long-run trends in unemployment

Long-Run Trends in UnemploymentAuthor(s): Humphrey SouthallSource: Area, Vol. 15, No. 3 (1983), pp. 238-242Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20001940 .

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Comment

Discussion arising from papers in area

Long-run trends in unemployment

Humphrey Southall (Queen Mary College, London) writes:

The recent debate between Gillespie and Owen, and Crouch' has considered trends in British regional unemployment over progressively longer periods: the original paper considered only the current depression but Crouch's reply compared it with the inter war period whilst the rejoinder referred briefly to 1909. The most recent discussion devotes some space to pre-1914 patterns of distress and in the process perpetuates certain misunderstandings about that period. This present comment is intended to correct these, rather than elaborate on the discussants' central theme.2

Since the expansion in 1920 of the National Insurance system to cover the bulk of the workforce, there has been a general consensus that economic distress, particularly as caused by cyclical downturns, is best measured through returns of the number of recipients of unemployment insurance pay. In the pre-1914 period, unemployment was not measured so comprehensively and, perhaps more importantly, neither was it an

important concern for the state. Any attempt to examine the geography of distress in this period must rely on sources which are either partial or indirect; further, we

must accept that it necessarily involves the imposition of anachronistic perspectives and criteria. Gillespie and Owen, and Crouch identify the three principal classes of relevant information but fail to interpret them in terms of their historical context, giving rise to apparently contradictory conclusions.

Firstly, there are the comments of other writers, both modern and contemporary.

Gillespie and Owen cite Brown, 1972, on the subject of pre-1914 trade union unem ployment rates;3 unfortunately, the statement in the original is wholly undocumented and seems, from material discussed below, to be quite untrue. Similarly unsupported statements can be found elsewhere but are in no sense historical evidence.4 Contempor ary writers, such as the contributors to the 1909 Royal Commission cited by Gillespie and Owen, provide direct testimony but care must be taken in interpreting their remarks. Most such commentators were concerned not with the economic problems of ' industrial unemployment ' but with the ' unemployed ', with the various social prob lems associated with those lacking regular employment.5 These were underemployed

238



Comment 239

as much as unemployed and concentrated into the casual labour markets of the great cities, particularly London. An emphasis on the visibility of distress concentrated atten tion on areas accessible to middle class observers, hence, for example, of the 39

witnesses to the 1895 Select Committee on Distress, 22 were concerned with local conditions in London.6 Consequently, the abundant references to the special problems of unemployment in the metropolis cannot be taken at face value.

Turning to less impressionistic sources, the obvious choices are the voluminous stat istics of Poor Relief, used by Crouch and available over very long periods in the Annual

Reports of the Poor Law Board, later the Local Government Board. These provide, bi-annually, classified totals of paupers for each county. Unfortunately the Poor Law was explicitly intended to limit relief to the ' able-bodied' men, i.e. the employable, and the vast majority of paupers were women, children, elderly or sick. Figures for pauperage more closely parallel modem statistics for Supplementary Benefit rather than unemployment and, treated as an index, reflect many other factors besides variations in the demand for labour.7 This applies a fortiori to geographical patterns, crude county figures for paupers as a percentage of total population in 1909 being highest in the rural counties of the South and East Anglia8 and generally low in the industrial north. Essentially the same geographical pattern can be followed back, through boom and slump, to the 1860s and it bears an obvious relationship to the geography of the so called ' Speenhamland ' system in the 1830s, under which poor relief effectively subsi dised the wages of farm labour in certain areas.9 Cyclic gains, as analysed by Crouch, are arguably a more meaningful indicator but such decompositions are greatly com plicated by the long-term downward trend in levels of pauperage, essentially administrative in origin, and the enormous local variations in the actual operation of the system.10

Lastly, there are statistics of unemployment itself. Many modern comments on high pre-1914 levels can be traced back to Beveridge," as cited by Gillespie and Owen, and through him to the figures reproduced in Table 1, which appear to provide unam biguous evidence. However, these data come from the first six months of operation of National Insurance, when the system was scarcely established, while coverage was narrow.'2 Further, the period covered was one of' extremely good trade '," hence the

figures provide no measure of depression unemployment. The high rate for London was most marked in building and shipbuilding, where the effects of casualisation were greatest.

The most serious inaccuracy is Crouch's statement that 'local unemployment data do not exist for periods of recession before 1914'. National figures from 1851 onwards are well known,'4 having been calculated by the Board of Trade from returns made by trade unions which provided unemployment insurance to their members; a recent study by Garside provides a suitable introduction to their use.'5 Less well known are the statistical returns from individual branches which the principal unions printed in their own monthly reports. An extended discussion of these data is beyond the scope of this note but Figure 1 provides a relevant example of the results possible from their analysis. It is based on levels among 99,423 UK members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the largest union of the period, and refers to the trough of the last depression before 1914.16 The general resemblance to patterns of unemployment in the inter-war period and later will be obvious, while examination of earlier depressions suggests great stability over the preceding 60 years.

This note has been principally concerned with pointing out the problems of assessing spatial patterns of unemployment in periods before comprehensive statistics exist. On superficial examination, most evidence points to the northern industrial regions of



240 Comment

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Comment 241

Q 7

Unemployment rate (%) 2 -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~; . ..........

