CHURCHILL, Winston S.

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Typed letter signed, to David Lloyd George, outlining a scheme to end unemployment. A very lengthy letter, around 1,400 words, from one future wartime Prime Minister to another, in which Churchill propounds a solution for unemployment.Churchill was President of the Board of Trade, and Lloyd George Chancellor of the Exchequer. They were close political allies and friends who led the Liberal government's programme of welfare expansion and social reform. Over 1909 they were championing the "People's Budget", which increased taxation on the wealthy to fund the reforms.The previous October, a Cabinet Committee on unemployment was formed, and various plans proposed. Churchill writes these have not been "properly clamped together". Churchill viewed the Board of Trade as the best body to coordinate these plans, and could provide Whitehall with forecasts, similar to the role of the Army's Intelligence Department. "It seems to me that the Board of Trade ought, each year, to endeavour to forecast, from all the information at its disposal, the relative degree of unemployment which will be reached".More than this, a new executive body should be founded to tackle unemployment. "We should reproduce for the defence of this country against poverty and unemployment, the sort of machinery that we have in existence in the Committee of Imperial Defence to protect us against foreign aggression. There should be formed a Committee of National Organisation (call it what you will) analogous in many re

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