Introduction. ix. 



wages and conditions. The workers accepted the pro- 

 cedure laid down by the Government and relied upon the 

 machinery provided for adjusting- wages and working 

 conditions. To sweep away the machinery at the time 

 when the reversal of the guaranteed prices tends to en- 

 courage farmers to make an attack on wages, is to leave 

 the workers to face an entirely new situation bereft of the 

 machinery to which they had been invited to entrust the 

 settlement of these questions. The Government's action 

 is a direct invitation to the farmers to attack the standard 

 of living of the workers. In Scotland the position is 

 different. There the workers never had any faith in the 

 wages policy of the Government and took their own line 

 of action independently of the Committees set up under 

 the Act. 



The position for the community is quite as serious, 

 however. By sweeping away even the meagre control of 

 farming which the Agriculture Act gave, we are thrown 

 back to uncontrolled private speculation in the manage- 

 ment and cultivation of land. That was the danger of 

 interlocking prices, wages and control. If we are to wash 

 our hands, as a community, of the agricultural industry 

 in this way and leave it to muddle along, with landlords 

 refusing to equip and maintain the land, and farmers 

 playing for safety by letting down the land, and the 

 workers left to sink or swim as they may be able, we may 

 bid farewell to any revival of agriculture in this country. 

 To decontrol agriculture and do nothing else is simply to 

 declare we have no policy in agriculture. I submit that 

 the policy I have outlined is all the more urgent because 

 of the sudden reversal of the Government policy and that 



