Production Blowoff

Britain's secret worries about producing enough war material, not only for home defense but for her armies and garrisons all over the world, last week came out into the open. Parliament held a two-day debate on arms production and gave all sides a chance to blow off steam.

First speaker was a junior member of the House, Lieut. Rupert Brabner, a Navy flier on leave. Making his maiden speech and drawing on his personal experiences in the Mediterranean, Flier Brabner pulled no punches.

In Libya, Greece, Crete and Syria, said Lieut. Brabner, military operations had been dangerously hung up by lack of supplies; 70% to 80% of British tanks in Greece had broken down before they got to the front lines.

At Malemi in Crete, where he was stationed, "we were rarely in a position to put more than two aircraft into the air for a continuous patrol during daylight hours." The anti-aircraft guns protecting the airport were without protection themselves, were quickly put out of action by Stukas.

Lieut. Brabner stated the position of the fighting men, tried to lay no blame for the situation as he found it. But the speakers who followed did.

First under fire was Supply Minister Lord Beaverbrook, not for inefficiency but for efficiency. Several members feared that his new drive for tank production would take the emphasis off the building of equally needed planes. As a way out, Liberal Geoffrey Mander suggested that Beaverbrook be given a new ministry with power over all production.

From the Labor benches came charges of incompetence, statements that planes from the U.S. were lying idle in warehouses because no one had thought to order spare parts or maintenance equipment. Laborites also pointed to a survey just made by the big Amalgamated Engineering Union among workers in arms plants. Seventy percent of them said that their plants were running under capacity, due to mismanagement.

From another Navy man came the fightingest speech of all. Lieut. Commander Austin Hopkinson lit into Supply Minister Lord Beaverbrook, said he would organize plane production as a newspaper stunt. ("Straight from the shoulder," commented Publisher Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express.)

Amid Laborite howls M.P. Hopkinson went on to call Labor Minister Ernest Bevin "an unskilled laborer,"* unfit to handle the complex problems of labor organization. Said Hopkinson: "The labor question has been grossly mishandled for the last twelve months. . . . The whole thing is chaos from top to bottom."

In a vain attempt to soothe the angry M.P.s, a spokesman for the Supply Ministry broke into the debate to announce that plane and tank production for the second three months of 1941 was double what it was at the end of 1940, that machine-tool production was six times normal.

More to the point was a summary of the production situation that came from the floor. Sir John Wardlaw-Milne spoke with reason and authority as Chairman of the House Committee on National Expenditure. War production, he said, was at about 75% efficiency. Production lags caused by the absence of workers, for which the Government's labor policy has been much blamed, are the inevitable result of the inevitable long hours and bad conditions of wartime work.

*Labor Leader Bevin used to drive a ginger-beer dray.

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