Economic Planning
| Published date | 01 March 1947 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1947.tb01963.x |
| Author | M.P. Herbert Morrison |
| Date | 01 March 1947 |
Economic
Planning
By
the
Right
Hon. HERBERT
MORRISON,
M.P.,
Lord
President
Df
the
Council1
WE
talk a good deal in these days abut planning, but planning is a very large
and complicated business, and Britain is the first great nation to attempt to
combine large-scale economic
and
social pldng with a full measure of individual
rights and liberties.
So
far we are
still
at the experimental stage-indeed plan-
ning must never be rigid-but
I
will try to give you some idea how this experi-
ment is shaping.
I
will
hst
try
to
outline what is meant by planning as we in Britain under-
stand it.
Then
I
will
review the machinery and methods of planning, and
finally
I
will say something about the current and future problems
to
which
planning must find the answer.
PLANNING'S
FIVE
STAGES
Planning can
be
divided logically into five stages.
The first, without which none
of
the others can happen, is making up one's
mind
to
plan and grasping what planning
means.
The second is assembling the necessary facts and forecasts to make sure that
the plan can be put on a
sound
practical basis.
The third stage
is
actually devising alternative plans and seeing what they
each offer
and
what 'they each cost in terms
of
resources and disadvantages.
The fourth is the taking of decisions between alternative plans, including
the decision what is
to
be planned and what is to be left unplanned.
The fifth, and by far the most extensive stage,
is
carryhg out the plans in
practice.
This
includes explaining
them,
adjusting them and devising all the
necessary ways and
means
of
ensuring hat what was planned on paper does in
fact happen at the right times and
in
the right places and in the right way.
I
suggest that the first and vital stage was when the British people made up
their minds to plan.
We sometimes
need
to remind ourselves that planning
in
the sense
of
deliberately using the main available natiunal resource:, in the endeavour
to
secure the good
cf
the
nation
as a whole,
is
a very new thing. Until very recently
the dominant idea was that it was unnecessary for the nation to know what its
resources were and best not
to
attempt
to
control their use. That is still
the
view of a minority. Obviously while 'that view Frevailed the necessary conditions
for planning could
not
exist. Using a war-time
parallel,
the modern
nation
which is not prepared to plan is like a country which expects to win a war
with-
out mobilising for it.
Well, it is no less impossible to achieve social and econolmic well-being
without planning and working for it. That really is obvious, and it
is
time
the obvious
was
accepted, even by people who prefer abstract dogma
to
the
facing of plain facts. Unemployment and destitution were,
in
the main, the
products
of
letting 'things drift-the muddled outcome
of
muddle.
All
our
machinery and methods of planning are based
on
the express willingness
of
Parliament and
of
very large numbers
of
citizens in all areas and activities,
to
support
and participate in social and econosmic planning, and
to
censure Ministers
and public authorities
if
they plan wrongly or
fail
to plan when they ought.
And let not the individual citizen forget that he has his responsibilities
in
plan-
ning no less than Ministers.
__
-
-~
I
Address delivered
to
the
Institute
on
17th
October,
1946.
3
A2
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