BRITAIN’S PLIGHT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 169, 1 May 1946, Page 3

BRITAIN’S PLIGHT

Churchill’s Declaration LONDON, April 29. Declaring Britain’s plight to be one of singular gravity and insecurity, Mr Churchill, in a speech at Edinburgh, charged the Attlee Government with: (1) Tardy demobilisation. (2) Increased lush and lavish expenditure. (3) Failure to allow the production lof sufficient consumer goods. (4) Failure regarding the housing programme. (5) The disturbance and enfeeblement of industry by nationalisation schemes and threats of it. (6) A campaign of hatred and vili- ' fication on the part of one half of the nation against the other half. “There never in human history was a community so. numerous- in a position at once so magnificent and so precarious,” said Mr Churchill. “Mistakes now would dissipate the means by which more than half the population lived, ending in the abridgement of one-tliird to- one-half of the population and to the final extinction of Britain as a centre 1 of the widest, most experienced and most tolerant association of people since the fall of the Roman Empire. Mr Churchill, referring to the months when invasion seemed near, said: “I do not hesitate to say that I feel the same kind of anxiety now about our life fortunes as I did in those dark but glorious days.” The prolonged period of restriction and austerity which the Government asked the public to endure would have occurred even if a national coalition had been in power,' but some of it was unnecessary and not concerned with national objectives, but only Socialist Party interests and doctrines.