20-24990 .. 15-19 I

exprincnga evrslit the shfn Brti s _oiini ol rd oti98

However, uch of te 'evidene' on unmploymen results fro unupp sertion or misinterpretation of the histoncal record while alIs of staisca :;- sources. requires u .s totread more fearfully. ..................

....... ::-::-:::::-:::-::: .........:-:

.::::. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Unemployment rate (%) _t::::::::::::::::::::::::::::e: ...........: ........... : {:: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.........................:L_

_ 20-2499 )~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~............... | S _ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . .... ....:: .. .......... I... _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.... ...................

_ | ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~..... ..... :

Source:~~~~~~~~~~~~~--XXX-_- .........etuns

Victorian and Edwardian Britain being areas of high growth and low......... unemploy.........m........ experiencig a reversl with theshift in ritain's psition in orld tradepost-1918 However, much of th ' evidence ' on uemployment results rom unsuppor.ed.as sertio or miinterretatin of te hisoricalrecord whil analyis of tatisical mteria points to epression nemploymet being cocentratedinto indusrial area. ....... .........

relationship to regional growth usually assumed, the question ...........-............. unemployment is not of only antiquarian interest; nor can it ............................

in a couple of hours in a library. A proper appreciation ..of .t ............................. sources ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~~~....... ..............................lly



242 Comment

Notes 1. Gillespie, A. E. and Owen, D. W. (1981) 'Unemployment trends in the current depression 'Area 13,

189-96; Crouch, C. S. (1982) 'Trends in unemployment' Area 14, 56-9 and reply by Gillespie and

Owen, 5941; Crouch, C. S. (1982), 'More on unemployment trends' Area 14, 286-9, and reply by

Gillespie and Owen, 289-91

2. This note draws on the writer's research on the geography of unemployment pre-1914 but proper docu

mentation of the statistical results referred to is clearly impractical here; see Southall, H. R. (1981),

'Regional unemployment patterns in Britain, 1851-1914 ', paper presented at the CUKANZUS confer ence, Toronto, July 1981

3. Brown, A. J. (1972), The framework of regional economics in the United Kingdom (Cambridge). Gillespie and Owen cite p. 120 but see also p. 20 and p. 216; in the former, his belief in a shift in unemployment

patterns appears to underpin a particular disequilibrium-based perspective on modern problems. 4. See, for example, Stedman Jones, G. (1974) 'Working class culture and working class politics in

London, 1870-1900', J. Social Hist. 7, 489; von Tunzelman, N. (1981), 'Britain 1900-45: a survey',

247-8 in Floud, R. and McCloskey, D. The economic history of Britain since 1700 Vol. II

5. This distinction is discussed by Harris, J. (1972), Unemployment and politics (Oxford), 7-9 6. BPP 1895 VIII, IX; 1986 IX

7. This point was made explicitly by the government official responsible for labour statistics, H. Llewellyn Smith; SC on Distress, 3rd Report, BPP 1895 IX, 61

8. 39th Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1908-9, 131

9. Blaug, M. (1963) 'The myth of the old Poor Law and the making of the new', 7. Econ. Hist., XXIII,

15144. Blaug, M. (1964), 'The Poor Law Report re-examined', ]. Econ. Hist., XXIV, 229-45

10. Fraser, D. (ed.) (1976) The new poor law in the nineteenth century, (London), esp. chapters 2-3, 8.

A particular problem was that the Scottish system operated under quite different legislation 11. See in particular, Beveridge, W. H. (1944), Full employment in a free society (London) 73-4

12. The 'other' category refers to a small residual group, comprising 2 8/8% of all insured in July, 1914;

18th Abstract of Labour Statistics, BPP 1926 (Cmnd. 2740) XXIX, 46

13. Unemployment insurance, BPP 1913 (Cd. 6965) XXXVI, 24. (This was written by Beveridge as Director of Labour Exchanges.)

14. Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, P. (1971) Abstract of British historical statistics (Cambridge) 64-5

15. Garside, W. R. (1980) The measurement of unemployment in Great Britain (Oxford), chapter 1 16. The data were drawn from the ASE Monthly Report for this month, using a copy held by Nuffield College,

Oxford. The percentages were calculated by deducting the sick, superannuated and ineligible recent

admissions from the union's total membership in eligible classes and those on strike from the total in

receipt of 'donation benefit'. The spatial units employed are modern Standard Regions and certain

ad hoc urban areas. Further documentation is given in Southall op. cit. (see note 2)

IGU Research Development Committee The International Geographical Union has established a Research Development Committee, comprising R. Fuchs, S. Faissol and R. F. Tomlinson. Its remit is to identify projects suitable for involvement by the IGU and which require participation by several commissions/working groups and/or funding by several agencies; to provide advice on the preparation and submission of such proposals; to perform a coordinating function for such proposals; and eventually to provide an intelligence service on current research in geography.

As a first step contact is being made with chairmen of commissions, working groups and national committees, who are being invited to identify, in outline, topics of broad interest which can be seen as being of concern to the IGU, to which geographers can or should be contributing, which are manageable and where useful remits can be achieved within a reasonable time. Most proposals will probably arise through commissions and working groups, but they are also welcome from individuals. Any geographer wishing to make such a proposal for consideration by the committee is invited to get in touch with the Secretary of the British National Committee for Geography, D. J. H. Griffin, The Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace, London SWIY 5AG in the first instance.

J. T. Coppock University of Edinburgh



long-run trends in unemployment

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