By Sir Leon Bagrit. Weidenfeld and Nicolson 15/- IR LEON’S Reith Lectures were commented on by The Week at the time they were broadcast, but now they have been published it is possible to give a more considered judgement on them. Sir Leon sees the tremendous Opportunities of the new technological revolution and is enthused by them. If the potentialities of automation are tapped production could soar, the food problem could be solved and a new leisured life evolved. He comments that ‘“Mechanisation has sometimes given millions of peopie sub-human work to do. Automation does the exact opposite.” Some problems do lie between us and the Golden Age. Certain difficulties must be removed. “For instance an early warning system is being organised to indicate, in good time, those workers who might be threatened by displacement due to technology and advance. But this will only work if the employers show selves willing to be able to indicate their plans far enough ahead. Publicising his intentions in this way is asking a great deal of a manufacturer. The result might be that he would lose some of his labour, alarm his shareholders, and encourage his competitors to take steps against him.” - To properly and humanly use the potentialities of automation at least two age-old truths must be given the lie; that those who do not work shall not eat and that in a community the means of existence of that community shall be in private hands. The economist, Strumilin, in a statement to the Soviet Academy of Science, said that “if Capitalism can be characterised as a classical period of mechanisation of work, Communism will be seen to bring about a new era of total automation in production.” Sir Leon remains optimistic. “Today, if we know where we are going and if we use the slave services of automation intelligently and courageously, we have the chance of building a high civilisation. And, when I say ‘for ourselves’ I mean the whole community, not just for a small elite on the Greek pattern.” And these are really big ‘ifs.’
Bristol Multi-
Racial Club
Flourishes
About 5.5 millions New Yorkers
live in poverty. This is the conclu-
sion drawn by the Community
Council of Greater New York in its
eighth annual review.
James Fogarty, General Director
of the Council, said that to be free
from this impoverished situation, the
income of a half of the population in
the city should be twice as big as
now.
According to U.S. official statistics,
he said, 50.5 per cent. of all the
families in New York in 1959 had
incomes below the minimum cost of
living. The situation now was the
same. Food prices, house rent and
medical charges had been rising par-
ticularly quickly in recent years.
The U.S. News and World Report
said in a February issue that “some
1.25 million residents of New York
City live in sub-standard housing —
dilapidated, uncomfortable, unhealthy
- Slums keep spreading.” It
quoted a congressman as saying that
New York City “seems to sink deeper
into trouble every day.”
Tom Nicholls
New York's
Submerged
Five Million
ihe for the Bristol Multi-
Racial Club continues to grow,
and membership now attends at over
300. The club was set up last Sep-
tember, with the object of promoting
better understanding between the
coloured and white communities in
Bristol. _ Meetings are held in the
Toc H Centre, St. Andrews Road,
with Monday evenings devoted to
current affairs and Fridays to social
events.
At a recent meeting Mr. Paul
Stevenson, Secretary of the West
Indian Development Association,
gave a first hand account of the
Negro Civil Rights struggle in the
.S.A. with special reference to de-
velopments in Selma. Mr. Steven-
son has recently returned from a 6
months’ sponsored visit to the United
States.