GREAT BRITAIN'S PROBLEMS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19971, 4 July 1930, Page 13

GREAT BRITAIN'S PROBLEMS.

INVITATION TO CONFERENCES. VIEWS OF PARTY LEADERS. (BBITtSH omcui WIBXLBSS.) BUGBY, July S. The text is published of the correspondence which has passed between the Prime Minister (Mr Ramsay Mac Donald), and Mr Stanley Baldwin and Mr Lloyd George, leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Parties, regarding the holding of three-Party conferences on agriculture and unemployment. The Prime Minister invited Mr Baldwin and Mr Lloyd George, with colleagues, to take part in such conferences. Mr Baldwin declined the invitation to both conferences. In regard to the unemployment conference he said: "You have made it perfectly clear that, whilst inviting the other Parties to confer with you, you reserve to the Government alone the decision as to what is to be done. We are, in fact, invited not to a Council of State, wnose decisions will prevail, but to a conference in which you will submit to us your proposals, when they are matured, with the purpose, and soie purpose, of ascertaining what facilities we will accord for them. "We are compelled, therefore, to ask ourselves whether our participation in a conference held in the circumstances and under the restrictions pro posed by you could be of any public service. Our views upon the unemployment problem, its cause and its remedies as far as they depend upon political action, have been frequently explained. We believe the principal reasons for the decrease in employment are to be found in the lack of confidence in industrial and business circles occasioned by the political and economic policy of the Government and its supporters, and in the excessive burden of taxation laid upon industry in the execution of that policy. "We believe, further, that the most effective help which ean be given to industry, in the maintenance and recovery of its markets, lies in that wide extension of the policy of safeguarding which forms one of th< main plankß in the Conservative programme, and in securing and extending its position in other parts of the Empire by a system of preferential tariffs with our Dominions and Colonies.

"Yon have yourself been at pains to indicate that no useful purpose would be served by a discussion of these views in a conference in which two of the Parties are irrevocably opposed to them. It is impossible for us to enter a conference in which the consideration of the contribution whicb we to make is ruled out from the beginning, and we are expected to assume, as a basis of our discussion, the continuation of a policy which has so gravely added to our national distresses." In declining participation in the proposed conference, Mr Baldwin pointed out that he had agreed to a conference of agricultural representatives on a non-Party basis. This had met and reached certain unanimous decisions, aad the measures which the Conservative Party regarded as essential for the, restoration of - agriculture included the recommendations of this . expert conference. Hitherto the Government had shpwn no willingness to adopt any of these recommendations, but proposed to submit to the leaders of the Opposition Parties only the results of the Government's own study of the agricultural problem. The Prime Minister, replying to Mr Baldwin, regretted that the latter had declined the invitations, to both conferences. He said: "I had hoped it had been made abundantly clear that the Government's proposal was not, as you say, to confer with the other Parties, after It had decided what to do, but before having come to a deoision, and in the hope that when a decision was reaehed it might embody the common views. Of course, the Government was to be responsible for the action finally adopted. Nothing else is constitutionally possible, but those taking part in the advisory deliberations would be in no way bound j to support anything contrary to the views they had expressed. "The Government tried to secure a national effort to meet a special national emergency. The invitation was therefore not given in order to open up an ordinary partisan controversy, either on agriculture or unemployment, but rather to try and' discover, if, while continuing to advocate their own views, the Parties would confer on the peculiar needs of the moment, and see whether some action of a practical and temporary kind could be devised to alleviate the unfortunate condition in whicb sections of our agriculturists and our industrialists find themselves, to world causes. Your colleagues decline to consider the proposal to make this national effort. That is all Lo which, for the moment, I aib interested." Mr Lloyd George, accepting the invitatlsn to both conferences, aid: "The economic condition oj the country is such that I am convinced that inter-Party co-operation is necessary if we are to take the action necessary to put agriculture on its feet again, and to reduce unemployment to normal proportions." ■ , . The proposals of the Prime Minister, which have thus proved abortive, were that the representatives of the Opposition Parties should confer with a committee of Ministers specially appointed for the purpose; that two or three advisers, not necessarily members of Parliament, should accompany the Opposition leaders; that the executive officers of the Government should attend; and that the conferences should be advisory and not executive.