NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

ONE OF OUR less endearing national characteristics is that we suspect any sort of planning of being an encroachment on our freedom. When there is a hint of planning of manpower in it, we are quick to see the first step towards the totalitarian state. Only in times of dire national peril has the Briton accepted the need to plan the use of manpower, but when the danger has receded, the apparatus of planning has been dismantled. Even the desperate days of mass unemployment were not desperate enough to overcome the British distaste for a planned manpower policy.