8 February

National service

Will Hutton's weekly column in the Observer today ("We can replicate the beauty that came from the Depression") has a sensible suggestion - that we should replicate Roosevelt's New Deal's Works Progress Administration, the biggest employer in Depression-hit USA which gave work to up to 3.2 million people a month in socially creative programmes. Even before the present economic crisis hit us I advocated something similar. So I have used Hutton's piece as an opening to fly a kite in this letter to the paper:

Dear Sir
National emergencies, the two 20th century world wars and austerity post-1945, spawned the creation of national service. With the prospect of the present crisis extending over years and with mass unemployment disproportionately affecting the young, as Will Hutton says, his suggestion that we immediately emulate the New Deal Works Progress Administration project is a good one. We should go further. We face the likelihood of massive social unrest and its consequences. Now surely we should reintroduce a form of state-funded and directed national service, say for two years, in community-orientated activity, for all school-leavers and voluntarily for any other adults in need of work.