Now the employer is to be told that if the unions force him to pay exorbitant wages or go out of business if he tries to continue, he will be taxed. … - Jo Grimond
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Now the employer is to be told that if the unions force him to pay exorbitant wages or go out of business if he tries to continue, he will be taxed. The unions will escape any punishment. The employer will not be allowed to increase employment by paying lower wages nor to attract good labour by paying higher wages. We shall have another huge department to supervise the whole operation...an incomes policy is minted in the thinking of 1945.
Joseph Grimond, Baron Grimond (29 July 1913 – 24 October 1993) was Leader of the Liberal Party from 1956 to 1967 and Acting Leader in 1976. He was the Member of Parliament for Orkney and Shetland constituency from 1950 to 1983.
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston (Public domain / CC0)
Portrait from Wikimedia Commons. Credit: Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston. Used under Public domain / CC0. Processed and styled by Quotewise.
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After listening to the debate on unemployment I can see a danger that Liberals lose to the Tories their claim to have new and sensible ideas and are left saying "Me too" to a Socialist conventional wisdom which is failing...The salient need of this country—to produce more and much more efficiently—hardly figured on the agenda.
We should not delude ourselves into thinking that an incomes policy is other than a serious infringement of freedom...Nor have the Liberals explained how it is to be worked, and even if they had, it is certainly not a permanent answer to our economic troubles...At present, the Liberal-Social Democratic Alliance occasionally looks too much like a half-way house on the old road to state socialism. It will spend more than the Tories but rather less than Labour...Such compromises may win votes, but they will not improve the country.
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10 per cent inflation is not heaven and the factors are all still there to push it up much further next year. Nor has the Government any policy adequate to deal with unemployment. It is not capitalism that is in crisis. It is Socialism that is in collapse. The faith has vanished. The principles are shattered. It won't do for Liberals merely to say they will put on the brakes. Even if you slow down the Gadarene swine, they will go over the precipice eventually.
