II.

Persons in Class II or IV taking work temporarily under a contract of service will be allowed to claim exemption from their own contributions, and persons in Class Ill undertaking such work will be allowed to obtain exemption so long as they desire it. Exempt persons will present to the employer a special card to be stamped. by him with the employer’ contribution.

On the other hand, certain exceptions and exemptions under the present scheme will no longer apply.- In particular.-

There will be no exception of employees on the ground of the regularity of their employment or that it entitles them to pension. The basis of the security scheme is that all should contribute compulsorily irrespective of their personal risk. For men in the Armed Forces special arrangements for contribution will secure their rights to the benefits of the scheme when they return to civil life. For men in the merchant service there will be special arrangements for contribution adjusted to the conditions of their employment.

There will be no exception of any employees by a remuneration limit.

The right of persons above normal working age to claim exemption will cease on the introduction of the principle that pension is payable only on retirement from work and that men and women reaching the ages of 65 and 60 respectively, will have the option either of continuing to work and contribute or of retiring on pension at any time thereafter.

The possibility of either including in Class I and so insuring against unemployment certain classes of persons who are not technically under a contract of service but work in effect for employers (e.g. manual labour contractors, out-workers and private nurses) or of insuring such classes by special schemes, taking account of their special circumstances, needs further exploration. In one of these classes for instance, namely nurses, in addition to the fact that nurses work sometimes under contract of service and sometimes not, there are special needs arising out of their exposure to infection and out of the urgency of their duties, rendering necessary the possibility of intervals for rest and recuperation. The problem of giving some income security under a special scheme to share fishermen should also be explored. As stated above, apprentices generally will be included in Class I, but special arrangements may be made in regard to their rate of contribution (see para. 408).

315. Others Gainfully Occupied (Class II): These are, in general, all persons working for gain who are not in Class I. Most of these will be persons working on their own account as employers or by themselves, including shopkeepers and hawkers, farmers, small holders and crofters, share fishermen, entertainers and renderers of professional and personal service and out-workers. They will include also persons who, though technically under contract of service, are excepted from Class I on the ground of family employment. Apart from the possibilities whose exploration is proposed above, persons gainfully occupied otherwise than under contract of service will not be insured against unemployment. Persons in Class II will pay contributions upon an occupation card. If a person in Class II gives up his independent occupation and takes insurable employment he will pass into Class I and will in due course acquire a claim to unemployment benefit in addition to the other benefits of Class II. If he takes insurable employment temporarily he will be allowed to work as an exempt person, i.e. only the employer’s contribution will be paid and he will neither contribute for unemployment nor acquire a right to unemployment benefit. Conversely, a person whose main occupation is employment under a contract of service but who also works regularly or occasionally at some other gainful occupation, will be able to obtain exemption from Class II contributions. Persons in Class II will be able to apply for exemption on the ground that their income is below a certain minimum, say £75 a year (para. 363).

316. Housewives (Class III): These are married women of working age living with their husbands. An housewife who undertakes paid work as well, either under a contract of service or otherwise, will have the choice either of contributing in the ordinary way in Class 1 or Class II as the case may be, or of working as an exempt person, paying no contributions of her own

317. Others of Working Age (Class IV). These are in the main students above 16, unmarried women engaged in domestic duties not for pay, persons of private means, and persons incapacitated by blindness or other physical infirmity without being qualified for benefits under the social insurance scheme. The last of these groups will be a diminishing one. Blindness and other physical infirmities will occur in most cases after people have had a chance of contributing under the scheme and qualifying for disability benefit. At the outset there will be a number of people who became incapacitated before the scheme began. After the scheme has been established, persons in receipt of any benefit or pension in respect of contributions in other classes will be treated as still belonging to those classes and not as in Class IV. Those incapacitated or in institutions will be subject to the special arrangements appropriate in each case. All the others in Class IV will be required to hold security cards and to pay contributions thereon unless and until they pass into another class. This security card must be produced to obtain an employment book or occupation card. Persons in Class IV will be able to apply for exemption from contributions on the ground that their total income is below a certain minimum, say £75 a year (para. 363).

318. Below Working Age (Class V): This class will include all persons below 16 who are in full-time education, whether compulsorily or voluntarily.

319. Retired Above Working Age (Class VI): The minimum pensionable age for retirement on social insurance pension will be 65 for men and 60 for women, but persons who continue to work after these ages will pay contributions in the ordinary way and will be treated as belonging to Class 1 or Class II.