A PROTECTION PROPOSAL.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20040, 23 September 1930, Page 10

A PROTECTION PROPOSAL.

GENERAL TARIFF OF TEN

PER CENT.

"DAILY HERALD'S 99 DISCLOSURE.

Croon ora cwk cobbespondekt.)

LONDON, August 15

i According to the "Daily Herald," the Cabinet is now considering "a proposal for a general tariff of 10 per cent, for revenue purposes, with a rebate to the Dominions." "If the information is correct," says the Parliamentary correspondent ot the "Morning Post." "it means that the Cabinet and the Socialist Party, split badly enough already, will be rent, intersected, fissured, and driven into more violent partition than ever before. The pressure of events impelling the Government nearer and nearer to the Conservative policy of Protection has been immense and cumulative— the shattering manifesto of the bankers, the resolutions continually passed uu and down the country (even m Manchester) by important Chambers of Commerce, the seats at by-elections lost, or nearly lost, the pressure of the National Union of Manufacturers, the mass demonstrations of men whose livelihood is being threatened by Free Trade, the sudden disquieting discovery by tho Trades Union Gongress that it has an open mind on the subjects of tariffs, the misgivings of the Liberals about foreign dumping, the spreading distrust of its own cardinal ideas among the Socialist Party in the country ana among the Government'® supporters in Parliament. Even the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot continue to be blind to such a constellation of warnings. Mr Thomas's Views. "When Mr Mac Donald, a couple of days before the House was prorogued, announced the agenda for the Imperial Conference, the nearest he came to any alteration in policy was to state that bulk purchase would be discussed, a theory which a section of the specie lists has long been keen to try. A fortnight earlier the Chancellor of the Exchequer had insistod with fanatical fervour that there would be no food taxes and no safeguarding. 'We shall approve of no conclusion,* insisted Mr Snowden, 'which involves this country in a food taxation policy or a. general Protection policy.' But Mr Thomas, when the vote for his Dew Department, the Dominions Office, wns being discussed in the House, was not so dogmatic lie declared emphatically that the Imperial Conference must be permitted to discuss everything—'everything and anything which will ease our economic situation.' The Chancellor's Position. "It is sbundantiy plain that a 10 per cent, duty lias only to be mentioned in tho Cabinet room for the cSocinlist leaders to fall on each other. Since it is computed tliat the duty i»uggosted bv the Economic Council would produce £80,000.000 in revenue, Hie situation for the Chancellor, at the old of his invention to meet commitments and find the cash for his next Budget, is one <>f torment. It 'is true that lie retained certain revenue duties in the last Budget because he could not forgo the money, but that he will swallow general Protection—which h® has denounced as a 'capitalist conspiracy' and 'an attack on wages'—is. unbelievable. If tho Socialist Government do turn to Protection to assist therr. out of the dismal morass in which thev flounder, it seems that Mr Snowden's body must first bo buried in the quagmire." '