Will not the daily toil of the actual producing worker have a heavier burden thrust upon it by the enormous hordes of disinterested and largely uninterested officials than would be the case under private management? And will not these officials be less efficient, more costly, and far more dictatorial than the private employers?
1947, 16 May, Ayr, Scotland. (Europe, 97-8.) For related quotations see Capitalism.
The bureaucrats suffer no penalties for wrong judgments; so long as they attend their offices punctually and do their work honestly and behave in a polite manner towards their political masters they are sure of their jobs and their pensions. They are completely disinterested in the directness of their judgment. But the ordinary private trader, as you know in your own lives, faces impoverishment or perhaps bankruptcy if he cannot measure things right from day to day and those who show themselves unable to do this are replaced by more capable men and organisers.
1948, 28 May, Perth, Scotland. (Europe, 344.)
The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals; between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition; between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.
1949, 23 July, Wolverhampton. (CS VII, 7835.)
We [Tories] are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They [Labour] are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes. But, we ask: “What happens if anyone slips out of his place in the queue?” “Ah!” say the Socialists, “our officials—and we have plenty of them—come and put him back in it, or perhaps put him lower down to teach the others.” And when they come back to us and say: “We have told you what happens if anyone slips out of the queue, but what is your answer to what happens if anyone slips off the ladder?” Our reply is: “We shall have a good net and the finest social ambulance service in the world.”
1951, 8 October. Broadcast, London.
(Stemming, 134.)
World History
